> one of the worst misconceptions in product design is that a microwave needs to have a button for every thing you could possibly cook<p>"Worst" is a stretch. Not to mention these often actually do more than just power and time. For example detecting humidity and/or varying power over time.<p>> You can just have a time (and power) button. People will figure out how to cook stuff.<p>You could, but people don't always want to figure it out, especially when they are hungry.<p>This would have been a better article if the takeaway wasn't basically "people are smart, make them learn the underlying structure".<p>I think good design is recognizing when and how to either expose the structure or paper over it, all while making it pleasant to interact with for all users at either end of the spectrum of willingness to learn it.<p>For a bike, it pays off to learn. For other things maybe not so much. Combining these two very different cases and then making a blanket statement that "Good designs expose systematic structure" doesn't land well.
A much better analogy is the fact that bicycles are hugely popular at all. Douglas Englebart used to bring this up in his talks. If usability is the most important thing then we would all be riding tricycles. Most of us started out on trikes but the benefits of a bicycle compared to a trike are great enough that it is worth the one-time but significant investment in learning to ride it.<p>That said, I have little desire to ride a bicycle now that I have been riding a velomobile. ;-)
I haven't read "Changing Minds".<p>> As he points out: it would be terrible! We’d lose the intuitive understanding of how to use the gears to solve any situation we encounter. Which mode do you use for gravel + downhill?<p>I have no idea, actually, what gears I should use for gravel + downhill, which is surprising since about 6 years ago I biked from Pittsburgh to DC, which had a fairly long downhill section. I remember mostly coasting on that section. I might've stopped a few times to make sure my brakes could cool down. I don't think there is a wrong gear on a bicycle when coasting down on gravel?<p>Perhaps I am the user who does need a nightmare bicycle with a gravel + downhill button.