Make obvious software, not simple software

Brian Oberkirch has been on a bit of a blitz of great posts about social networking today (and I'm not just saying that because he picked up on bragster supporting hCard import yesterday). The one that I really liked is from "simple to obvious", in which Brian has a go at the propensity people have for assuming a 'regular user' exists and can/should be catered to. You should read the whole post for the detail, but the bit that got me at the end was this:

I think we?ve made a fetish of 'simple' software... Simplicity is not a value in & of itself. It's a condition of usability within a given context. Maybe we should start trying to make 'obvious' software instead. What's obvious to someone may not be obvious to another.

This is a really good point. There's a clear danger of just designing 'simple' interfaces and interactions where what we really want is something that's obvious to the user. It may be that a successfull task is not a 'simple' thing to complete, but if it's always obvious what you need to do next, success becomes more likely. As Steve Krug would say, "Don't make me think!" While you're at Brian's site, be sure to read "What PR people should know about social media".