Simply Complex

Bruce Tate, Graham Glass, Kent Beck and Steve Jobs all seem to agree that the simplest approach is often the best one.  Graham argues that it is a key factor in improving the entire user-experience.  They're dead on.  It would behoove all engineers and designers to get on board.  But even the pursuit of simplicity can go too far, making some unintended thing more complicated.

Granted, it may be rare but, like all misapplied ideologies, this kind of thing is possible.  For example, I recently took a flight from Virginia to California and happened across this simple chair-arm TV controller. 

At first, I admired how elegant it was to read and use.  Then, after 15 minutes of trying to read with the TV on, I decided to turn it off in order to avoid the distraction.  I figured later I'd jump right back on to ESPN classics when I got tired of reading.

But, for the life of me, I could not see how to turn the TV off. 

It should've been easy but there was no discernable "On/Off" button anywhere in site.  I tried turning the volume down to zero but TV images continued to ficker and distract.  I found a soundless, static-display channel you could flip to but the TV was still bright and, well,... on.  Brightness could be controlled but maximum dimming of a channel left the TV volume unchanged.  I wanted everything off, all at once.  Later I wanted everything quickly back on, right where I had left it. 

It turns out, flipping the TV to the static channel and turning the dimming all the way down was the only way to turn the TV off.

The interesting thing about this is that the chair-arm TV controls were good in every other respect.  Obviously someone had strived for a clean and effective design.  Perhaps, they strived so hard that their design became a little too simple.  Ideology didn't trump common sense so, they missed.  My solution: Add an on/off button.  How simple would that have been?