Living with Complexity Review

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Living with Complexity ReviewI used to be a fan of Don Norman's books. Heck, The Design of Everyday Things is what got me started in my career, and reading it was a truly formative experience. Emotional Design is another great Norman book that helps the reader understand the world around them.
But the more Mr. Norman writes, the worse his books get. The Design of Future Things was a rambling beat-the-dead-horse screed about how cars should drive themselves, and appliance designers should find ways for appliances to communicate with us other than going 'beeeeeep'. Both of those are true, but he covered them just as well (perhaps better) in a two-page article he wrote for a journal.
This volume, Living With Complexity, continues that downward spiral.
As always, he has a good premise: complexity is not inherently bad. Simplicity is not inherently good. And more important, it's not a zero-sum trade-off between the two.
Unfortunately, it's buried under semi-coherent prose that rambles, circles, repeats, and ultimately goes nowhere. It takes entire chapters to convey simple ideas. He even gets tangled up in his own arguments, getting the punch line wrong at least once (i'm not sure if he meant to say 'reduces simplicity' or 'increases complexity', but the end result was 'increases simplicity', which was exactly the opposite of what he'd just shown).
He even gets some of the research wrong. It's well known that people will shop based on features. They'll take two software packages or cars or dishwashers, line them up, and compare the feature list, almost always buying the one with the longer list if the price is equal. Mr. Norman takes this and concludes that people want more features, even though the research pretty solidly indicates that people simply equate more features with greater value, regardless of whether they have any use for the features. (Think of any time you've heard a person say, 'but this one has eight different settings!' when you know full well they'll only ever use one. It's just like people rationalizing a purchase with 'it's on sale!' even if it's an item they'll never use.)
With a few rounds of thorough editing, this book could have been a Norman masterpiece, explaining the intricacies of interaction design to a general audience and even teaching interaction designers a few new tricks. Instead, it's quite nearly a waste of paper.
If you're new to Don Norman, skip this book and go straight to The Design of Everyday Things. If you've read a few of his books and are hoping he got his groove back, save yourself the money.Living with Complexity Overview

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