In a recent NY Times article, Alice Rawsthorn describes her frustration with technology that is innovative, but much too complicated. Design is supposed to make our lives easier, but sometimes complicated technology that is not easily figured out through common sense just make everything more difficult. It reminds me of the Rube Goldberg machines that get the job done but have so many unnecessary steps that it makes everything ridiculous.
It also reminds me of a watch my Dad got that had all these extra bells and whistles. It had several alarms, ability to show time in army time, the date, etc. But somehow by pressing a button he set an alarm on it and couldn't figure out how to turn it off. There was no simple way of figuring out how to change it and he had lost the instruction manual. Eventually he just smashed the watch to get it to stop because it was that annoying. Even though it had more, it was an awful design that made life more difficult instead of easier.
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