This article was a response to the "Best UI no UI" debate that was sparked by one of Cooper's article I think [1]
Personally I think the "Best Interface = No Interface" mantra is too black and white and totally ignores all the shades of grey in between. If you come up with these principles, the language needs to be much clearer.
I think what people meant to say was "Sometimes the best UI is no GUI".
One minor problem with Berkun's otherwise good essay is around paragraph five, his description of no-UI as a desire for simplicity, perpetuating the idea that complex interactions with machines are undesirable and a symptom of insanity. Then declares everyone's goal is simplicity, its just no-UI is doing simple "wrong". I could not disagree more. They are not linked or in any way related, complexity and desirability are orthogonal. I greatly enjoy highly complex, desirable interactions. Why must we only be capable of simple, boring actions? Highly complex action for little reward like his ridiculous example of a door opening UI shows the orthogonality of the two concepts, not that granting the user the ability to do complex things if they want to is somehow "wrong".
The best literature analogy I can make is something like the ideal love story is probably a lot more like a 200 page romance novel than like a 2 minute pr0n video.
The best literature analogy I can make is something like the ideal love story is probably a lot more like a 200 page romance novel than like a 2 minute pr0n video.