[ankeshk]

While I agree with the thesis, a contradictory point comes to mind.

We just don't know a lot about how cognitive resources are utilized. Long distance runners know this. Athletes know this. The whole concept of "second wind". Where they find the strength to better their game using way less resources -- after they have been tired. Some type of cognitive resource depletion gives people even more energy and motivation.

While I agree that things should be made simpler and we shouldn't over-gamify things, I don't think we should make decisions with the cake / fruits question in mind. That just provides a framework to dumb things down. We will never enable the users to hit their second wind if they never get tasks that make them crave cakes.

I guess my point is: simplicity is good. Simplicity to the point of dumbness is not.

[tetha]

Also, another important thing to realize is: Simplicity is ambiguous and highly dependent on the target group. Or, put in other words, certain choices that might look hard or certain mechanisms that look complicated might end up being simple.

For example, in a small project, the simplest possible solution for a problem was to throw the full power of regexes at the user. Why? Because the audience was a number of developers who knew regexes and they needed the ability to match some strings.

In a similar vein, if my mom is cooking, it is actually simpler if the recipe doesn't give her a billion choices how to do a simple step, just tell her that one step. She'll do it the way she likes.

So, simplicity is actually pretty complicated, and removing the wrong choices and possibilities might make your program a lot harder to use.