The author of this article is interesting because he is so obvious: "It's about giving people a great experience." In other words: it's all about selling stuff

The author of this article is interesting because he is so obvious: "It's about giving people a great experience." In other words: it's all about selling stuff to consumers. Which is a great thing to say if - like Baekdal - you are marketing yourself as a guru to people to want to sell stuff. Many "usability" discussions have the implicit (sometimes explicit goal) of making it easy for users to do things without having to learn anything first. This may be fine for generic routine tasks that everyone has to do from time to time. We are all thrilled about our shiny new phones. But consider this: 1. Not long ago, most things were hard, confusing or impossible to do on any phone 2. Even if 80% of all things you can do on an iPhone are dead simple - are these things that really matter to you? Things worth well are usually not generic routine tasks. When you love what you are doing and try to make it as good as you can, using the right tools in the right way is a major part of the experience. But that kind of experience is impossible without making an effort to learn new things. My personal belief is that those of us who want to create our own experiences benefit from getting our hands dirty with technology now and then.