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While it is a must to have a really simple user interface, I do not agree with the idea that such an interface has anything to do with feature minimalism. Sure

While it is a must to have a really simple user interface, I do not agree with the idea that such an interface has anything to do with feature minimalism. Sure these are not mutually exclusive, but the correlation that latter leads to former is far from being correct. Or straightforward. A great example that contradicts the minimalist theory is that of Facebook. Faceboook has a very complex interface and that you can observe by seeing someone who joins Facebook now. And yet the usability, experience and interface of the social network is great. Given a subtask - say throwing a party or sharing pictures of one - Facebook does a splendid job to help its users do whatever they undertook. And they give a lot of features of varying complexity and clutter at one place.

mpyne 13y ago
Another thing I noticed from the article was that the improvements to the U/I are not always improvements. E.g. the set-your-own pricing option, it's nice to be able to do either way from a single line edit, but there still has to be an affordance provided to the user to let them know that it's even possible to enter a '+', and that adds clutter. Likewise with merging the opt-in email option to the combo box... by leaving it blank instead of explicitly saying that the client won't be spammed you may lead to anguish on the part of the user, as they now have to figure out whether the entry is blank because of a software bug, to signify that the client will receive a "default" email, or whether the client will receive no email at all.