Talking to an operater to make a call is a long, slow, and complex process. Not when compared to trying to find an entry on the iPhone when you are elderly and

Talking to an operater to make a call is a long, slow, and complex process. Not when compared to trying to find an entry on the iPhone when you are elderly and blind. But, yes, it's got tradeoffs, like any designed object. This is why designers get paid: There's no simple checklist of things you can do to make your design good. It has to fit the use case. This is what the essayist is trying to say: From a certain point of view, the iPhone has a lot of interface elements that are hard to use. But, nonetheless, it meets a different important design criterion: It's delightful to explore. There are interface elements that are incredibly obscure, ("Why have all the application icons started shivering like they were cold?") but once you find them it's kind of thrilling, like a magic trick, or an Easter egg. (I find those shivering icons highly amusing, even if nobody has any clue what they mean the first time through.) But not everyone wants that. The fact that no one design can suit everyone is one reason why we want a diversity of options in the marketplace.