| Law of Conservation of Complexity | |
|---|---|
| Years active | 1980's-present |
The law of conservation of complexity states that every application must have an inherent amount of irreducible complexity. Who will have to deal with it—the user, the application developer, or the platform developer? It's a very simple but important concept for Interaction Design with major consequences. Should a software developer spend extra time on the program to make it simpler for the user or should the user have to deal with increased complexity.[1]
Contents |
Larry Tesler while working for Apple in the mid-1980's realized how users interact with applications was just as important as the application itself.[1]There is a twist to complexity however that Bruce Tognazzini points out; people strive to maintain the same or more complexity in their lives.[2]This results in a delicate balancing act that Interaction Design professionals must do. Designing Interactions, a book by Dan Saffer,[3] has an interview with Larry Tesler, wherein the law of conservation of complexity was discussed, and since then it has become quite popular amongst the user experience and the interaction design professionals as a reference point. The reference interview can be found online.[1][4]
Larry Tesler makes the argument that an engineer should ask if would be better for the success of the company to spend an extra week reducing the complexity of an application versus making millions of users spend an extra minute using the program because of the extra complexity[1]. That argument alone indicates Tesler's Law can be applied to many things outside of programming.
Possible applications of Tesler's Law: