Ease of Use or Flexibility

Ease of use and flexibility are design goals that sometimes do not go hand in hand. In those rare instances that they do, the programmer, of course, has to provide both ease of use and flexibility.

Apple managed to combine both ease of use and flexibility in their MacOS X System. Their Aqua interface gives users ease of use while the core Unix system provides flexibility a power user might want. This is no mean feat and that’s one of the things that make the Mac a great platform.

But there are times when those design parameters do not play well together and trying to provide both would actually result in a program which is neither flexible enough nor very easy to use. In these instances, the programmer has to choose between ease of use or flexibility. If you are the programmer, what will you choose?

This is when the intended users of the application come in the picture. If your intended users are professionals or would use your application professionally, then features and flexibility should come first. If your application is for home users, then ease of use should be the top priority.

A good example of this is Picasa for home users, and Photoshop for the graphics professional. Picasa is easy to use while Photoshop is flexible and feature-rich.

User targeting should always be considered in application development to avoid those applications which try to be all things to all users and, as a result, become something none wants to use.