The rise of the simple UI

User interfaces are about to become simpler.

This change is driven by the rise of mobile devices. The UI for mobile apps must be simpler. A cell phone has a small screen and (when needed) a virtual keyboard. The user interacts through the touchscreen, not a keyboard and mouse. Tablets, while larger and often accompanied by a real (small-form) keyboard, also interact through the touchscreen.

For years, PC applications have accumulated features and complexity. Consider the Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel applications. Each version has introduced new features. The 2007 versions introduced the "ribbon menu", which was an adjustment to the UI to accommodate the increase.

Mobile devices force us to simplify the user interface. Indirectly, they force us to simplify applications. In the desktop world, the application with the most features was (generally) considered the best. In the mobile world, that calculation changes. Instead of selecting an application on the raw number of features, we are selecting applications on simplicity and ease of use.

It is a trend that is ironic, as the early versions of Microsoft Windows were advertised as easy to use (a common adjective was "intuitive"). Yet while "intuitive" and "easy", Windows was never designed to be simple; configuration and administration were always complex. That complexity remained even with networks and Active Directory -- the complexity was centralized but not eliminated.

Apps on mobile don't have to be simple, but simple apps are the better sellers. Simple apps fit better on the small screens. Simple apps fit better into the mobile/cloud processing model. Even games demonstrate this trend (compare "Angry Birds" against the PC games like "Doom" or even "Minesweeper").

The move to simple apps on mobile devices will flow back to web applications and PC applications. The trend of adding features will reverse. This will affect the development of applications and the use of technology in offices. Job requisitions will list user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) skills. Office workflows will become more granular. Large, enterprise systems (like ERP) will mutate into collections of apps and collections of services. This will allow mobile apps, web apps, and PC apps to access the corporate data and perform work.

Sellers of PC applications will have to simplify their current offerings. It is a change that will affect the user interface and the internal organization of their application. Such a change is non-trivial and requires some hard decisions. Some features may be dropped, others may be deferred to a future version. Every feature must be considered and placed in either the mobile client or the cloud back-end, and such decisions must account for many aspects of mobile/cloud design (network accessibility, storage, availability of data on multiple devices, among others).