Dancing with digital interface complexity: a story approach

We're constantly looking for ways to manage the growing complexity of our computer experiences. Software developers are weaving more features into already bloated applications because. It's up to human interface designers as members of development teams to quell this drive of feature creep with smarter interface tools to make life easier for computer users. Methods for dealing with the increasing complexity range from the simple floating tool palettes (as used in Adobe Photoshop) to complex intelligent interfaces and interface agents making their way out of academia and into the commercial marketplace. The dilemma is that easy software sells better than difficult software, feature-rich software sells better than feature-poor software, and the two best-selling categories-easy and feature rich-seem to contradict each other. Story interfaces show some promise of mitigating the ever-increasing complexity of information interfaces. We must of course perform much research in the area of applying the story to interface design. We still have to work out a lot of the choreography, such as interaction between stored information, human relationships, story representation and expression. But eventually, using a story approach to device design can take us closer to dancing with our technology rather than struggling with it.