Living With Complexity

Don Norman's Stanford talk is a useful reminder that product design should help people manage complexity instead of pretending it is gone.

A useful design talk for anyone making writing tools, editorial systems, or AI-assisted product surfaces. Norman's argument is not that complexity should disappear. It is that complexity should be organized so people can build a reliable mental model.

Why it belongs here

The lesson travels well. Modern software often hides complexity until the moment a user needs to make a precise choice. That can feel simple at first and brittle later. Good tools keep the system understandable even when the work has many states.

For Write, that means drafts, covers, galleries, video, status, feeds, and editing controls need to feel like one coherent place. The interface can be quiet, but it should never be evasive.