One of my philosophies is that technology should be invisible. What I mean by that is that you could have an amazing algorithm or incredible platform but your user interface should be simple, intuitive and elegant.

Some of the best technology out there like the Apple iPhone, Google’s search algorithm or Flickr’s image processing are hugely complicated with thousands of hours development but the user interface is elegant. The user does not care how amazing your technology all they care about is performing their task quickly and accurately.

I have been dealing with a lot of hardcore developers recently and I am finding that sometimes they can overcomplicate their applications to show off the complexity of underlying platform. You should always keep in mind your audience when developing an interface and make their choices simple and intuitive.