Sitepoint has an article that looks at the trade off between simplicity and features .

The article looks at a paper which argues that the suggestion that a greater number of features equals lower usability and that fewer features equals greater usability is a false assumption that needs to be challenged.

The point of the article is ultimately to state that what people want is more capability and easier to use products.

What I find interesting about the argument between simplicity and features is that sometimes they both actually reduce the capability.

Take widgets for example. Widgets exist to make it easier to quickly change the contents of your sidebar. But, once you start using widgets you are also constrained by them.

How often are you asked by someone how they get a widget that replicates a particular template tag?

Before widgets it would be a case of adding the tag to the sidebar code. Users would be forced to learn how. But with widgets you don’t need to learn how to do this, or you want it in a position that the widgets won’t let you add manually, so you are constrained.

I have a theory that the more development that is done on a product like WordPress the lower the barrier for use is. This, in turn, means that more features are needed to help users accomplish things that they don’t have the technical knowledge to do themselves. This adds to the complexity which reduces usability and leads to the need for simplification. This reduces the options.

The process brings in new users and provides capability to a larger number of users, but at the same time the overall capability of the product and its user base gradually lowers making way for a new product to meet the needs of the more technically competent.