When simplicity leads to stupidity
Why too much usability threatens our digital independence
Digital services are supposed to make our lives easier – and they do. But with every simplification, knowledge is lost. Why the boundless convenience of technology makes us lazy and how we can use it more responsibly again.
Index
From tinkering to ordering
In the past, if you wanted to play games, it wasn’t just a matter of clicking ‘Download’. It was a project. First, you had to build a computer somewhere. Parts came from friends, from advertisements in computer magazines or from shops that looked more like workshops. Inside, it smelled of old coffee and dust, motherboards lay next to floppy disks on the counter, and everything was somehow improvised. Then the tinkering began: setting jumpers, checking the BIOS, screwing on fans, hoping nothing would smoke. And, of course, installing a cracked version of Windows. It came from some old warez platform, downloaded from somewhere, unzipped, and then when the crack programmes started, that typical 8-bit music played in the background – a mixture of annoying and hypnotic. If something didn’t work, the only thing that helped was trial and error or frantically posting in computer forums, hoping that someone would respond. And when the thing finally worked, it was almost like a knighthood. You had worked hard for it.
Today, you click somewhere on ‘Gaming PC – available now’, the thing arrives by post tomorrow, and everything is ready to go. Switch it on, log in, get started. No effort, no stress, no knowledge required. It just works. The effort that used to be required is now simply outsourced to presumably poorly paid workers somewhere in warehouses or on production lines, where people spend their days assembling the things we conveniently unpack in our living rooms.
Convenience without expertise
Even installing games is a joke compared to how it used to be. Instead of spending hours setting up CDs and waiting for patches and serial numbers, today you just click once in Steam or Battlenet, and the game is ready to go shortly afterwards. And what you buy there, you don’t even really own. Digital games cannot be resold, given away or lent. You pay for the rights to use them – and if the platform closes down or the game is removed, it’s gone.
Sure, that’s called usability. And the idea behind it is good at first glance. Technology should adapt to people, not the other way around. No one wants to fight their way through ten installation windows when it can be done with a single click. But somewhere along the line, the whole thing tips over. Because the easier everything becomes, the less we have to deal with anything. People who used to learn what a graphics card actually does now only know ‘RTX something, expensive = good’.
Loss of self-efficacy
The biggest problem with this is that we no longer have to make any real effort. And if something doesn’t work right away, we immediately give up. Then the product is ‘bad’, the app “useless” and the website ‘annoying’. It doesn’t even occur to us that perhaps our brains simply don’t have five seconds of patience. Self-efficacy, i.e. the feeling of achieving something yourself, is becoming increasingly rare. And yes, I’m not exempt from this. If something doesn’t have a PayPal option, I often get annoyed straight away.
Convenience as a driver of mass consumption
What happens as a result is that we consume more. Because it’s so damn easy. In the past, you had to drive through several neighbourhoods to find a computer part, get advice, compare prices, install the part, test it and look for faults. Today, you simply order the cheapest model from any shop where everything looks the same. Yes, it saves money. But it also takes the soul out of the whole process. It becomes an anonymous transaction. And while we’re already clicking through the pages, we hit ‘accept’ on five cookie banners without even realising that we’re selling off a large part of our digital privacy.
And it doesn’t stop with the individual. When an entire society can no longer tolerate friction, no longer exercises patience, no longer wants to do anything itself, then there are consequences. We forget how to deal with problems. We forget how to question things. And we become increasingly dependent on everything being nice and easy right away.
When simplicity becomes a burden
And another thing: this ultra-optimised usability not only influences our minds, but also our environment. Because what is easy to buy is also easy to throw away. When a product is no longer understood as something that has cost labour, resources and time, but only as another order among many, it loses its value. The result: more and more electronic waste, more short-lived stuff, more plastic waste, more things that rot in the cupboard after one use or end up in the rubbish straight away. Cheap platforms with maximum usability and minimum prices, such as Temu, Wish, Shein and whatever else they’re called, are prime examples of how convenience can tempt people into environmentally damaging mass consumption.
Between usability and responsibility
Can anything be done about it? Perhaps. Sure, there are people who still tinker. They build themselves a weather station with a Raspberry Pi. They install their own Linux and know what a terminal is. But they are the minority. The vast majority have already lost when it comes to installing a printer. Printers have become something like the final boss of the modern world. And no one can avoid them.
Of course, better usability is not automatically a bad thing. On the contrary: in administration in particular, we can see how urgently we need functioning digital solutions. What is often sold as an ‘online service’ is frequently more like a digital mess with a login hell. Real usability would be a blessing here. And we mustn’t forget accessibility either: for people with disabilities, good UX is often the difference between participation and complete exclusion.
Conclusion
The problem isn’t that things are getting easier. The problem is that we want to make everything as easy as possible – from buying a T-shirt to playing a 200-hour game. The easier consumption becomes, the more the feeling of creating anything ourselves disappears. We are not becoming more empowered, but rather smoother consumers. And that is precisely where the danger lies: those who only buy, click and consume will eventually forget what it means to be self-effective.
Perhaps we simply need to differentiate: usability where it is really needed to break down barriers, simplify administration and ensure genuine access. But not as a permanent accelerator for meaningless consumption and clicking away. Because in the end, it’s not usability that’s the problem, but how we use it.
Author: Julian Groll, Lead UI / UX Designer at Materna
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