Matt Gemmell posted a brilliant article about developing iPad apps and how to correctly us their built in UI elements. A lot of what he says rings true for a lot of user interface design, especially in the desktop world.
Feature-creep or bloat is the bane of desktop software. Any application with a non-trivial feature set isn’t fully used by most of its users; that’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever used Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop or even the iWork apps on the Mac. There are plenty of features there which you’ll never touch, and would probably never miss if they were gone.
Most users need only a small set of features, and software is better when it’s focused. A nice side-effect of focused software is that the UI is easier to design and comprehend (because there’s less of it, and it’s more obvious why each thing is there). The trick is to figure out which small set of features are actually important, and implement only those.
There is a lot of wisdom in the article, certainly worth your time if you work in, around or near software development.
