Kodak knows Simplicity
The paragraph that follows comes from The Kodak Primer, a promotional pamphlet apparently published in 1888, around the time the first Kodak camera was introduced. The major innovation of the Kodak camera was that it used special film that was flexible and was stored on spindles. This meant that a spindle of film could be removed from the camera and sent to an expert to be developed. Therefore, people didn’t need to understand the complicated process of developing film in order to take photos.
“The principle of the Kodak system is the separation of the work that any person whomsoever can do in making a photograph, from the work that only an expert can do. . . . We furnish anybody, man, woman or child, who has sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button, with an instrument which altogether removes from the practice of photography the necessity for exceptional facilities or, in fact, any special knowledge of the art. It can be employed without preliminary study, without a darkroom and without chemicals.” Found via Lawerence Lessig’s Free Culture
And so the people became photographers.
Having “sufficient intelligence to point a box straight and press a button” was all that was needed to take a photo. Simplifying a task was all that was needed to create an industry.
Web applications can benefit from subscribing to this same level of simplicity.