>> It's a bit like the way you can drive a way without having a clue how an
>> internal combustion engine actually works.
>>
>> Is that "dumbing down"? Or is that "removing unimportant implementation
>> details"? Where do you draw the line?

I would say you provide the information to allow the user to do what is 
expected in normal situations. In the past it was expected a car might 
not start at some point, not anymore. Therefore there is no need for a 
user to know how to diagnose an engine that won't start (beyond being 
told there's no fuel left!).

Or take a photocopier. It's still expected that paper might get jammed 
somewhere, so there is provision to explain to the user how to open the 
correct panel/drawer to unjam the paper. The user doesn't need to know 
how it works to do that.

If everyone took the time to learn how everything worked that they used 
we'd have a world full of curious engineers and nobody with any time to 
do other tasks :-)

> I think that is the crux of the problem.
> I don't have an answer.

The difficulty with software like MS Office it is used by a huge range 
of people with very different requirements. My mum wants to type a 
letter and struggles to change the line spacing to make it look right. 
My gf wants to make a form in Word with boxes for people to check and 
type in. I want a complex workbook in Excel with macros. Designing a UI 
that works well for all those people cannot be easy.

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