oliver reichenstein on information entropy:

It's incredibly complex to calculate the number of moves that someone can make in a user interface. It is similar to chess where three moves is already for the pro's. One, two, three, a lot of possibilities. And in user interface design you also need to reduce the amount of possible moves to win, as within chess. So you need to reduce your application so the basics really works nicely. And so you have the time and space to care for the details. You care for the details not just to show that on the other side there was a human designing this, but to make things clear.

compare this to what don norman was saying in emotion & design: attractive things work better:

Good design means that beauty and usability are in balance. An object that is beautiful to the core is no better than one that is only pretty if they both lack usability.