>>Again my take on this is a bit more nuanced. Software should be simple to use with a simple interface. The whole event driven model introduced in Windows 3.0 twenty years ago was great for advanced users, but developers went crazy with it and created software that went away from the goal driven approach in DOS applications and created GUI that became too complex for the average user of the software.
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>>For a lot of applications it just makes more sense to guide them through the steps to achieve their goals rather then simply giving them options to perform some action on a given dataset. Its a total different mindset and the older I grow and the more I speak with the users of the software the more I'm getting convinced that we got it all wrong in the past 2 decades. Now seeing how Phone and tablets apps are being developed, it seems evident we should put more effort in creating goal driven software.
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>>And in the latter, modal forms are just great.
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>>But otoh, no single approach fits all.
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>Unfortunately - what I get from users is the reverse. They hate the applications they have - which often are not windowed the way I do it. My approach is so uniform that there is no confusion and the users easily adapt. That uniformity means I can build much faster with lots of features built-in. They start telling me how it let them do more than designed - which is the real hallmark of a good tool.
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>The really good iPhone apps are still few and far between. I just started using something called Trello - it's UI is very nice and windowed - and drag and drop and it flows really well.

There is nothing wrong with uniformity. It should not be confused with goal driven design versus data driven design. Whether you have lots of additional features or not has nothing to do with this.

The emphasis should be on building software that is easy to use, even for those that will use only small fractions of your software for limited time a day. That is the challenge, Something that is inmediately obvious to the novice user (we have a lot of older users, which really are the tough cases). Goal driven designs (e.g. wizards) help in those cases.