We recognise the little analog pictures, yet digital coding remains a mystery to us. The icons which have become so popular since Apple's Macintosh put them on the user surface are, in the light of day, nothing more than disguised digitality. Even virtual realty is a digital simulation of the analog. And computers are hereby imbued with something magical. This magic is design's most important effect.
Designers are indeed the masters of simplification.
Their task is to reduce complexity in such a way that the user surface offers us a meaningful image, an image of meaning. When you turn on your computer, you don't see the dangerous logical profundities of the digital on the screen, but instead a series of trusted icons. And these icons suggest to you, as used to be the case in the world of people, that you're operating an analog device. Perhaps terrible simplifications only exist for the Enlightenment philosopher who fundamentally mistrusts surfaces. The designer, on the other hand, wants to seduce one towards use, and therefore has to whittle away people's fear of technology.