An underlying theme of some of my work these days is making things that are unseen more visible and obvious. Invisible things (like how well someone else hears you on a video conference) is helped when they are made more visible - maybe have a mic to pass around. This goes along with keeping things simple and therefore understandable.
This Penn & Teller video contrasts the seen and the unseen. Magic is meant to entertain but systems are meant to be understood and controlled easily. The first version of the trick is entertaining while the second takes away the mystery and is less entertaining except to marvel at how Teller moves.
If you are designing a system (video conference or web UI) you want it to be clearly and easily understood by those who run it and look like magic to those who observe it.
