Appreciating complexity in a seemingly simple timer

It is a photo of an analogue timer on my combi boiler. I have spent easily an hour to try to understand how to set the boiler timer. I went through an usual self doubt process of questioning my inability to understand what appears to be so simple. Luckily I got it to work but not because I understood how this simple looking timer works. After testing it a few times, I realised that after setting the time, I only need to consider the outer numbers as time. The only trick is that it is anti-clock even though the numbers represent clock times. I am completely baffled by it. I even thought at one point I understood the rational behind this, But no, now I do not. I am still staring at it, appreciating the design complexity. 

Simplicity no more. It became a symbol of complexity that exists within a seemingly simple artefact (for me anyway). There are many questions remain unanswered. Why is it anti-clock? Did it have to be anti-clock? Was there a trade off between cost and quality of this technology at the expenses of producing an intuitive design? Is there such a thing as simple? Isn’t it just because we perceive it to be simple? Let’s say, with some miracle that I get to understand the operating mechanism and design rational of this timer, just because I get to understand it, does that make it simple’? When we explain something that we understand well, we tend to say the phrase, ‘it’s simple’. Probably someone who understands this timer will be explaining it to me with such an opener as; ‘it’s simple, it works like…’