Posts filed under 'simplicity'
Usability and simplicity
Andrew Curry writes:
Our former colleague Chad Wollen, who has spent the last few years working for digital media companies, sent me a cartoon by Eric Burke that’s being going the rounds in the digital community:
Judging by the response to the original post, it’s clearly struck a nerve among designers and programmers, even provoking some discussion about the purpose of jokes.
What’s interesting, reading the comments, is that people are taking a somewhat ‘binary’ view of simplicity (it’s either ‘good’ or ‘bad’). As John Maeda reminds us in his Laws of Simplicity, it’s a bit more complicated than that. One of the ‘laws’ of simplicity, he suggests, is to ‘reduce’, for example by removing functionality - the Apple and Google trick. But he also reminds us that simplicity often requires knowledge on the part of the user, that “simplicity and complexity need each other” - and that “some things can never be made simple”. The design skill is knowing what can be, and why.
Add comment 17 March 2008
Simple pleasures
Jo Phillips writes:
A shop in Soho (London) that I visited recently asks its customers “What is your luxury?” You are invited to chalk yours up on a huge blackboard alongside those of your predecessors.
Add comment 15 October 2007
The simplicity trend
Andrew Curry writes:
One of the trends we’ve been following for a while is that of increasing simplicity - a response to increasing product complexity. One of the signs of this was the emergence at MIT of John Maeda’s Simplicity consortium, attended by various leading businesses. (Another was the success of Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan ’s book Simply Better).
John Maeda has recently distilled his thoughts on simplicity into a book, The Laws of Simplicity - currently running at #1,333 on the Amazon best-sellers list. The blog at TED.com has a video of him doing his Simplicity thing. (It runs just under 18 minutes).
Thanks to flatcrabs for the image of the poster.
Add comment 24 September 2007
