Laws of Simplicity

The best art makes your head spin with questions. Perhaps this is the fundamental distinction between pure art and pure design. While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.

Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction

You want a service/product to be easy to use but also to do everything a person wants it to do

simplest way to do this is through reduction but be careful of what you remove

After you've reduced as much as possible, use SHE

Shrink

Hide

Embody

Make it smaller because we are more forgiving of small things

Make it smaller because we are more delighted by small things doing multiple things

Make things smaller because we can with Integrated Computer (IC) chips getting smaller

Make things smaller because we have lower expectations of smaller things

This means small things can still do complex things

Making things delicate evokes pity

eg. Swiss army knife, computer menu bar

Hide less-used functions

but belief that visible buttons attract buyers exists

A form of deceit so can feel like magic or nuisance. We want the former

Shrink and Hide leads to sense of value being lost so need to restore the sense of value

Embodying quality

can be actual (eg. type of material used) or perceived (eg. marketing)

could be done through ad content, materials or other messaging techniques (like heaviness indicating better quality in certain cases)

"Small is better when SHE'd"

Organise: Make a system of many appear fewer

To figure out what goes with what, use SLIP

Working with fewer objects, concepts and functions is easier

Sort

Label

Integrate

Prioritise

Use post it notes for each datum to put into natural groups (what do you mean by natural though....)

Label each group you've sorted

Whenever possible, integrate groups cos the fewer the groups the better

Put highest priority items into a set using Pareto Principle (80/20 - 20% requires the highest priority) so you know where to start (This seems very different to first chapter cos less focus on making product)

Using tab to create order using grids/tables

Aesthetics of blur - eg. iPod control blurs all controls into one image of simplicity

Disadvantage that it's harder to figure out at first cos to answer 'What goes with what' in blurred approach is everything goes with everything

"Groups are good; too many groups are bad because they counteract the goal of grouping in the first place [which is to give some organisation/order]. Blurred groupings are powerful because they can appear even more simple, but at the cost of becoming more abstract, less concrete." - need to find the right way of organising

Emotion: More emotions are better than less

Simplicity can be considered ugly if you like bling

Simple things are cheap to make

But some can consider they look cheap too

The move away from simplicity and towards complexity that is sometimes required eg. adding layers of meaning

Spread of smileys cos of human need to express emotions

Smileys give facial cues that texts can't

Smaller things are less scary

We worry about survival of small and simple things (after SHE) eg. putting cases on simple iPhones + We want to add human warmth to simple things

Aichaku = sense of attachment one can feel for an artifact (influences by animism in Shintoism)

"Acknowledging the existence of aichaku in our built environment helps us to aspire to design artifacts that people will feel for, care for, and own for a lifetime."

The art of more eg. communicating cancer news to patient within usual 10 min appointment may achieve clarity but it doesn't achieve comfort

The best art makes your head spin with questions. Perhaps this is the fundamental distinction between pure art and pure design. While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.

Emotional Intelligence, Return on Emotion

Trust: In simplicity we trust

Is the risk that comes with putting trust in tech worth the simplicity we gain?

Design philosophy in just enjoying something - to enjoy we need to lean back and to lean back we need to trust

If we can undo, we trust more cos less risk

"The more a system knows about you, the less you have to think. Conversely, the more you know about the system, the greater control you can exact."

Privacy is sacrificed for extra convenience when following the Master’s lead. Alternatively, undo allows us to become the Masters ourselves by gently learning to trust our own knowledge of a system. The placement of faith goes many ways.