There’s a hidden radio concept design that’s been making the rounds. My friend Nathan sent it my way and said it reminded him of the unopenable mint container.

The radio’s volume is controlled by pulling up the lid, showing more speaker. It is tuned by twisting the entire lid. Once you know this, it’s wonderfully simple. Do you think it would be obvious to the first time user? Does that matter?

I hate doing the same stuff over and over. Since I’m a technical guy, I often create ways to make myself more efficient. Outside of work, this looks fairly mundane: stuff like buying only one type of sock, so I never have to search for a pair.

Michael Lopp writes about the geek phenomenon of being efficient in Saving Seconds. It begins as a rant against the mouse, but really gets somewhere when he writes about creating a new email message:

“There are two types of people. The ones who waited for me to say Go to compose a new mail and the ones who read ‘compose a new mail message’ and pressed the three keys that are necessary, from anywhere in the OS, to fire up a new compose window.”

I think Web people bring this desire to be efficient into our work, mostly for the better. Finding and eliminating repetition is an excellent way to streamline your product. Why make a user click twice if once will do? (Lopp might also say, why make a user click at all?)

Of course, everything in moderation. One can certainly be overcome when constantly striving to be most efficient:

Paying attention to productivity is a slippery slope. The system efficiency addiction associated with saving time can become so compelling that your process begins to control more of your time than your product.

Sound familiar to anyone?

There were some great comments on the unopenable mint container post. I wanted to share a few of them.

Most people agreed that once someone learns the trick, the container is simple. Brent Logan downplayed the effort needed to learn how to use the mint tin, then came up with some great additional reasons why the time spent learning is worth it:

I’d say opening this mint container IS simple, because once you know how to do it (and it can be documented in just two simple pictures), you can open it:

• one handed
• without looking
• with ease

Justin Thiele liked the mint tin, but wouldn’t call it simple:

What if Microsoft Word decided on a new way to copy text? No more Command C (Ctrl C for you PCs). Instead copy would be F1. F1 is simpler, only requires pressing one button, no keyboard dexterity required, and much easier to say to somebody. But now the process of remembering that Microsoft Word uses F1 and every other program uses Command C, becomes more involved. If other programs begin to take these same liberties then complexity abounds.

It sounds like Justin is worried about consistency, which I think plays a large part in simplicity. Certainly being consistent within a context (such as your own website) is important. But there’s also consistency between contexts, such as your website and my website. If you underline links and I underline everything except links, one of us will probably be confusing people. And if there are enough people making changes like this, we may all begin to confuse people.

A few weeks ago I bought some mints at Powell’s bookstore before a meeting. I didn’t want my breath to stink. As I was walking to the appointment, I struggled to get at the mints. It turned out this container required me to read the directions.

See the unopenable mint container in action in this video:

Since I discovered the secret, I’ve been pretty taken with the mint container’s simplicity. Still, I think back to my struggle in downtown Portland. It was not intuitive to open that container.

The fourth law of simplicity states:

“Knowledge makes everything simpler.”

What do you think? Does needing to read the directions eliminate the chance for it to be simple?