Simplicity Rules

This is part of a series looking at John Maeda’s ten Laws of Simplicity.

“What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.”

Maeda is a designer and this is a designer’s chapter. Of course, designers already understand the importance of the periphery. If you think the design process is nothing more than making something look pretty, you’re a great candidate to read on.

Like some earlier chapters, Maeda provides a helpful continuum to explain the law of context:

Somewhere in between the extremes is a place Maeda calls “comfortably lost.” It’s going to be different depending on the Web site. If it’s promoting a rapper’s new album, users are more willing (perhaps hoping) to be less directed. If it’s IRS.gov, then “just the facts, ma’am.”

It essentially comes down to ambiance. Maeda gives a great non-Web example about hiking a subtly-marked trail:

“I personally experiences this sensation of being “comfortably lost” on a recent vacation hike in Maine. I noted that the trails were marked with rectangles of bright blue paint. Each of the trails was highly navigable due to its good condition, but once in a while I would pause and wonder, “Where do I go next?” Almost like magic one of these blue markers that previously sat in the background of my perceptual field literally “popped” into the foreground.”

I think this law explains why “Have hay / Need hay” offends me (mentioned here). When it is translated to other types of sites they are too directed. Too dry. They become the equivalent of plastering blue signs on every inch of a forest hike.

Maeda concludes:

“At some point, with successive addition of more sophisticated elements, the true value of the untainted forest suddenly vanishes.”

The law of context says a designer should let visitors, whether to a Web site or state park, feel “comfortably lost.” Maybe that is the “feel” half of “look and feel?”

Joel Spolsky recently pseudo-attacked simplicity. I say pseudo because he makes great points and is only really down on being totalitarian about simplification.

Expressing simplicity is not always simple. What some call the simplicity cult have attempted to boil down good strategies for making things easy. The problem is that this can lead to generalizations that are misunderstood.

37Signals is a company with simple, lean products. They preach “less software,” but that doesn’t mean they never add features. As I’ve been noting in my Laws of Simplicity series, it’s a balancing act. There is no perfect approach.

Spolsky continues:

What works for bootstrapping, I believe, will not work as a good long term strategy, because there’s very little to prevent the next two-person startup from cloning your simple app, and because eventually you can’t fight human nature: “The people want the features,” says Norman. Just because handheld video was perfect for Blair Witch, doesn’t mean every Hollywood blockbuster will use it.

Again, I think this is just a misinterpretation of what it means to be simple. It also assumes that it’s easy to do something simply. A lot of people try and fail to copy the success of simple products. It’s hard to copy the balancing act. Having already achieved the difficult task is an advantage.

This is part of a series looking at John Maeda’s ten Laws of Simplicity.

“Simplicity and complexity need each other.”

If everything was simple, nothing would be simple. We appreciate simplicity only because we can compare it to complexity. The iPod and Google, ever the popular examples of simplicity, would not have succeeded if there weren’t some pretty bad (read: complex) competition.

Like many opposites, simple and complex aren’t that different. Many times, the simple thing just disguises very complex things going on behind the scenes. Millions of non-programmers type words into search engines every day. These same people have no idea about what it takes to create an index that is able to return results in a fraction of a second.

In the first law, we learned about thoughtful reduction. In that process, we consider what is most important. Then we highlight those things. Similarly, organizing is about deciding what groups are important and what they should contain. If everything is important, nothing is. The law of differences acknowledges that in order to achieve simplicity, we must have complexity.

This is part of a series looking at John Maeda’s ten Laws of Simplicity.

“Knowledge makes everything simpler.”

One reason I really like the Laws of Simplicity is because each one is important to the whole package. When I first read this law, I thought it was a cop-out. As a Web developer, I accept at least a partial truth to the claim that people don’t read directions. At a glance, this law says, “just tell them how it is and suddenly it’s easier because they know now.”

Learning has to happen somehow. It’s not the responsibility of this law to say how that happens. Hopefully the other laws make the knowledge transfer implicit.

It’s also worth acknowledging how much our users already know. Most sites don’t need to explain how to click links or fill out forms. Instead, the basic navigation style and layout of sites are similar because that’s what the users expect.

To me, the law of knowledge says to consider what your users already know. Once you have a group on their current knowledge, you can use the other laws to help them learn what they don’t know.

I think of the small technical lessons I have given my father. Perhaps the biggest was copying and pasting. The next biggest might have been the shortcuts to copy and paste. Those small bits of knowledge create a much simpler experience.

Two years ago, The Wheeze encouraged me to read Web sites in a feed reader. Taking the time to learn that process greatly changed the way I consume information. Now I probably track five times the sites in half the time.

As these examples show, this fourth law of learning works in tandem with the third law, time. Once you know something, you save time, which directly equates to simplicity.