Simplicity Rules

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

“Savings in time feels like simplicity.”

Web design gurus have preached this law since the mid-90s. Watch your file sizes! Beware the total site “weight!” they warned. These are still excellent strategies for savings time, though broadband penetration means we don’t have to be quite as militant.

Ajax has opened up a whole new time-saving tool bag. Using Javascript, developers can limit the apparent roundtrips to the server that require an entire page to reload when only a small portion has changed.

In reality there is still a roundtrip going on, but it happens in the background. And it doesn’t have to return the header graphic, navigation, and other items the user already is seeing. Instead, it returns the smallest amount of information needed, saving time.

Better yet, it feels like we’re saving even more time. With a traditional roundtrip, the screen goes blank for just an instant, but it feels longer. What simplicity really gets down to is perception. If it seems slow, then it can’t be simple.

Taking perception a step further, Ajax developers have added small animations to display during the short wait:

Here’s a whole gallery of them.

Of course, progress bars aren’t new. They existed on Expedia and their ilk well before Ajax was around. Travel sites didn’t invent them, either, as they’ve been a staple of slow desktop operations for years. Heck, maybe old school programmers got the idea from “please take a number” signs at the deli.

In all these cases, we have a glimpse of action. When the end is in sight, the wait seems shorter. The shorter, the simpler.

(What I’ve left out here, for simplicity’s sake, is a whole other side of time savings. Fill in the gaps yourself by considering how online banking has saved us all so much time.)

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

“Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.”

This law comes down to basic cataloging. Find like elements and put them together. Maeda uses the ol’ screenwriter trick of placing one thought/item on an index card. Then the cards can be moved around until you find the right groupings.

At BestPlaces we’re continually honing in on the best way to show all the data we have on every city and zip code in the US. The most important step was organizing the data into categories. To show air quality, average precipitation, and unemployment rate right next to each other would be confusing. Organizing them into health, climate, and economy sections goes a long way to simplifying what we’re showing.

USDA’s Haynet was able to boil their entire site down to two links: have hay and need hay.

I’ve harped on this before as being too simple. My main beef with it is that it’s not a template that translates to other sites very well. When architects have emulated the Haynet approach, they lost something in their simplicity.

A later law does a good job of explaining my problem with Have Hay / Need Hay. As far as organization goes, one can’t get much simpler.

As I mentioned yesterday, Maeda explains many of his laws with continuums between conflicting factors. It seems to me that as we nudge one way with one law, we cause a reaction that moves other laws. It’s a delicate balance that should be embraced, because with the process comes simplicity. Organizing is a big part of that process.

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

“The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.”

This is the crux of most simplification. If something is not needed in a site’s global navigation, for example, get rid of it. There is a reason that most home pages are not entire site maps. Showing everything is not the simplest way to show an interface.

Google is an overused example. Yet, I go to it here because it’s so appropriate. When they brought the bare page with only a search box to the Web, Yahoo!’s front page was essentially a site map. Thoughtful reduction, in this case, meant removing everything not related to the aim of searching. They even auto-focused the cursor to the input box!

That’s not to say Yahoo! doesn’t try.

They used to have a drop-down box with choices for what to search: The Web, In Images, In Yellow Pages, In Products. It went away earlier this year, probably because it wasn’t really that useful. Removing it (or rather replacing it with the version shown in the multi-goal search box) was thoughtful reduction on Yahoo!’s part, even if it was a bit superfluous in the first place.

Recently, Joel Spolsky wrote about the Windows Vista shutdown menu:

The fact that you have to choose between nine different ways of turning off your computer every time just on the start menu… Can anything be done? It must be possible. iPods don’t even have an on/off switch.

By reducing, Spolsky got down to one option: shutdown. I think he went too far and made the menu too simple when he removed the restart option. As many Windows users know, that is often the best solution to a wacky computer problem. Shutting down and starting back up usually involves pushing a button on the machine itself, which sometimes means crawling under desks.

Nevertheless, Spolsky’s process shows how thoughtful reduction is a great approach to simplification. Taking it too far is part of that process, too. Maeda uses continuums (like the one pictured here) to explain the give and take of finding the balance point. You know you’ve gone too simple when you realize it needs to be a little more complex. And you know it’s too complex when you can make it simpler without losing something necessary in the process.

Over the next two weeks I will be reviewing John Maeda’s ten Laws of Simplicity. His book takes an academic approach to the topic. Maeda is a professor at MIT’s Media Lab. His writing is both philosophical and practical. True to keeping it simple, the book is short (100 pgs) and an easy read.

I love this definition:

“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”

That quote is also the tenth law, which boils down he other nine into one. But I’ve got ahead of myself. I have more to say in the links below, as I relate Maeda’s laws to the Web.

Law 1: Reduce
Law 2: Organize
Law 3: Time
Law 4: Learn
Law 5: Differences
Law 6: Context
Law 7: Emotion
Law 8: Trust
Law 9: Failure
Law 10: The One

Those on the edge of their seats can see the author’s site or buy the book at Amazon.