Simplicity

Belatedly I finished John Maeda‘s book, The Laws of Simplicity, which outlines ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology and design. In effect he is building on the “Less is More” principle, popularized by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (originally spoken by Robert Browning in 1855.)

I’ve been a long admirer of the concept of simplicity. In architecture and the arts, simplicity was often called “minimalism” or even “modernism”. At the turn of the last century, in reacting to rampant pluralism of styles, and trying to come to terms with industrial production and the embodiment of socialist ideals, modernists rejected ornamentation and sought more fundamental architectural values. They stripped architecture down to it minimal functionality. Works by Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier of the 1920′s and 1930′s exemplify this movement.

By the 60-70′s simplicity had become stylized to the point that some reacted against its “over-simplification” burden of stylized, soul-less modern architecture. The vanguard of this reaction was Robert Venturi‘s compelling 1966 book, Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. In this book, the author call for a return to richness in architectural meaning, and the embrace of inherent contradictions of the human condition. Unfortunately what they started was the beginning of the often misguided and cacaphonic post-modern movement in architecture.

Maeda’s book mentions this cyclical relationship and rhythm simplicity and complexity have towards their coexistence. We seem once again to be drifting towards the simplicity extreme again these days.

What I liked the most about Venturi’s book, isn’t so much the complexity part, but the contradiction part. I think we are bound to live with contradiction. This is a part of what makes us human. I love simplicity but I value complexity. Fractal rules are so simple yet they reveal a deep complexity. Humans are wonderfully complex but driven by very simple hopes and loves. I see it all the time within me and in my children.

It seems that Maeda tries to dig deeper to a more spiritual plane. What he write seems more than a series of observations that can be translated into techniques for product development or organizing your desk. It is less a series of laws to abide by and more a series of conversations worth engaging in, with our very being, in search for a deeper meaning.

Vittorio Gregotti, Italian architect, architectural critic and former editor of Casabella has a whole chapter entitled “On Simplicity” in his 1996 book Inside Architecture. Here he muses: (my italics)

…to me simplicity is not simplification, and above all not simplification as a formal model. Eloquent simplicity can be reached through great effort, but it is never a good starting point, nor above all, an objective at any cost. Architecture is not simple; it can only become simple.

…Simplicity must make contradiction itself clear and compehensible without denying its existence and its value as a material for establishing difference.

Gregotti talks about simplicity in the context of architecture, but it can equally be applied to product design or design of online services. What he seems to be getting at is that we should not strive for simplicity for its own sake. This will end up being another misguided stylistic overture or even worse, end up denying the a meaningful part of our existence.

The future of simplicity seems to be in its ability to work with complexity. Industrial production techniques nowadays allow for simple, personalized variations in design. (think iPods inscribed with personal messages before delivery). Websites deliver, in simple form, personalized information that is in fact generated through complex algorithms and make use of immense processing power.

Great complexity belies anything of great beauty or meaning.

Leibniz once wrote:

The infinite fold separates or moves between matter and soul, the facade and the closed room, the outside and the inside.

Infinity that is enclosed in a finite space. Now that’s a simple and complex idea, if not a pure contradiction.

The video wall inside the IAC building, Frank Gehry’s New York City landmark is huge. At this scale is ceases to be a “display” screen and comes into the realm of the architectural, where it starts to define the character of the space.

This is very high on the list of places to visit next time I am in NY.

ITP Big Screens Testing Round 2 from shiffman on Vimeo.

You don’t see too many new interface designs for organizing “stuff” on your PC. Bumptop (see TED video) one is interesting and amusing because it accommodates “messiness” better than any other interface out there.

I love designer Bruce Mau’s An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth that articulates the way that creative people work. #25 in a list of 43 statements reads:

25. Don’t clean your desk. You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

This may be just the right desktop interface for him and the rest of us who keep messy desks.

Bumptop

In his thoughtful article, Intuition, pleasure, and gestures, Jonathan Korman of Cooper crafts the most elegant definition of the word “intuitive” I have ever come across:

Intuitive: Easy to explain, powerful in its implications, impossible to forget.

I went to buy a microwave the other day. I thought it would be simple. But then is anything really simple these days? I had three factors I decided to consider: Price, Design and Usability.

Price:  A microwave is an everyday appliance and hence I wanted it to be cheap. The cheaper the better.

Design: I wanted a microwave with a simple design. No Cuisinart stainless-steel. Just something I could bear to look at in the kitchen.

Usability: I think most of the time I use only 3 features on a microwave. 1) For heating small things up I usually guess 20 seconds and if it’s not heated I try another 20 seconds. Heating something has never been a precise science ever for me. No one measures the mass of a slice of frozen pizza from last night. 2) Sometime I heat larger things which I guess in 1 minute increments. 3) I also heat the occasional popcorn and frozen meal. Both have instructions and I need a way to input precise timing.

So why is it so hard to find something that fits those things. When I find something that is simple, it’s totally unusable. Why do cheap things have to have really ugly design? What was suspiciously annoying was the fact that this was the same case with all the major Korean brands.

In the end, as it usually is, it is a trade-off. Either pay dearly for something that is unusable, or pay for something that is moderately usuable, cheap but ugly. Most Korean would choose the more expensive and better designed product over the more usable one. I am finding out that Korean generally have a strange bias towards things that are “pretty” (which isn’t always the same as “well-designed”). I have overheard conversations at work where people say, “I don’t use that [website, phone etc] because it isn’t pretty”, and not because it is unusable. People here are more forgiving if it is pretty. Don Norman agrees that people generally perceive attractive things to work better.

[A]lthough poor design is never excusable, when people are in a relaxed situation, the pleasant, pleasurable aspects of the design will make them more tolerant of difficulties and problems in the interface.

Product designers in Korea must know this, and they must work with the marketing department to make sure that the products that are at the lower end of the price scale look ugly so that people don’t buy it and buy the product that is more expensive not because of any added functionality or production cost, but simply priced higher over the “ugly one.”

Bruce Tognazzini observed something similar when he wrote:

What a strange situation. You take a mediocre product and rework the design to make it better. Your design is a success, by any reasonable measure, but the resulting new release is actually worse. You redouble your efforts and matters become untenable. It doesn’t matter how brilliant and effective your designs, the more they improve the product, the less usable the product becomes.

The clean design but expensive and unusable	The ugly but cheap and usable

What people consider “pretty” is culturally subjective. What one culture considers cute and pretty, another culture considers childish. Cyworld as wildly popular social networking site made this mistake when they launched in the US, maintaining their “pretty” aesthetic which was part of their success in Korea. This alienated a lot of the teen, youth audience who viewed Cyworlds avatars and wallpaper to be more fit for a pre-teen audience. Now they have more photos and less “prettiness”. This is why it is acceptable for grown adult women to don Hello Kitty accessories in much of East Asia whereas it will be viewed as plain freaky in the much of the US or Europe.

In the end, I settled for the  cheap and ugly microwave. For better or worse, the usability professional in me prevailed.