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Keep It Simple Redux

20 May 2004 by Matthew Linderman

Dr. John Maeda, an associate professor at the M.I.T. Media Lab and a graphic designer, has spent eight months putting forward his own one-word vision of the future: simplicity (NY Times). He describes some tenets of simplicity:

1. Heed cultural patterns. The iPod, for instance, succeeded not just because of its sleek form, but because, in conjunction with iTunes, it solved so many of the problems of buying and storing music.
2. Be transparent. People like to have a mental model of how things work.
3. Edit. Simplicity hinges as much on cutting nonessential features as on adding helpful ones, the Newton MessagePad and the Palm Pilot being prime examples.
4. Prototype. Push beyond proof-of-technology demos and build prototypes that people can interact with.

27 comments so far (Post a Comment)

20 May 2004 | Benjy said...

I hope this is true. I hate the overly complex gagets that keep flooding the market. I want a cell phone to make calls with -- why do I need it to play video games, take photos, play MP3's, etc.? Same thing with the newer PDA's. Maybe a phone/pda makes sense, but none of those other combos. There seems to be some peverse techie pride in having and knowing how to use complicated things. They seem to even want to take formerly easy tasks and make them difficult--old home phones had a simple switch with wich to turn off the ringer, but the new cordless phones require navigating a series of menus to do the same... In my mind, the true techie pride should be in doing such a great job designing and developing a product that it's incredibly easy to use for all users.

20 May 2004 | CM Harrington said...

I am not so sure of "2". Most people don't know how their car works, nor the lift/elevator, etc, etc. While I do agree that transparency is a good thing, I don't think necessary. As long as a product "just works", I'd even argue that people don't care about the "how" portion of the programme. Only geeks care about DACs and CODECs. The woman next to me on the treadmill cares not about these things, as long as the tunes keep her in step.

(For those hyper-sensitive types, the above was for illustration only, taken from a scene at my gym earlier today. Feel free to substitute "man" where appropriate)

Simplicity (aka KISS) is also the ages old UNIX philosophy. The idea being that each application should do one thing, and one thing only (and do it well), but be robust enough to be able to communicate over standard methods to any other application. This allows many applications to work in tandem, giving the user flexibility and immense power to manipulate data.

20 May 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

I think what works best is an outer simplicity coupled with access to inner complexity.

Anyone can figure out how to use an iPod in a few minutes. That's outward simplicity. But after you become comfortable with it and you want to be able to do more, you can. You can assign ratings on the fly, add notes, contacts, and calendars, etc., and more. To figure out how to do that, you have to read the manual; it's the next level beneath the outward intuitive simplicity.

Same thing with a digital camera. I like my little Canon Powershot because it's so simple to use as a point-and-shoot camera, but when I want some more control, create a panorama, or shoot a movie, I can do that too...the outer layer of simplicity masks a more complex inner layer that I can learn to use by reading the manual.

People complain about the feature bloat of Microsoft Word, but in some ways it follows this outer simplicity/inner complexity model too. Anyone can sit down with Word and produce a simple typed document with no trouble, it's actually quite easy to use for the basic word processing that most people do all day. But for people who need more features, they're available...you just have to take the time to learn how to use it.

Complexity is okay, and sometimes very desirable, but if you're aiming for a mass market you have to provide at least a veneer of simplicity for people who just want the basic features.

20 May 2004 | Derek at CD Baby said...

When Apple was introducing iTunes Music Store to the independent labels (like us), they had a private little meeting up on Apple's campus.

As Steve Jobs was showing all the features from the backend - how labels could get involved - people kept asking, "Will we be able to _____?" and "Can you make it do _______?"

After a while, he asked everyone to put their hands down for a minute and said, "I know you have 1000 great ideas for things that iTunes COULD do. And we have 1000 more. But innovation is not about saying 'yes' to everything. It's about saying 'NO' to all but the most crucial features."

I love that.

20 May 2004 | Simon King said...

I agree with the sentiment, but was disturbed by this statement:

"Think of the sophistication of interacting with today's video games compared to working with an Excel spreadsheet," Dr. Maeda says. "We need to bring dynamic, immersive, engaging visuals to a whole range of information-display problems, from handling messages in your e-mail in-box to mapping the genome."

This is something I'd expect from a late '90s VR enthusiast. Spreadsheets shouldn't be interacted with like video games. They need to make it simple to crunch numbers and get results. Immersive or engaging interaction seems misplaced here and contradicts his earlier statements on simplicity. Excel could be improved, but I don't see how comparing it to video games helps.

The other annoying thing is the classic example of how many lines of code were added to Windows. Increasing the amount of source code has no direct relationship to simplicity of use for the user. These sorts of generalizations and vagaries hurt the point that he's trying to make.

I often find Maeda to be vague and lacking methods for his suggestions. It's no surprise to me that the only design method noted came from Bill Moggridge.

20 May 2004 | Don Schenck said...

As someone tasked with administrative stuff, I'd like to be able to control a scaleable interface.

I'd like, for example, to be able to go into Excel and click a button that says "This user needs early Lotus 1-2-3 Functionality" and presto! ... a simple GUI with no clutter.

*sigh*

Carry that over to all apps -- heck, anything electronic -- and now you're getting somewhere.

20 May 2004 | Darrel said...

"I often find Maeda to be vague and lacking methods for his suggestions."

Like any good person employed in the academia of MIT. ;o)

I saw him speak once. Most of his presentation was samples of his work mixed with lots of great stories. Near the end, he wanted to visually present some concepts up on the screen. Instead of whipping out a Powerpoint presentation or a nicely formatted HTML presentation, he pulled out a sharpie and drew on some paper as he talked. KISS indeed...and it worked.

================================
(insert my new 37sig sig/request...)
Can you get the Firefox, can't-scroll-left-to-see-rest-of-SVN-bug fixed? You need to give your body a min-width = to the width of the container DIV (min-width: 766px).
================================

21 May 2004 | RS said...

(insert my new 37sig sig/request...) Can you get the Firefox, can't-scroll-left-to-see-rest-of-SVN-bug fixed? You need to give your body a min-width = to the width of the container DIV (min-width: 766px).

Darrel, we gave the body the min-width you suggested and have tested in all major browsers on Mac and PC and cannot see a problem. If you still have a problem, please be more specific or send a screen shot instead of repeating this sig :)

21 May 2004 | Vaughn said...

Looks fine to me in Firefox. What resolution are you viewing this in, Darrel?

21 May 2004 | Jennifer Grucza said...

I get the same can't-scroll behavior when I resize the viewable window area to around 700px or less in Firefox on Windows XP.

21 May 2004 | JF said...

After a while, he asked everyone to put their hands down for a minute and said, "I know you have 1000 great ideas for things that iTunes COULD do. And we have 1000 more. But innovation is not about saying 'yes' to everything. It's about saying 'NO' to all but the most crucial features."

Man, that's the sort of thing that gives me the chills. Such a deep commitment to keeping things focused, simple, and on point. It's so hard to do, but Steve seems to revel in it.

21 May 2004 | LB said...

Such a deep commitment to keeping things focused, simple, and on point.

that is very hard to do -- but the only way to control the brand.
IMHO

21 May 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

After a while, he asked everyone to put their hands down for a minute and said, "I know you have 1000 great ideas for things that iTunes COULD do. And we have 1000 more. But innovation is not about saying 'yes' to everything. It's about saying 'NO' to all but the most crucial features."

Same thing could be said about requirements gathering in general. Too many meetings spent talking about what they "want" the system to do and not what they "need" the system to do. And all these conversations happen after the project has been given scope. So much time wasted.

People need to have a more refined understanding of the difference between starting a project to make changes and maintenance of a product/service.

21 May 2004 | Don Schenck said...

My experience with requirements gathering is that people don't realize what can be done, and "under-ask".

That said, my reply to every "Can we do such-and-such" is

"Please, do not ASK if we can do something. Instead, tell us that is NEEDS to do something. We can do ANYTHING, given enough time and money".

(Except time travel)

21 May 2004 | Darrel said...

RS:

COOL! FIXED!

My campaign has now ended. ;o)

21 May 2004 | Darrel said...

"My experience with requirements gathering is that people don't realize what can be done, and "under-ask"."

That's a very good point, Don. I see that a lot as well. I find nothing wrong with over-asking. It's the filtering process that is key.

Jobs had a good point, but it's just as likely that he used the comment just to get everyone to shut-up so he could continue the presentation ;o)

21 May 2004 | Darrel said...

Oh...and for you FireFox users, you'll need to hit RELOAD to update the CSS file.

21 May 2004 | Matthew Oliphant said...

Note: Matthew's frame-of-reference is uber-big-corporate-machine-world. :)

My experience with requirements gathering is that people don't realize what can be done, and "under-ask".

I generally agree, but my complaint is that people tend to go on and on about "requirements" that are "just so needed."

Most of the time it is out of scope with what the project has been funded to do. I agree we can do it all if they give us enough money, but within the confines of the usual project woes of time and budget, many of these requirements gathering sessions (that tend to continue through build and test sadly) are a waste of time.

This goes back to my comment about having a refined understanding of project work and maintenance work. Maintenance work should be collecting all the things that are "needed" that would then define the scope of a project to make changes. That project would build within scope, deliver and then the maintenance cycle would continue.

21 May 2004 | Don Schenck said...

Again drawing on my own experience, using RUP, we were able to prioritize and then our mantra became "It's done when those paying say 'Stop!'".

Seriously.

21 May 2004 | Tom said...

In reply to "I am not so sure of "2". Most people don't know how their car works, nor the lift/elevator, etc, etc. While I do agree that transparency is a good thing, I don't think necessary. As long as a product "just works", I'd even argue that people don't care about the "how" portion of the programme."

Surely (2) is not saying that people need to understand how something actually works; it's only saying that they need to be able to build a consistent mental model that allows them to predict how an item or system will behave under different circumstances. That is the transparency, and I agree that it's a necessity for something "just working".

A mental model isn't necessarily a true representation of reality; or even close to reality. A simple mental model of driving a car doesn't involve understanding how internal combustion engines and torque convertors work; just that turning the key makes it start and that the steering wheel makes it turn. If the steering wheel suddenly starts operating backwards or at random, the mental model is broken and the driver becomes bewildered (and in this case terrified)

Tom

21 May 2004 | matt said...

I'm a semantic-markup-obsessed psycho, and this is driving me nuts. On the bottom of your post pages for SVN, the following code appears...

To make something bold:
Text to bold

To make something italic:
Text to italicize

Shouldn't that be:

To make something strong:
Text to make strong

To emphasize something:
Text to emphasize

Or, if you really do mean bold and italic, use 'i' and 'b' instead?

Or should I go outside and enjoy the weather instead?

21 May 2004 | Don Schenck said...

matt -- go outside and enjoy the weather.

:-)

21 May 2004 | Mark said...

Matt -

Read this post by Seth Godin. Replace the airline industry with the website development industry, and equipment with semantic markup.

There's an important story here if you think about it.

BTW: It's a beautiful day outside.

23 May 2004 | johnza said...

Really agree with the point that "what works best is an outer simplicity coupled with access to inner complexity." This point is totally true when it comes to marketing. Too much is overcomplicated. As a marketer, planning is hard, research is hard, campaigns are hard, creative is hard. All of these are supposedly the private realm of "experts." I say bunk, at least as far as your own judgement goes.

At the end of the day, if you can't figure it out with some simple ABCs and XYZs then it's not going to work. No matter how sophisticated all your experts are, if you can't keep it simple, the team won't execute and the target audience won't get it.

I'll get off my soapbox now.

24 May 2004 | Brad Hurley said...

I think the "access to inner complexity" is important because simplicity can backfire if people perceive a product as too limited in its functionality. When Apple's Macintosh first came out, a lot of DOS users viewed the Mac as a "toy," because an ordinary user couldn't interact with it at the command-line level. In hindsight, we know they were just victims of a blinkered mentality. But now that OSX is here, with easy access to its UNIX underpinnings, nobody argues that the Mac is any less powerful than Windows. The candy-coated GUI wrapper is fairly intuitive and simple, but there's enough complexity beneath the surface to keep any geek busy for a lifetime.

26 May 2004 | Marc Lacoste said...

ironic that an article on simplicity is published on the nytimes, requiring a step of registration (wich made me tired of searching the nytimesregistration page, cut & paste url, then launch).

31 May 2004 | maria said...

This might be possible!

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