Building Scalable Illustrations for Your Design System
May 18, 10:55 PM
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theuxblog.com – Medium | Alex Jones
John Maeda’s 10 life lessons for sanity
Available on Amazon
The following 10 laws created by John Maeda are presented in his excellent book. After reading it, I’ve decided to simplify this 100 page masterpiece into a ten minute read.
Technology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time we’ve become uncomfortably “full”.
With simplicity, sanity can be achieved. Here are the ten laws to accomplish peace of mind.
Law 1: Reduce
The best way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
Use SHE to reduce:
- Shrink: when a small unassuming object exceeds our expectations, we are not only surprised but pleased.
- Hide: like the Swiss army knife, only the tool that that you wish to use is exposed. Computers have made the power to HIDE incredible amounts of complexity.
- Embody: an object needs to be instilled with a sense of value. Consumers will only be drawn to the smaller, less functional product if they perceive it to be more valuable than the bigger version of the product with more features. Quality can be actual, as embodied by better materials and craftsmanship; or the quality can be perceived, as portrayed in a marketing campaign.
Law 2: Organise
Organisation makes a system of many appear fewer
Squint to open your eyes: the principles of Gestalt illustrate that the human mind has evolved to fill in the blanks. In other words, the whole is independent of its parts.
The evolution of the iPod wheel illustrates how organising smaller parts, into a whole can increase the usability of a product.
Simple, complex, as simple as possible
Simple, complex, as simple as possible
Use SLIP to organise:
- Sort: card sort into groups.
- Label: name each group.
- Integrate: wherever possible, merge groups.
- Prioritise: use the Pareto Principle where it can be assumed that in any given piece of data, generally 80% can be managed at a lower priority and 20% requires the highest level.
Law 3: Time
Savings in time feel like simplicity
No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Engineers are always asking how to make the wait shorter, and designers are always asking how to make the wait more tolerable.
Loading bars: which ones appears to take less time?
Use SHE to save time:
- Shrinking time: potentially the pinnacle of this is removing choice and letting a machine make choices for you, for example, Amazon’s one click payments. Alternatively, this could be achieved with randomness as exemplified by the iPod shuffle.
- Hiding time: a simple way of “saving” time is simply to hide it. It’s for this exact reason casinos remove windows and clocks form their walls.
- Embodying time: a frozen computer is like a frozen clock, this is exactly why the progress bar was invented.
Law 4: Learn
Knowledge makes everything simpler
While a screw is a simple design, you still need to know which way to turn it.
Use your BRAIN to learn:
- Basics are beginning: assume the position of the first time learner.
- Repeat yourself often: simplicity and repetition are interrelated. Many politicians continually preach the same phrases on their campaign trails.
- Avoid creating desperation: don’t let “wow” become “woah”, it’s important to ease users into a new product.
- Inspire with examples: internal motivation trumps external reward.
- Never forget to repeat yourself: say that again?
Relate, Translate, Surprise: the best designers marry function with form to create intuitive experiences that we understand immediately. Sometimes this can be achieved through translation, as in ‘desktop’ personal computing, other times designs can be purely functional as exemplified by Braun shavers.
Law 5: Differences
Simplicity and complexity need each other
Without the counterpoint of complexity we could not recognise simplicity when we see it. The more complexity there is in the market the more that something simpler stands out.
Complexity implies the feeling of being lost; simplicity implies the feeling of being found. The rhythm of how simplicity and complexity occur in time and space holds the key.
It’s important to feel the simplicity/complexity beat whilst designing a product
Law 6: Context
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
This point emphasises the importance of what might become lost during the design process. It’s important to shine like a light bulb, not a laser beam. For instance, the best hotels in the world require exhaustive attention to many minutia that normally go overlooked at the individual level but they all cumulatively add up to achieve real perfection.
There is an important tradeoff between being completely lost in the unknown and completely found in the familiar.
Law 7: Emotion
More emotions are better than less
It’s important to remember that simplicity can be considered ugly. Why, after people are drawn to the simplicity of a device, do they rush to accessorise it?
iPhone cases, the perfect example of consumers craving emotion.
Whilst simplicity can make an object smaller, alleviating the natural fear associated with larger and more complex machines, it’s successful application can instill a different kind of fear: concern for the object’s survival. Secondly, there is an innate human desire to balance the subzero coolness of simplicity with a sense of human warmth.
Aichaku (ahy-chaw-koo) is the Japanese term for the sense of attachment one can feel for an artifact. It is a kind of symbiotic love for an object that deserves affection not for what it does, but for what it is: the truth of an object. Acknowledging the existence of aichaku in our built environment helps us to aspire to design artifacts that people will feel for, care for, and own for a lifetime.
Whilst great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear.
Law 8: Trust
In simplicity we trust
Everyday computing is becoming increasingly smart. We are not far from an electronic device with only one unlabeled button on its surface, that when pressed, would complete your immediate task: whatever it is. That’s the pure personification of simplicity, and we are not far from that reality.
Trusting simplicity, is putting your faith in a master.
In sushi restaurants, using the term omakase (oh-maw-kaw-say) roughly translates to “I leave it up to you”. Upon this announcement, the sushi chef (the master) will then proceed to look at you, complete a rough analysis of your general disposition, reflect upon the season, the day’s weather, take into consideration the variety of fish available in their arsenal and form a rough idea for your optimal menu. The chef then starts the process of delivering the meal in measured increments, attentively observing your reaction and tweaking the menu accordingly. This is a much lower risk for the diner (as complete blame rests with the chef), however then all stakes are on the chef’s performance.
Undo is a superpower: knowing something is correctable later, in an undo manner, makes the process simpler because you know that any decision made is not final.
The more a system knows about you, the less you have to think. Conversely, the more you know about the system, the greater control you can exact. Thus, the dilemma for the future use of any product or service is resolving this dilemma.
On the left, effort is required to learn and master the system; on the right hand side, trust must be offered to the system, and that trust must be consistently repaid.
Law 9: Failure
Some things can never be made simple
Knowing that simplicity can be elusive in certain cases is an opportunity to make more constructive use of your time in the future instead of chasing after an apparently impossible goal.
However, there is always a ROF (Return On Failure). One person’s failed experiment in simplicity can be another’s success as a beautiful form of complexity.
There needs to be a realisation that some things just shouldn’t be simple like close relationships and art.
Law 10: The One
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful
This law is self explanatory, however there are three extra keys to bear in mind:
- Away: more appears like less by simply moving it far, far away. Why not access software from a remote computer instead of from a CD?
- Open: openness simplifies complexity. Open sourcing software is championed as a way to generate software that is not only free, but more robust than more software available on the market. For example, Linux (free and open-source) is much easier to fix than Windows (for-pay and closed source).
- Power: use less, gain more. Increased social practices that result in the use of less power — as well as supporting technology innovations for power harvesting and conservation- stand to realise a world where the most powerful examples of simplicity are those that will ironically appear powerless.
And finally, the essence of simplicity realises that, in the end, all that matters are memories.
The Laws Of Simplicity was originally published in theuxblog.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
