Chapter 3. Simple
Tame complex situations
AT THE BEGINNING OF A DESIGN PROJECT, itâs common for everyone involved to hope that the outcome will be âsimple,â but rarely are they speaking the same language. Simplicity is a concept that people champion as a goal, but they usually have trouble describing what they mean. Often they will point to other products as oblique examples, as simplicity is easier to recognize in use. In the early years of the 21st century, businesses often strove to be the âiPod ofâ their category, an oblique analogy for simplicity or innovation. Apple is often credited as understanding simplicity, leading many companies to copy its clean aesthetic. But as Appleâs Jonathan Ive puts it, âsimplicity is not the absence of clutter, thatâs a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product.â[52] In other words, simplicity canât be copied because itâs specific to the nature and context of the problem.
Simplicity is often conflated with minimalism, where the goal is to remove as much as possible. IDEOâs CEO Tim Brown has described minimalism as a âreaction to complexity whereas simplicity relies on an understanding of the complex.â[53] Minimalism can be beautiful, but it is often a stylistic choice, a surface treatment with a clean appearance at the expense of confusion or frustration in use. Minimalism adopts the notion that âless is more,â but these kinds of pithy ...
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