Simplicity

I am articulated right now. I guess it is because this topics reminds me of too many examples and not sure where to start. The first thing that came to my mind was what my dad said and keeps reminding me of even today, “Simplicity is the best policy”. And I’ve learnt in the past one year that it applies not just for life but also for what I create too. To start with Einstein, he says, “Out of clutter find simplicity”. Occam’s razor can be summarized to the same point too. Life is fast and the users have too many things to worry about. Why give them an additional reason to be frustrated? I find myself being repelled faster than a light’s speed when a design is complicated and annoying. But sadly, my design as a pioneer was of that sort!

The article about Tessler’s law says that “If a million users each waste a minute a day dealing with complexity that an engineer could have eliminated in a week by making the software a little more complex, you are penalizing the user to make the engineer’s job easier. Whose time is more important to the success of your business? For mass market software, unless you have a sustainable monopoly position, the customer’s time has to be more important to you than your own.”

The creators have to accept the fact that if the end product is too complicated, it is just going to annoy the user. Sometime, it also makes you feel like you were a fool. Just give what the user wants and in a simple way.

Simplicity

I chose Occam’s Razor as the theory I will talk about. Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation is most likely the correct one, which also reminds me of the quote, "If you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it well enough." It seems to me that designing is trending now towards the extremely simple. Big pictures, few words, minimalistic color schemes, etc. Often times I will be designing a site and think that it's just not doing it for me, and then I'll take off a pattern, or remove some text and the overall feel of my design will become light years better. Even very deep and complex information can be shown in a simple manner, the real challenge should be presenting it, not explaining it.
 Think about company logos for a few seconds. Some of the most iconic images are the most basic. Take the Nike "swoosh" for instance. No other symbol is as widely recognized throughout the world and it is basically just a stroke. Or how about the McDonald's "golden arches"? Or the Mercedes logo? All of these are incredibly simple but 99% of people you show them to will know what they are within seconds. They were created that way for specific reasons: to build a brand and to communicate information quickly.

Tesler’s Law of Conservation of Complexity

The law states that: “Every application must have an inherent amount of irreducible complexity.” The only question is who will have to deal with it.

According to Larry Tesler , A commercial software is written once and used millions of times. If a million users each waste a minute a day dealing with complexity that an engineer could have eliminated in a week by making the software a little more complex  than the user is being penalized for making the engineer’s job easy. He developed this principle while he was working for the apple Mac in mid - 1980’s. The law became very popular and is quite practical. For example : The windows OS takes comparatively much longer time in booting as compared to Mac OS. If the software engineers of window’s could spent more time in fixing the matter than probably many windows users could save several  hours at the end of the year.

Larry’s law points towards designing for users. He calls it the “Method design” and states that the developer should place himself in the user’s shoes. Only then he will be able to develop a better user and interface design. Moreover each type of user’s have their own necessities. Take for example the Adobe Photoshop is used differently by animators, photo-editors, advertisers, graphic-designers, web-designers or school students respectively. Even the Adobe flash software is used by web-developers, designers, animators etc. These softwares despite of being so massive maintain their easy user ability and   interface designs.  Again the softwares designed for engineering or mathematical purposes have their interface objectives much different compared to designing softwares.

In one of the interview Larry even explained about the choice of words which should be shorter and easy to remember and understand. I can easily remember the short cut ‘Ctrl S’ to save a document since my 2^nd grade, but instead if it were given the shortcut ‘Ctrl Q’ I would have probably messed up.

The law, thus gives importance to user’s time and easy access. Larry strongly recommends for proper ‘usability testing’ of the software before it is published.  The money for “usability testing” should not be saved at the cost of users time.

 I do would like to know more about Larry and his work. It is very interesting, true and practical. He seems to have a very popular name amongst the User Experience and the Interaction Design Professionals. But unfortunately there is only little information available about him on the internet.

The idea of keeping things simple is one that I feel is very important in the field of digital design. At the end of the day, the medium we work with most is technology, something that is super complex within itself. With so many options and routes available to find the outcome, over complexity along the way can just cloud the final result to the point of forgetting what your idea was in the first place.
With that said, just making something simple for the sake of simpleness wont always yield great results either. It might be a little extreme of an example but can you think back to when you were 2 and you just got that toy where you had to figure out how to fit the square, triangle, and circle blocks into their corresponding holes? It was fun for a minute then your mind wandered and you found yourself leaving the toy and eating some crayons. I can parallel this in a design sense because I want to create something that is simple enough to be dynamic and remembered, but not too simple to be easily forgotten. A great example of doing things right would be the nike logo.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - author unknown

For my topic today i decided to discuss both the Conway's law and Occam's Razor. This is because I find that they work well together when planning and executing a project of any kind. Occam's theory focuses on the value of using simplicity when explaining anything. Personally I think that is a great way to go about doing so because I like have trouble focusing during long moments and/or discussions so I love it when people keep it short and simple with me, and going straight to the point. I do this a lot in my everyday life even when I'm telling stories because I don't like going into unnecessary detail with a lot of things. I find it a waste of your time and other people's time when you decide to explain something and to go more in-depth than need be because it becomes too confusing and sometimes your audience looses the point you were trying to make. 

Conway's law can be related to Occam's razor theory because it focuses on working together and communication with one another when designing and implementation. This is very important because without communication between these two parties the final product won't look cohesive between the designing and production. Using Occam's razor theory within this law would aid the effectiveness of the communication between parties because the information that is shared would be simple and straight to the point leaving no room for questions and over analyzing the process. Learning about both this theory and law I can use this in my everyday life whether independent design and working for school and eventually my career. 

Interesting

Times have changed very much, so has the value of time. Back in the old days people wanted to hear the whole story about something before committing because they had the time to. As time goes on that luxury of time is lost, so all the details of something can be left out.

If you can catch someone with three words, why say twenty? Details today are not as needed, people only want to hear the outcome. Sometimes when pitching a product idea a investor doesn't want to hear about the product that much, they want to hear about the money they can make. Approaching an investor with the ability to describe your product in three sentences and moving on the the profit part can be all you need.

Think of the most complicated piece of technology you have and look its box and read its description. Then find an old version of that product and look at how long its description is. As technology improves , the need for complicated explanation of how they work decreases.    

I personally think the simpler the better, because it leaves all of the unneeded extras and visuals out. It allows you to know what your getting and what it does. Some people appreciate that extra info and functionality, so keep it there. Just don't wrap the core idea in all of that wrapper.

Simplicity Theories

I reviewed Occam’s razor and Einstein’s rule of Simplicity. Both rules have a common goal to keep what is needed, and remove what isn’t needed. When someone is problem solving, they should choose the path with the least amount of steps and the best results. Keeping things simple is the best way to phrase these theories. In web design we are faced with making things as simple as possible, but need to have as much functionality that can be utilized. The first example that comes to mind is Steve Job’s one button smart phone. Designers need to produce websites, and programs that take away unnecessary steps for the users.
While researching these theories, I came across Aristotle’s saying “Nature operates in the shortest way possible”. It’s natural for humans to choose the simplest, shortest way for the results they want. When a designer can create the easiest paths to the end goal, it makes the end user happier. When designing a project website, or animating, I try to keep the minimalistic approach in mind. The less noise in the project, the better the sound. When animating, I try to focus more on the character’s reaction rather than the background. The best way to polish up these practices is critiquing an artist’s work, and designing following the theory of Occam’s razor.