The Perfect Thing

"That interface made the iPod experience special even for those who had been intimately involved in designing it. For Stan Ng, the head-slapping moment came when he took his own prototype home for the first time. 'I probably had 80 or 90 CDs' worth of music on my Macintosh; transferring down superfast over FireWire and then being able to pick any music, any album, whenever I wanted to was a feeling of freedom, of empowerment. It was just magic. I don't know how else to put it.'"

Wired 14.11: The Perfect Thing

Elegance

Simplicity may put too much control in the hands of designers. Which is sometimes ok, because we’ve hidden a lot of tedium and the internal structure (the machinery). But if we make everything simple, we’ll end up de-skilling users by only giving them the lowest common denominator in their products. Imagine if all cameras were point-and-shoot!

Elegance removes us from this trap. An elegant design contains the necessary, essential, and occasional features in a way that doesn’t impinge upon any of their uses, revealing and hiding them as necessary. Shaker furniture springs to mind, as do rolltop desks, Leatherman tools, and TiVo.

Nineteenth-century Unitarian minister William Henry Channing puts it best, in what could be The Designer’s Creed:

To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common–this is my symphony.

May all our designs (the common) be refined, worthy, wealthy, and, yes, elegant.

Dan Saffer "Strive for Elegance, Not Simplicity," Adaptive Path Blog, 11 Dec 2006 »http://www.adaptivepath.com/blog/2006/12/11/strive-for-elegance-not-simplicity/

Interaction Designer from PlainSimple Design LLC - Gilbert Lee, Salt Lake City, Utah

Interaction Designer from PlainSimple Design LLC - Gilbert Lee, Salt Lake City, Utah: "I love this quote from Christopher Alexander, which I got from the latest Getting Real workshop by 37signals: “When a group of different people set out to try and find out what is harmonious...their opinions about it will tend to converge if they are mocking up full-scale, real stuff. Of course, if they’re making sketches or throwing out ideas, they won’t agree. But, if you start making the real thing, one tends to reach agreement.”"

Simplicity

Simplify, simplify, simplify
-Henry David Thoreau

Seek simplicity and distrust it.
-Alfred North Whitehead

Perceptual Edge