Design Decisions: Campfire transcript browser redesign - (37signals)

Design Decisions: Campfire transcript browser redesign - (37signals): "We confused enthusiasm with priority."

In defense of simplicity

"Connoisseurs of anything discern between trash and class. They know that understatement is class’s hallmark: it’s a product, person or design that knows it has substance, and does not need to go far out of its way to prove itself: its core is good. This is part of what drives the lust for Apple’s aesthetics. The trash, the wanna-be, the knock-off has to parade distractions, buttons, gadgets, and modes to compensate for its lack of core design integrity."

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without letting people know how complicated the problem was

“We try to solve very complicated problems without letting people know how complicated the problem was,” he shrugs. “That’s the appropriate thing.” " ...

“I remember coming across this remarkable product. It was easy to use, and you could do little things like change the noise when you made a mistake,” he grins. “It sounds small, but at the time that was remarkable. I went from feeling stupid to feeling empowered – I somehow connected to the people that made it. The object testified to the care that went into it.”

Soon after graduating, Ive was to make ever closer contact with Apple and his mentor Steve Jobs through Tangerine. They were clearly impressed, and by 1992 he’d moved in with them in San Francisco. Six years later he was turning their fortunes around with the first iMac. Then the well-trodden tale begins: not only did it shift two million units in its first year, it made its beige boxy rivals look moribund and so last millennium.

It’s no coincidence that it was tender loving care and attention to detail that first attracted Ive to the brand that’s now synonymous with his career – the difference between superficial differentiation for its own sake and genuine investment in a better and more innovative product. From hidden horseshoe feet to the celebrated iPod one-touch navigation, his design team pours time and resources into getting it right.

Nick Carson, "Jonathan Ive," ncarson.wordpress.com, 12 Dec 2006 via Signal vs Noise

A prototype should be an invitation to play.

“A prototype should be an invitation to play."

Michael Schrage, Serious Play - Quoted by Carolyn Snyder in a UIE Virtual Seminar 6 Feb 2007

Simplicity: The Distribution of Complexity

A user interface solution that thoughtfully places complexity on the system side, rather than the user side, is typically referred to as “simple.” To get to such a solution, the design team will need to deal with issues of complexity, rather than leaving it to the end-user of the resulting product.

Rob Tannen, "Simplicity: The Distribution of Complexity," Boxes and Arrows, 30 Jan 2007, www.boxesandarrows.com/view/simplicity-the:

Hybridizing Java

Hybridizing Java: "Various fixes have been attempted for Java over the years, but I think the basic issue is that whoever is trying to solve the installation problem is someone who has a more inward technical focus rather than what’s really needed: an outward user-experience focus. For example, I was stymied by early Linux distributions because of the challenge of installation. About once a year, I would try to install Linux, and it would immediately start asking me questions. Only a hard-core Linux geek would know the answers to these questions. I couldn’t even fake my way through, so I would give up and try again the next year. Then Red Hat came along (at least, I think they were the first to focus on the installation experience) and set it up to install Linux without asking questions, or at least to give me reasonable defaults. That’s when Linux started becoming popular (more recently, Ubuntu seems to have taken the lead in solving the Linux friendliness problem)."

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