Maeda's SIMPLICITY

More is Better

I have observed that health clubs at hotels are often indicative of the local culture, even though the visitors are often not natives. Peer pressure is a powerful force. For instance, this week in San Francisco I found that unless I got to the health club by 5:15AM I would not be able to get access to a treadmill. This high level of activity symbolized to me the Silicon Valley hard-pushing, super-healthy way of ilfe. In contrast, yesterday at a hotel in Houston it was 6:30AM and empty in the health club. This was consistent with the sprawling, twangy and relaxed atmosphere of the mighty state of Texas.

When I am running, I like to watch CNN or what not on the TV sets mounted high up that they often have in these settings. Often I am barely tall enough to turn these sets on/off, much less adjust the other settings. I was lucky to hit the power button, and got a re-run of the once popular The Pretender series. I couldn't reach the volume control, but I was lucky that the closed-captioning feature was activated. Thus, I could read what was happening and didn't need the audio track.

Listening-and-watching, versus reading-and-watching, are quite different activities. Listening-and-watching comes natural as that is how we usually perceive the world around us. Everything we see comes with a natural soundtrack running in complete synchronization. Watching TV with the sound off and with closed-captioning is not how we connect with the general world around us. Imagine if when people spoke you could not hear them, and instead there was a little speaking bubble over their head like in a comic book? In a sense, this is essentially what the world of IM-ing is like.

While watching The Pretender in reading-and-watching mode, I was impressed with the expressiveness of the simple monospaced type set in white on strips of plain black rectangles. Simple literary devices like using left- and right-justify without any change in typeface or style, for instance:

Are you sure you want to do that?   

   Of course!

I don't know if it's really a good idea.   

Or in addition, the interjection of voice-modifier directives like:

[Angry tone] Are you sure you want to do that?   

   [Innocently] Of course!

[Concerned] I don't know if it's really a good idea.   

With respect to this latter device, I was most impressed when watching a commercial and it began with "[Male announcer] Have you ever ...." I never thought of how by imagining it as a male voice versus a female voice, my perception of the commercial would indeed be different.

At the end of my solo run, another person finally showed up at the health club and got started on a treadmill. Her TV volume was set low and she asked if I could adjust it for her. This TV was within reach, and as I turned up the volume I began to experience all three channels simultaneously: video, audio, and text. The richness in experience was almost overpowering, but definitely appreciated. Thus although the overall experience was complex in terms of an increased number of information channels and a higher perceptual load, the richness afforded by having more did not conflict with the quality of the experience.

A counter-example of where more=excess is the CNN or MSNBC screen designs that inundate you with five or more channels of information simultaneously. The intention is to inform, but the result is to smother, the recipient of the data feed. Another more subtle example is when you watch a foreign film with subtitles—if you understand the foreign language, having the subtitles on screen often can hinder the quality of the cinematic experience because you are trying to resolve what's already in your brain with an often conflicting interpretation.

Simplicity is not driven by reducing the quantity (of anything) for the sake of achieving less, but more in the issue of increasing the quality of an experience in ways that a rich holism of many elements can be achieved. Which brings us to the third law of simplicity which I hereby entitle the "Add Whipped Cream and Cherries" approach:

There's nothing wrong with getting a little fat ... especially if it's the elusive "muscular" variety of fat.

Given that my exhibition in late fall at the Cartier Foundation in Paris appears fully confirmed, I will shortly be forced to blog less and art more. Expect a gradual shift away from a daily publication schedule.