Maeda's SIMPLICITY

The Laws of Simplicity

My new book The Laws of Simplicity ("LOS") is now officially available on Amazon.com, Powells.com , Barnes & Noble.com and other fine book sellers across the country. The inaugural international presentation of LOS will happen this Saturday at Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria where I serve as guest curator of this year's program. In conjunction with LOS, I have launched a new website lawsofsimplicity.com where I plan to develop ideas specific to LOS and simplicity. I still plan to post my random thoughts here in this space, even though that seems a bit complex.

Note that the Laws changed in the LOS book (there are only ten) whereas on this site I had planned to create 16 and ended up with 13. Fewer are better, so I think that the new structure of the Laws is an improvement over the original thinking. I could be wrong ...

The Ten Laws of Simplicity

When I started this whole search for the Laws of Simplicity, I left myself a buffer for the thought process at a total of 16 Laws. From the beginning I knew, (as well as all the people that wrote to me expressing their disdain that I would even consider 16 as that number was too large) that it was too many. After a few months of refinement I am down to ten Laws, and actually one Law if that's all anybody really wants.

Over the next few months I plan to migrate the discussion on the ten Laws to a new website I'll be building. I also am speaking about the ten Laws around the world just to air them out and see how they stand. Results so far have been positive.

In the meanwhile, I will still be using this space to think out loud. I've found the process useful, and I appreciate the interest that it has received. I have posted an image of my Nature exhibit courtesy of Fondation Cartier and curator Leanne Sacramone here.

Look Mom ... No Batteries!

The next step in wireless service contracts.

While Googling for information about charging an iPod, the barely-intelligent Google Ads service informed me of an interesting service by Target to recharge my iPod online. Of course when you click on the link, all they want to sell you is various dongles, wires, and assorted plug-in recharging accessories. However this ad gave me pause because it really is what I want -- a way where I never have to recharge the various electronic devices that I own. What if I were just able to go to Target and have a service contract where my iPod would always be recharged automatically?

Every rechargeable device I own is something like a new child to feed. Cordless devices are truly magical, yet they exact a toll on their owners. I know that if I do not regular feed the device energy, its battery will begin to discharge and its efficacy will eventually be affected. Sometimes during the charging process, the device betrays you and runs amock. A good example is what happens when I recharge my Powerbook laptop while not in use and its clamshell is closed -- sometimes it begins to overheat out of control. Note that I'm not even using laptop, but at sporadic times I hear its fan wildly spinning and when I try to turn the computer on there is a refusal to engage. Thus not only must you feed your electronic devices, but now you must watch to be sure that they do not overeat and hurt themselves.

In my book, the smartest guy here at the Media Lab is Prof. Joseph Paradiso. If you think of the legendary MacGyver character who could fix any situation with duct tape and a paperclip, Joe is best thought of as most likely MacGyver's sensei. A few years back, Joe and his team invented a self-powered, wireless switch that harvests the energy generated during the push of a button to electrically send an RF signal. Said another way, the FOB that activates your car alarm system will not need a battery and instead use just the power from your pushing of the button.

Joe's work shows that true simplicity in electronic devices is not simply about being wireless, but also self-powered. An alternative possibility is for devices to recharge anywhere they might rest in the environment as has been demonstrated in some covert labs I've seen with recharging tabletops. These systems operate upon the same principle that rechargeable toothbrushes use called inductive charging. However I'm not certain that I want to have substantial power emanating from every single wall and surface in my home ... hmmmm ... but sitting in front of a computer can't be all that great for you either so ....

The thirteenth law of simplicity is destined to be the most unlucky and unsolvable for the near future (at the same time I figure Joe will figure it out in the next few years):

Electronic devices cannot achieve the ultimate level
of simplicity unless they are not only untethered,
but have (at least) the appearance of being unpowered.

Thus being perceived as powerless, shall become the epitomy of power. Is that not the same in our own social spheres as well? Off to recharge my growing collection of iPods ...

The Taste of a Room

Yes it's real.

While enjoying a lunch conversation with the quietly masterful designer Sam Hecht arranged by the Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming European magazine Provider, I was happy to know that we had one important thing in common. Neither of us understood the mystery of why in France the bath showers never have any proper shower curtains. As Sam put it, "The water gets all over the darn floor." There was a cosmic moment of two minds connecting when he revealed his puzzlement over this issue as I was grappling with the exact same question in my head. Note that to avoid any misunderstanding, neither Sam nor I were anywhere near a shower as we were just having lunch in Lisa's office near the famous Montparnasse Cemetary.

Sam's designed some incredibly simple pieces for the popular MUJI brand and it was nice to meet one of the people behind perhaps the most elegant telephone in the world. We talked a great deal about a variety of issues concerning the ecology of the product landscape, but the most memorable moment for me during our lunch conversation was when he turned to our lunch itself. Sam said something to the effect that the taste of our beautiful sushi meal was affected by the room that we were sitting in. He felt that the visual purity of the meal was anchored by the environmental tranquility of Lisa's elegantly simple office.

Thus we come to the twelfth law of simplicity we shall call "Hecht's Law":

A pure and resonant experience
is only as simple
as the greater context
where it is appreciated.

Hecht's Law doesn't imply that the only way you can properly enjoy your iPod is by sitting in a room full of furniture that is painted white or else made of see-through plastic. It is more of a general statement about life. Sometimes you have the capacity to enjoy certain things; and other times you are just too busy to smell the roses. I guess the moral of the story is that simplicity comes to those who can allow it (and not just afford it).

The Subtlety Of Simplicity

Linda Tischler's article on simplicity for Fast Company is now visible online. Everyone wants more; everyone wants less. And everyone can't make up their mind. Thank goodness we're human like that.

I think while I was in Paris I had a brief moment of clarity. While watching a television program about the new French coach, Jean-Pierre Elissalde, of the Japan National Rugby Team things started to make sense. Apparently the Japanese team was once strong, but had fallen in recent times. Elissadle explained the team's fundamental problem -- that they were too predictable as they moved up the field. The ball was passed between team members with a mechanical accuracy that was easy for the opponents to predict, and thus consistently topple. Elissalde professed that the better way was what he called "to become like the bubbles in champagne." (Man, I love the French!) His metaphor described the way that bubbles float to the top in unexpected and fluid ways. In the same way, the Japanese team had to learn how to operate based upon their intuition versus their intellect. The ball needed to be passed between teammates in a fluid, realtime manner where all course corrections occured in zero-time.

It then dawned upon me that the intellectual approach to simplicity is to reduce details, whereas the intuitive approach to simplicity is to add subtlety. The beauty of subtlety is that it is usually weightless, hard-to-detect, and, by most accounts, invisible. In other words, it is the style of something gained from nothing. Thus we arrive at the eleventh law of simplicity:

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, while adding the meaningful.

I shall continue this thought after the holiday weekend. The holiday calls ...

Less is Greater Than Zero

I sit on a cramped shuttle flight to Washington, DC. The fellow in front of me reclines. He wears a fancy set of collapsible headphones that rest flush to his balding head. The thin plastic supporting band of the headphones is only a millimeter thick. He is appropriately aerodynamic as I see very little possible wind resistance occurring over the smooth curve of his head as it passes over the slim bump of the headphones.

He reclines further. My field of vision is now dominated by the roundness and awkwardly fuzzy sphere of flesh at rest. Most certainly, the gentleman in front of me feels totally calm and in repose. Little does he know that only one foot behind him, I sit here nervously ... praying that he will unrecline so that I can restore my standard level of visual comfort.

Having less hair is certainly better than having more. The time to dry your hair is lessened. The amount of shampoo you require is minimized. The level of concern you have for 'messing up' your hair in the middle of a rainstorm is nominal. The less there is, the less there is to worry about. Of course I'm not advocating that everyone shave all of their hair off. Although I must admit that I prescribe to the crewcut school of hair styles ...

There is an important difference between zero, a little more than zero, more than zero, and much more than zero. Simplicity is not about living at the poles of simple versus complex. It is not about being zero or none. Instead, it is about some. Which brings me to the Tenth Law of simplicity:

Less breeds less; more breeds more.
Equilibrium is found at many
points between less and more,
but never nearest the extrema.

A glass of water left almost empty will evaporate to nothing more quickly than a glass that is full. As fast as momentum can build, momentum can also quickly dissipate. At the extreme, anorexia claims lives daily by pushing the mind to seek the body's point of starvation. Having overcome an eating disorder as a child, I have a sense for the meaningless quest for less that should always be avoided. As is said in all religions and ancient teaching, in all things, balance is critical.

There is an equilibrium point between simple and complex that does not necessarily lie halfway between the two poles. In fact, there are many such points that exist along the continuum. In the way of the once popular Pokémon adventures, "Gotta catch 'em all!"

WW

Today Wolfgang Weingart came to see me at MIT. He's in his sixties and continues to be a powerhouse of ideas and inspirational educator qualities. I think I spoke of him before ... oh yes, about the point. Weingart is my original inspiration for launching our online Digital Information Design Summer Camp. We officially closed our registration date on Monday of this week and are currently processing admissions.

It is important to me that Weingart should appear at this important moment. When I had once lost all interest in teaching some years ago, I was visiting Weingart in Maine to give a lecture for his then regular summer course. I marveled at Weingart's ability to give the exact same introductory lecture each year. I thought to myself, "Doesn't he get bored?" Saying the same thing over and over has no value in my mind. Yet it was on maybe the third visit that I realized that although Weingart was saying the exact same thing, he was saying it simpler each time he said it. Through focusing on the basics of basics, he was able to reduce everything that he knew to the essence of what he wished to convey. This brings me to the Ninth Law of simplicity:

Simplification most commonly occurs through
conscious reduction; the more uncommon form
involves subconscious compression.

Sometimes we are fortunate to achieve subconscious compression through the arduous passage of time like Master Weingart. However the exigencies of a capitalistic economy demand that things happen now versus later. The short span of now defeats the ability to age. Perhaps that is why living in "the moment" makes one feel young?

Obey

On the way to MIT this morning, there were two car accidents that I observed. Fortunately neither accident was fatal for the participants, and everyone seemed to be smiling in spite of their misfortune. A sudden dose of beautiful summer weather does tend to warm people's hearts. Police were attending to their duties of resolving the immediate details of each accident in perfect form.

I passed another car that was in the process of being towed. It was illegally parked in front of the city hall of Cambridge. Two tow trucks were in place to move the single car. Yet again, a fellow from the police was there to attend to the administrative task of the towing procedures.

As I neared MIT I glanced in my rear view mirror, and there it was right behind me—a new Audi A4. Having seen the television commercials for the A4, I was very excited about the idea of their new grille. If you haven't seen it yet, it looks something like this:

Note the wide swatch of dark gray space that sits there as a complete void. What a remarkable statement to have for a car. A plain, unfettered and undecorated space. I marveled at its simplicity when I first saw it on television.

And then reality hit me. The front of the A4 looked different. How come? Because a big license plate was slapped atop the beautiful field of dark gray. Suddenly the pristine design intentions fell apart. Let me help you visualize that:

The A4 was no longer an "Audi A4." It was now a legally licensed automobile. Granted the former would not get you anywhere (aside from within a dealer's parking lot); the latter is what puts the mobile in 'automobile.' Which brings me to the Eighth Law:

Recognize not only the absolute laws of
the physical universe as important constraints,
but also the artificial laws as of equal importance
when striving for simplicity.

Most kinds of art or design falls prey to forgetting that we don't live in a perfect world. Beautiful buildings are designed without the acknowledgement that the street will be cluttered with details that are discordant with the architect's intentions; statues are erected that are violated by all manners of unexpected grafitti or wear in ways that are far from the artist's desire. In the same way that we acknowledge the fact of gravity, we must acknowledge the fact of society. I'm of course not saying that society is artificial, although if that which is artificial can be defined as "made with intention by humans" perhaps it fits. Which reminds me, I never said that I was real.

Great Taste! Less Filling!

I'm not much of a beer drinker, but I have certainly loved the Miller Lite ads over the years. For those of you that are unaware of these advertisements, they have two sides of the room where one yells, "Great Taste!" and the other side of the room yells, "Less Filling!" If I understand the concept clearly, to drink a beer is to engage in both great taste with the penalty of an addition to your waistline; to drink a Miller Lite, or any other light beer, is to have the classic win-win effect occur—you get both great taste without a sacrifice of a heavy filling. I wonder what marketing genius recognized that calling "diet beer" could be improved upon by calling it "light beer." This person should certainly win some sort of national award, if he or she hasn't already.

We want the "light" version of something when we don't want to be overburdened with the pleasure of more. To choose "light" over "heavy" is the proper expression of a person that carries the burden of guilt. "No, I shouldn't do that. But I really want to. I'll just have ooooone sip." In the dessert category, a good example is an ice-cream bon-bon. It isn't an entire banana-split sundae or a chocolate parfait. Just a tiny morsel of ice cream dipped daintily in a little-bitsy of chocolate. It is as more as less could ever be. One could argue that it's harder to make a good bon-bon versus making an average-quality chocolate sundae. To make what appears to be less can sometimes be more work. Thus we come to the Seventh Law which is,

The more care, attention, and effort applied
to that which is less, the more it shall be perceived
as more than it really is.

I guess the same can go with raising children. Today at the Media Lab I sat with author Akiko Sugaya talking about children and the kind of invisible bits of pieces that you sprinkle over them. When they are young and constantly changing, you really can't clearly see the evidence of your careful handicraft. But you know that they are more for what you have done, and that you are more as well inside. Now that's real win-win!

Turn Up The Noise!

I fly to New York on the shuttles that run regularly out of Boston's Logan Airport. Over the years I've noticed gradual cost reductions in their service. I'd like to say it's like the approach of winter, when all the leaves turn their colors, and then fall of the trees. Snow comes. With the seasons however, we at least know that spring will eventually return. Somehow in the airline industry I don't think that spring will ever return, so the services that are now gone, are most probably gone forever.

There used to be a sizeable snack in the evening on the flight, and then that became pretzels. I don't know about you, but I don't usually eat pretzels for dinner. In the morning there used to be a real bagel with some sort of dried fruit snack, and then it became a fake bagel (you know the kind that come in shrink-wrapped bags?). Now it has become a shrink-wrapped donut of questionable nutritional impact. I suspect we will soon be getting a donut hole on the morning flight, followed by nothing.

Magazines have tremendous surplus of unsold goods, and the shuttle service took advantage of this problem in the publishing industry by providing all sorts of free magazines to pick up at the terminal for your flight. Most of the magazines were of the undesirable category (thus they were surplus), but once in a while you'd find a title that you might have heard before and actually wanted to read. The quantity of free content has been heavily downsized of late, and thus the pickings are indeed slim.

Truly desperate to read something on my return to Boston, I picked up an IEEE Spectrum ... which I don't personally find as exciting as a People magazine of course. In this issue there was an interesting story about noise. I found the identical online content right here. The premise was that older people lose their sensitivity to changes in their environment, and that unexpectedly, by adding noise to a target signal it is possible for people of lower sensitivity to experience the target signal. In other words, when the ground is shaking, it is easier to balance oneself for some people. You would think that noise would make more difficult to perceive something—for instance when you are in a room trying to read and your kids are blasting the stereo. Indeed if there's too much noise, then you are going to lose. The point of the study was that there was a critical point where noise actually helped. They cite the example of an experiment by Frank Moss where they discovered that crayfish are able to perceive their predators better in roiling water because they use the stream's turbulence to amplify the predator's signal of presence. Gotta love those animals! Man, are we the dumb ones.

Which brings me to the Sixth law of simplicity,

In order to "feel," you gotta have noise.
Too much noise, and all you've got is noise.

I was glad to find that there is scientific validation in this assumption I've held for a long time. People love noise. And we can't stand it at the same time. It's that classic love/hate relationship thing. I contrast this concept of noise as different from the Law of More (number five) as it is a kind of more that is like a fragrance versus a heavy sauce.

Music is noise, and we love it. But bad music is about too much noise. Music helps us feel—it places us into a space that we are sensitive towards "feeling." Perhaps it all goes to our origins in the womb of our mothers as we floated there and just ... listened.

There is visual noise. We usually call it "art." There is physical noise. We usually call it "texture." There is noise in life. It's called "chance." Heck, this blog is noise. Let me turn it down for you.

Super-author Virginia Postrel writes, "I'm writing to correct your misleading impression of the magazines on the shuttle. The magazines in question are not in fact surplus or, at least in the eyes of their publishers, undesirable. Magazine publishers pay to have new issues put on the shuttle because the shuttle's passengers are highly desirable readers. I've been out of that business for five years, so I'm not sure why there are fewer magazines today. Perhaps the airlines upped the charges." Or perhaps we shuttle riders aren't deemed as desirable anymore. Sob ...

Designer Steve De Mar from Microsoft corrects my science: "I think you may have misinterpreted the context of the article you reference from the IEEE Spectrum on noise and sensory input that you use to support your law. The article isn’t very good at explaining at a mechanical level why the noise helps people with sensory input problems to better perceive nerve signals. The detailed description is almost none existent in the article referring only to a vague explanation that the noise provides a 'pedestal' that allows the weak signal to ride over the nerve threshold. This is so vague as to invite misinterpretation. I think what is more accurate is that the nerve system, as it becomes less receptive (aged, damaged, etc), becomes more 'gated' where it takes some stronger signal to open the pathway, hence allowing a weaker signal to pass now that the nerve is in a state where it is open to pass signal. This is very similar to how electronic gating works in audio signals processing. So I think the message in the article isn't that noise is good or bad, it’s that it basically forces the threshold of the nerve to fire and allow any signal there to pass along. This doesn't seem to fit your argument for noise." Thanks Steve!

Wholeheartedly Accepting Defeat

About 4 years ago is when I first heard the term "win-win" in the context of, "... and then everyone can have a win-win situation" from my management coach. This concept was foreign to me and I asked for an explanation. Her reply was, "It's the opposite of a win-lose situation." So ... people win, and people lose. And you're telling me there is a way where people win, and people win again. I thought it was silly that if you'd already won once, that you'd want to win again. It was last year when I finally figured out she was referring to the issue of the winning side versus the losing side.

I think in the highly competitive world of business, we tend to think of this idea of winning versus losing. Although in grade school there may be winners, everyone nowadays gets a "participation prize" for just showing up. We know that in the real world, this is not always the case. You're either a winner or a loser. And in some cases, like mentioned above, somehow everyone's a winner—although I think that is something of a rarity.

There can only be a winner or a loser if there are specific metrics by which someone or something can be judged as greater-than or less-than the other. Sometimes that metric is a literal yardstick, and at other times that can be a single person that holds the equation of measurement in his or her head.

The wonderful "problem" of creativity, however, is that we don't have entirely good metrics for judging such a quality. "She's creative." What does that mean? Does that mean everyone else is less creative? How do we prove that? And, do we want a way to prove that?

Perhaps the fundamental dilemma I faced when trying to understand "win-win" captures my point. The power of creativity, is the ability to wholeheartedly accept a defeat. This is different from "learning from your mistakes" but more in the milieu of listening to your mistakes. For instance, I was talking to a curator yesterday on the topic of creating art and how everything good I ever make is a complete accident. Oh, I go into it all with clear intentions, but once everything starts to fall apart, it gets terribly exciting. It is like a sculptor with his stone. Oops, the place where the nose is supposed to go just fell off! Instead of giving up, a true artist realizes that the stone is telling the artist something important.

[In the voice of a stone] Hey, look at what I broke off for you! Now you can do something better than that ridiculous nose you were going to sculpt in the wrong place. Yo! I know you heard me. Look over here! Don't walk awaaaaay ...

So I have revealed that I am something of a Modernist (I'm not sure if that's been a secret). Understanding and "listening" to one's materials is a critical factor to finding the most natural form of expression for a set of given constraints. Which brings us to the fifth law,

A material's failure to comply to a specific application
provides indication that its more natural usage lies elsewhere.

Thus when something isn't working out, it isn't your fault really. And it's not the material's fault either. The only problem is that both of you (you the designer and it the material) aren't really communicating. Tuning into the messages versus tuning into the problems is a critical factor in designing for simplicity. I plan to listen to the ocean as heard in my conch shell today ...

Chris Yu from Japan writes about an experience he had with Win-Win in a negotiations class, "It was pointed out that Win-Win is more often being more creative to get to Win-Win-Lose instead of Win-Lose. In other words, let's say that there's only $2 between us and we each want an identical $2 sandwich. Since there's only $2 it appears that one side would win (get the sandwich) and the other would walk away hungry. But if we're 'creative,' one of us might go to the shop, order the $2 sandwich and upon receiving it the other one would run into the store acting like a madman, steal the sandwich and run away. The storekeeper would be dismayed and probably make the person standing there another sandwich. Hence Win (sandwich buyer), Win (sandwich stealer), Lose (sandwich shop). Anyway, I think the whole point was to encourage people to think more about how having more creative possibilities could result in a more optimal agreement but it also illustrates how Win-Win conveniently omits the other parties." So in essence, creativity always wins.

Educating Simplicity

A tiny digital camera's manuals outweighs those of a car.

After getting the dreaded "E18" error message on my Canon camera, I decided to use my MIT training in Electrical Engineering to try to fix it. A brilliant fellow has posted complete instructions as to how to attack the disassembling of a Canon IXUS which is similar to the one that I had. I decided to go for it. Problem was that after the first few steps, I noticed that the difference between the camera under study and mine was significantly different. Subsequently, I did take the entire camera apart, but without the intention of putting it back together again. Operation "Humpty Dumpty" was successful to a degree—I learned a few things about digital cameras through Humpty's unfortunate and premature demise.

My freshly ordered replacement camera came yesterday. I ordered the exact same model and wasn't tempted to go up to 7 megapixels as I am a humble 3 megapixels guy. I had forgotten how much literature the little bugger came with. Granted that there's a lot of multilingual overlap in the pile of paper, but it's definitely grand in heft. In comparison, a recent comparison with my stack of manuals for an autombile revealed that the digital camera was essentially more complex than the car!

That's not a fair comparison of course. To drive a car, you must undergo formal instruction. Either through a set of classes or a much thicker 'manual' of instruction or the undoing of your parent that is forced to sit in the passenger's seat while you tempt fate as the dreaded student driver.

I don't recall taking a 'digital camera operation' class in high school, thus the increase in complexity of manuals is probably deserved. Such a class is of course unnecessary for younger people as evidenced by my 3-year older that seems to have no problem operating my digital camera. Hands-on experience certainly beats reading a manual.

Which brings us to the fourth law of simplicity,

The more you know about something beforehand,
the simpler it will ultimately be perceived.
Thus education or any other investment in training is a valuable step towards battling complexity. The only problem is, of course, that learning hard things ain't easy. Making learning simple is thus a key goal to be realized.

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:

When the richness of an experience
is increased in a manner that facilitates
the perception of the overall intent,
by all means don't skimp. Add more!

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.

Wait!

Having been recently stuck on the runway at LaGuardia for 4 hours in the snowstorm, and furthermore standing in line for 3 more hours to determine my future flightfate, and then the next morning standing for 2 hours in a line to get through security, to finally wait for another hour on the runway at LaGuardia, I am now a changed man. The realization that life is about waiting comes later in life to most. As a child, the idea of waiting is something foreign. But waiting is what we do in the adult world. We do it all the time.

Some of the waiting we do is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the spigot when we turn the valve. We wait for water to boil. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can oftgen be annoying. Like when we wait for a URL to load, or wait for an Illustrator file to open, or wait for or wait for the computer to awake from sleep. When you think of all the waiting you do, the list really goes on forever. Well, not actually. Because we are all limited to finite lives. This is the final wait, or the implicit queue that we all find ourselves in.

This brings me to the Second Law of Simplicity (the First was discussed here), where each law is at a different level of granularity for the time being.

The positive emotional response derived
from a simplicity experience has less to do
with utility, and more to do with saving time.

One could argue that utility and saving time are synonymous, but I think they are two different concepts. Utility is a matter of convenience; reducing one's time to wait ultimately translates to freeing oneself to use the time saved elsewhere. Ultimately it's about choice. When forced to wait, by definition, you have no choice.

a... ah ... ATCHOO! Gestaltung!

In Japan when you sneeze in a public area, you won't hear a single peep from others. Whereas in the U.S. you can sneeze in places where not a single soul knows you and complete strangers will offer a "God bless you!" or a "Gesundheit!" Perhaps because the origins of the Western offering of a "Gesundheit" connects with an age-old superstition having to do with the potential loss of your soul with the violent action of the sneeze. That's a nice thought—next time you're on the subway see how many souls you can save. However by doing so you're more likely to catch a cold, and will eventually need your soul to be saved as well. It seems to all even out in a good way ... this germ-spirit economy we live in.

Gestalt psychology was something that I've heard of for quite a long time, but I never really understood it all that well. The only reason why it has stayed in my mind this long is the similarity between "gesundheit" and "gestalt," which was made even easier when I learned that the German word for design is "gestaltung"—3 syllables for 3 syllables cemented this word (at least lexically) forever.

Like all ideas that are deep and forbiddenly difficult to master, I held on to the one thing that did make sense to me beyond the name. That was the "grouping" principle of Gestalt psychology. It basically goes like this: What's the difference between a cluster of 30 dots expressed as displayed on the left, versus the dots on the right?

        

The answer is pretty simple. On the left there is no order to the randomly placed dots; on the right there is a clear grouping of some of the dots. We immediately pick out the group of dots as a "whole," even though it's composed of many little dots. In effect by gathering the dots into the group as on the right, we have simplified the otherwise haphazard display of 30 dots.

Let's place this principle into context with my favorite example of the Apple iPod. When it first came out, the controls were layed out as follows:

Then, perhaps as a cost reduction technique, or due to complaints from people with fat fingers, in a subsequent version of the iPod Apple separated the four buttons surrounding the jog dial into a discrete row of buttons:

As a result, they made the iPod more complex. The comfortable grouping of all the functions in the center made the newer iPod look significantly more complex to use. Until this morning I couldn't figure out why I ran out to buy one of the older iPods when this version with the button row came out. I was extremly irate and couldn't explain why! Now I know ... because they made something beautifully simple, unnecessarily complex.

In the newest version, they have oscillated towards extreme simplicity by integrating all of the buttons into a single seamless control:

Let's look at all three of them side by side now:

          

From left to right we can read this sequence of iPod evolutionary steps as "starting simple, then getting complex, and finally becoming over-simple." What do I mean by "over-simple"? I mean that you can simplify to the point where you simplification has been made obvious. This has the same effect as yelling at someone, "Look dummy, I'm simpler!" Let's illustrate by going back to my dot diagrams:

              

The diagram at the right shows the explicit grouping of the cluster of dots by smooshing them together. This has the advantage of complete explicitness of simplification, but also (as visualized by the diagram) means that the individual functions that could once be identified as unique, are now not as cognitively accessible than before smooshing occured. Which brings us to the First Law of Simplicity:

A complex system of many functions can be
simplified by carefully grouping related functions.

That will work for the time being. I got started on this Gestalt path this morning when I implemented a way to visualize how many people might be reading this blog regularly per hour. When you choose viewing by 'group' or 'line' the difference in your perception of quantity is quite striking.