The long-awaited and much-hyped Apple iPad is out, receiving a fairly upbeat response in the media and a much cooler, going on hostile reaction among bloggers and commenters.
Spec-obsessed techies bemoan the lack of hardware features and the relatively modest screen resolution, processor power and storage space. But the iPad isn’t about any of those things. It’s about providing a great user experience for the things it does, not beating the competition on points.
The Litl in conventional laptop mode and in easel mode
I have a love/hate relationship with computers. Or more properly, I love computing and hate general-purpose computers. Supposedly modern operating systems — Windows, OSX, Linux — are far too complex for the average user let alone novices. Collectively they’re responsible for wasting more human time, energy, money and ingenuity than anything in the history of civilisation. Even Facebook. A plague on all their houses.
John Pawson’s Sackler Crossing at Kew Gardens has won the 2008 Stephen Lawrence Prize for projects under £1 million. Prize judge Marco Goldschmeid praised the design, calling it “a masterly conjuring trick playfully deceiving the eye with light and water as its props. It is one of those rare designs where less truly is more”.
The bridge takes an intentionally low profile, giving its users the impression of walking on water. Its deck is made from bands of dark granite laid in parallel like railway sleepers. The balustrade is formed from close-set disconnected bronze cantilevers worked smooth at the top. These flat fins combined with the sinuous path of the bridge create differing optical effects depending on the position of the viewer, appearing in some parts as a solid wall, in others almost transparent. The materials are designed to age gracefully through the years as they take on a patina of use.
The Crossing dignifies its setting rather than dominates it, conveying a sense of harmony, calm and beautifully measured restraint that is sadly lacking from most of our contemporary culture, not just architecture. It is in sensitive settings like these that real design skill shines: Knowing when to stop, knowing how to add without taking away.
As my own small contribution to the literature on featuritis, here’s a personal illustration. My mobile phone isn’t anything fancy. It’s cheap and very basic by today’s standards. No internet, no camera, no MP3 player. I bought it because all I wanted to do was to make calls and send texts.
So here’s a list of what my “simple” Nokia 1100 can do, and what I actually do with it.
Getting to Less is all about helping designers decide what to keep and what to throw out of their designs. Whether you’re designing software, websites, products or cities, you need to choose what to include and what to omit. But how?
Just twist and go.
No low-contrast LCD display.
No instruction booklet.
No learning curve.
No fiddly buttons.
No modes.
No batteries.
No battery cover to snap off or lose.
No battery changes.
No weedy digital beep-beep-beep.
£3 delivered.
This is simplicity. Does it really need to be any harder than this?
Simplicity is becoming an increasingly important trend in design. As life becomes faster-paced and we’re deluged with more choices, more information and more stuff, users and consumers are demanding that designers do the heavy lifting of making things more focussed, easier to learn, more refined.
The question for designers is “How?” How do we know when something is just right, and when it’s too much or not enough? How do we separate the essential from the peripheral? When do we stop?
You’d have to get up pretty early in the morning to put one over the system management software that comes with the Acer Aspire 9300.
A jack has been plugged in!
A jack has been unplugged!
Do you think I don’t realise already? Who’s the one doing the plugging and unplugging?
An important usability principle is to conserve the user’s attention. Let them focus on what matters most. Emphasise the main event, quieten the minor details and remove everything that simply doesn’t need to be shown.
For pity’s sake, don’t pop up a balloon just because I’ve plugged my headphones in.
