In a world where everything is multitasking, doing something with simplicity becomes increasingly rare and a privilege of a few. John Maeda explains how to live simply in his best selling book: ”The laws of simplicity” setting out his 10 rules of which quote some excerpts. Taken from John Maeda, ”The Laws of Simplicity”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006.
1 REDUCE
The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. The easiest way to simplify a system is to remove functionality. Today’s DVD, for instance, has too many buttons if all you want to do is play a movie. A solution could be to remove the buttons for Rewind, Forward, Eject, and so forth until only one buttonremains: Play. […]
Lessen what you can and conceal everything else without los-ing the sense of inherent value. EMBODY-ing a greater sense of quality through enhanced materials and other messaging cues is an important subtle counterbalance to SHRINK-ing and HIDE-ing the directly understood aspects of a product. Design, technology, and business work in concert to realize the final decisions that will lead to how much reduction in a product is tolerable, and how much quality it will embody in spite of its reduced state of being.
2 ORGANIZE
Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. However, in the long term an effective scheme for organization is necessary to achieve definitive success in taming complexity. In other words, the more challenging question of “What goes with what?” needs to be added to the list. For instance in a closet there can be groupings of like items such as neckties, shirts, slacks, jacket, socks, and shoes. A thousand-piece wardrobe can be organized into six categories, and be dealt with at the aggregate level and achieve greater manageability. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. Of course this will only hold if the number of groups is significantly less than the number of items to be organized.
3 TIME
Savings in time feel like simplicity. Every year something like this happens: I get stuck on an airport runway for 4 hours in the middle of a snowstorm, then stand in line for 3 more hours to determine my future flight’s fate, then the next morning stand for 2 hours in a line to get through security in order to wait another 1 hour on the runway again. The realization that life is about waiting comes later in life. As a child, the idea of waiting is something foreign and simply intolerable. But waiting is what we do in the adult world. We do it all the time. […] When time is saved – or appears to have been – the complex feels simpler.
4 LEARN
Knowledge makes everything simpler. Operating a screw is deceptively simple. Just mate the grooves atop the screw’s head to the appropriate tip – slotted or Phillips – of a screw driver. What happens next is not as simple,as you may have noted while observing a child or a woefully sheltered adult turning the screwdriver in the wrong direction. […] So while the screw is a simple design, you need to know which way to turn it. […] The problem with taking time to learn a task is that you often feel you are wasting time, a violation of the third Law. We are well aware ofthe dive-in-head-first approach –“I don’t need the instructions, let me just do it.” But in fact this method often takes longer than following the directions in the manual.
5 DIFFERENCES
Simplicity and complexity need each other. Nobody wants to eat only dessert. Even a child that is allowed to eat ice cream three meals a day will eventually tire his sweet tooth. By the same token, nobody wants to have only simplicity. Without the counterpoint of complexity, we could not recognize simplicity when we see it. […] Acknowledging contrast helps to identify qualities that wedesire – which are often subject to change. I don’t personally prefer the color pink, but I do like it as a dash of brightness in a drab sea of olive green. The pink appears bold and vibrant as compared with its dark and muted surroundings. We know how to appreciate something better when we can compare it to something else.
6 CONTEXT
What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral. I was once advised by my teacher Nicholas Negroponte to become a light bulb instead of a laser beam, at an age and time in my career when I was all focus. His point was that you can either brighten a single point with laser precision, or else use the same light to illuminate everything around you. Striving for excellence usually entails the sacrifice of everything in the background for the sake of attending to the all-important foreground. I took Negroponte’s challenge as a greater goal of finding the meaning of everything around, instead of just what I directly faced.
7 EMOTION
More emotions are better than less.
My daughters send me email with text of all sizes, all colors, and sometimes in ALL CAPS! […] Does not the phrase “I love you!” have so much more meaning when typed. “I LOVE YOU!”? Think of it typed at 36 points in pink and bright yellow and it really can go over the top. I once asked one of my students at MIT why she never smiled when communicating with others. She said, “Because I don’t want to look unprofessional.” This event caused me to reflect on my own attempts to project professionalism as a professor, which caused a natural lean towards the stereotypical stern and authoritative. As an artist, I found the results of my self-analysis offensive. Thus, today I try to reply back to my daughters in all-caps and colorful letters when nobody’s looking, “I LOVE YOU TOO!!!”
8 TRUST
In simplicity we trust. Imagine an electronic device with only one unlabeled button on its surface. Pressing the button would complete your immediate task. Do you want to write a letter to Aunt Mabel? Go ahead and press the button. Click. A letter has been sent. You know with absolute certainty that it went out and expressed exactly what you needed. That’s simplicity. And we are not far from that reality. Every day the computer becomes increasingly smarter. It already knows your name, address, and credit card number. Knowing where Aunt Mabel lives and having watched you write a letter to her before, the computer can send a fair approximation of a kindly email to her from you. Just click a button and the deed could be done – finito. Whether the message is coherent and keeps you on dear Aunt Mabel’s Christmas list is another story, but that is the price of not having to think.
9 FAILURE
Some things can never be made simple. The truth embodied in the ninth Law is something I could have chosen to HIDE, but the eighth Law of TRUST commands me to speak. Some things can never be made simple. Knowing that simplicity can be elusive in certain cases is an opportunity to make more constructive use of your time in the future, instead of chasing after an apparently impossible goal. […] There’s always an ROF (Return On Failure) when you try to simplify – which is to learn from your mistakes. When faced with failure, a good artist, or any other member of the creative class, leverages the unfortunate event to radically shift perspective.
10 THE ONE
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful. The Japan National Rugby Team was once a mighty force that has fallen in recent years. Led by a new French coach, Jean-Pierre Elissalde, they appear to be on the rise. When Ellisalde first came aboard, he assessed the team’s basic problem – the players were too predictable. As they moved up the field, the ball was passed between team members with a mechanical accuracy that was easy for their opponents to predict, and thus consistently topple. Elissalde urged his players “to become likethe bubbles in a glass of champagne”, floating upwardin unexpected and elegantly fluid ways. The Japanese team had to learn how to operate based upon intuition versus intellect. Simplicity is hopelessly subtle, and many of its defining characteristics are implicit (noting that it hides in simplicity).
