Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less.
In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design–guidelines for needing less and actually getting more.
1. REDUCE: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
The fundamental question is, where’s the balance between simplicity and complexity: How simple can you make it? vs How complex does it have to be?
2. ORGANIZE: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
The home is usually the first battleground that comes to mind when facing the daily challenge of managing complexity. Stuff just seems to multiply. There are three consistent strategies for achiving simplicity in the living realm:
1) Buy a bigger house;
2) Put everything you don’t really need into storage; or
3) Organize your existing assets in a systematic fashion.
3. TIME: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
There’s the implicit benefit: reducing the time spent waiting translates into time we can spend on something else. In the end it’s about choosing how we spend the time we’re given in life.
4. LEARN: Knowledge makes everything simpler.
This is true for any object, no matter how difficult. The problem with taking time to learn a task is that you often feel you are wasting time, a violation of the third Law.
5. DIFFERENCES: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
The more complexity there is in the market, the more that something simpler stands out. And because technology will only continue to grow in complexity, there is a clear economic benefit to adopting a strategy of simplicity that will help set your product apart.
6. CONTEXT: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
The sixth Law emphasizes the importance of what might become lost during the design process. That which appears to be of immediate relevance may not be nearly as important compared to everything else around. Our goal is to achieve a kind of enlightened shallowness.
7. EMOTION: More emotions are better than less.
Everything starts from being sensitive to your own feelings. Do you know how you feel? Right now? By connecting with the emotional intelligence inside yourself, the next step is to empathize with the environment that surrounds you.
‘Form follows function’ gives way to the more emotionled approach to design: ‘Feeling follows form.’
8. TRUST: In simplicity we trust.
The more a system knows about you, the less you have to think. Conversely, the more you know about the system, the greater control you can exact. Thus the dilemma for the future use of any product or service is resolving the following point of balance for the user: How much do you need to know about a system? vs How much the system know about you?
9. FAILURE: 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 goal. However there’s no harm in initiating the search for simplicity even when success is deemed as too costly or otherwise out of reach.
10. THE ONE: Simplicity is about substracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.
Ten laws (10: one, zero), remove none (0: zero), and you’re left with one (1: one). When in doubt, turn to the tenth Law: The One.
In addition to the ten laws, John Maeda gives three keys to achieving simplicity in the technology domain::
1. AWAY: More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away.
2. OPEN: Openness simplifies complexity.
3. POWER: Use less, gain more.