Simplicity

Don Norman has a good article over at his blog about simplicity in design, and how we are often ambivalent about it. Most people, including me, ask for good design to make things simple and effective to use, but when push comes to shove, we often buy things that have lots of bells and whistles because it looks more impressive.

 

I’m not sure that I really fall into that group – I really do prefer to buy something that does the job with the minimum of fuss. For example, I still have an old-fashioned Nokia mobile phone – it can’t play music or take pictures and I have no intention of trading it in for a newer model. My hi-fi is an ancient Quad, with the absolute minimum of controls; no fancy graphic equalisers or other such nonsense. And we still have the simple toaster described by Norman – one knob to adjust the degree of toasting (which hasn’t moved in years), and a lever to lower the bread into the toaster. I mean, really, what more do you need?

 

Update: Here’s an article about what Philips think about Simplicity. I’m not convinced, particularly when I read guff such as: "using creative chaos to affect lasting change". Pass the sick bucket, Alice. BTW, the comments on the story make interesting reading too. A MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) that has 2 hours as a data point? My advice to Philips would be to improve the quality of the product before marketing Simplicity.