Justin Laing

As technology options become available, and the time to make a new feature becomes smaller we need to ask our selves, is more better? There is room for feature rich, power user design, but aren’t the most appealing designs/devices/solutions those that are the simplest (sort of like Occam’s Razor)?

Take out features:

FROM: design by politics
an interview with john maeda

Do you think that this is coming from the belief that more is better?

I think it’s because more is measurable, as a valuable outcome. Less is not measurable. What if Adobe said: New Photoshop CS3 with 80% less features?! Well, I mean it’s kind of a paradox. We all want simple things when we start, but when we live longer with it, we want more. So it really is about how to design things that are able to change. People have talked for years about adaptable interfaces and so forth - it hasn’t happened yet. But when that happens…at MIT we have a new model for software, we have a new system called Open Studio we’re developing that has made software simple again. Very simple drawing program, simple photo application. And then, most of the people ask us: “we want more features”! And it’s designed to accommodate more features, you can easily add a new filter and you can buy that or rent that so the software gets as complex as you want to. In Photoshop I use 10% of the features, easily, maybe less.”

Simple is the new safe:

FROM: Wired - Roads Gone Wild

Hans Monderman is a traffic engineer who hates traffic signs. Oh, he can put up with the well-placed speed limit placard or a dangerous curve warning on a major highway, but Monderman considers most signs to be not only annoying but downright dangerous. To him, they are an admission of failure, a sign - literally - that a road designer somewhere hasn’t done his job. “The trouble with traffic engineers is that when there’s a problem with a road, they always try to add something,” Monderman says. “To my mind, it’s much better to remove things.”

Flexible:

FROM: Signal Vs. Noise - Product roadmaps are dangerous

One of the tenets of the Getting Real process is the idea that the future should drive the future. When you let a product roadmap guide you you let the past drive the future. You’re saying “6 months ago I knew what 18 months from now would look like.” You’re saying “I’m not going to pay attention to now, I’m going to pay attention to then.” You’re saying “I should be working at the Psychic Friends Network.”