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Minimalism, Simplicity and Rules of Design

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Notes

  1. 1.

    These are not to be confused with journaling file systems that keep a journal of I/O operations that can be executed after a delay or system failure, thus ensuring atomicity of operations and a consistent state. Versioning file systems were first introduced in the TENEX operating system (Bobrow et al., 1972) to allow concurrent processes continue using old files; today, some experimental implementations exist (Cornell et al., 2004; Peterson and Burns, 2005)—and Apple announced TimeMachine, a journaling system, as part of MacOS X 10.5 (Apple, 2006).

  2. 2.

    This book, in a second edition more appropriately named Design of Everyday Things, has become part of the standard curriculum for interaction designers.

  3. 3.

    The term might originate from Xerox PARC, which was founded in 1970 with the mission to create an “architecture of information” and has become popular with the rise of the World Wide Web when the structure of information became a problem for every Web designer (Wurman and Bradford, 1996; Rosenfeld and Morville, 1998).

  4. 4.

    Nielsen presumably based much of his advice on “writing for the Web” on a SunSoft usability study (Morkes and Nielsen, 1998) where fictitious travel content was rewritten in different styles and judged by sample users.

  5. 5.

    The Xerox Star differentiated data icons and function icons, a function like copy could thus both mail and print documents, depending on the context.

  6. 6.

    T-shirts with the text “It depends”, fashionable in the HCI community, and probably first introduced by Jared Spool’s User Interface Engineering company, represent a less scientific version of this statement.

  7. 7.

    This yearning for clarity can be found in numerous reactions to computer dialog. Perhaps one of the most prominent examples is Ted Nelson’s: “featuritis and clutter... [which] is taking on new forms. In the popular iconic world, it becomes a new style of screen clutter. You face a screen littered with cryptic junk: the frying pan, the yo-yo, the bird’s nest, the high-button shoe. Or whatever. You must learn the nonobvious aspects of a lot of poorly designed screen furniture and the visual toys: what they actually do, rather than what they suggest. You must explore the details of each until you understand what it ‘really’ means.” (Nelson, 1990, 236).

  8. 8.

    Instead, as a designer, Maeda uses Gestalt laws to explain phenomena found e.g. in the iPod design.

  9. 9.

    The positive value ascribed to simplicity is so strong that Don Norman had to add the following disclaimer to his column: “Comment: This is one of the most misunderstood of all my columns. So after you finish, read the ‘Addendum’ before you Slashdot or otherwise flame me. … So, of course I am in favor of good design and attractive products. Easy to use products. But when it comes time to purchase, people tend to go for the more powerful products, and they judge the power by the apparent complexity of the controls.”

  10. 10.

    It is, however, doubtful that pure information appliances do really exist.

  11. 11.

    Modality can be considered a method for attaining structural minimalism as it decreases the number of options for the user. It does, however, also increase the amount of composition as the designer plans in advance what actions users are allowed to perform—this is a central aspect of critique for modal systems.

  12. 12.

    Design structure is to my knowledge not an explicitly discussed topic—in software development, the study of software structure surfaced as programs became too large to manage as a single block; architectural minimalism suggests that a similar approach to design simplifies the life of both users and designers.

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    Dr Hartmut Obendorf

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Obendorf, H. (2009). Minimalism, Simplicity and Rules of Design. In: Minimalism. Human-Computer Interaction Series. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-371-6_5

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