Comments on: Less is Best

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 18:30:45 +0000

Justin,
Thanks for the comment. Agree – we definitely are a culture that doesn’t like the idea of absence. The hardest thing to do is to let go of (or paint over) your favorite small part in order to allow the whole thing to progress to where it needs to be. A great thing I learned in art school. Taking away is just as important as adding.

By: Justin Kropp

Justin Kropp — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 17:58:24 +0000

I think it is important to embrace the act of letting go or, as Seth Godin has termed it, shipping it. Completing something feels wonderful and every step of your process should be in support of this goal. However, with that being said, I think that we forget that design—or any creative profession—is as much about editing as it is about all the other processes that come with it. As humans, I think we overcomplicate because we have become uncomfortable with the idea of absence.

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 16:50:15 +0000

Tracy,
Yes – going with your gut is a great skill to always work on developing. I trust mine much more today then I did years ago – I guess it gets better with age and experience. As for control issues, I always ask my team “why” they are concerned about control – what would the out of control situation create? Maybe a little less control (if you have a good team to work with) will get you past sticking points? Regardless – good luck and thanks for your comment.

By: Tracy

Tracy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:52:52 +0000

Ah, yes. #4. It stung. I’m going through this right now. Trying to anticipate my manager’s reaction to some mockups. Not going with my gut because of it. But knowing my gut is better (that might be the control freak part of me). Yes, insecurity…a little. This post came just in time.

By: Tracey Halvorsen

Tracey Halvorsen — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:01:45 +0000

Martin,
Thanks for your comment and insights. The iPhone brings up a great example, although I would wager that compared to the Blackberry or the Android, it’s a simpler solution overall. When I wrote the post, I was thinking about how we often over complicate design solutions, proposals, even the simple answering of questions. We tend to fret over them like they are fragile pieces of sculpture. Or we sit and fiddle with solving a problem to the point where we don’t even remember what the original problem was. In these cases, it’s always helpful for me to step back, and look for a simple solution. In the case of the iPhone, I feel like it’s a device giving me lots of simple solutions built into one nicely designed (and simple) interface. A true testament to the iPhone’s simplicity is how much children love it. My nieces aren’t screaming to play with my brother-in-law’s Blackberry. Perhaps “Simplicity is Best” would have been a better title

By: Martin Ringlein

Martin Ringlein — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 19:42:33 +0000

Great post and well said. I love the idea of “less is best” or “less is more”, but is it in fact always true and just a catchy design type thing to say?

If less is best and we strive to live in a world where under-complicated is the name of the game, would we have the material items we love most, like an iPhone? Wouldn’t the evolution of the mobile phone have stopped at the ability to make and send calls, as opposed to the computer in our hand it’s become today? And isn’t it sort of cheating to say that the iPhone is the simplest form of the complicated concept that it is? If less is best, there never would have been a swiss army knife.

Are we allowed to have over complicated ideas as long as the solutions are under-complicated?

Twitter is as simple as it gets; but how many of us choose to use a third-party client over the service’s site itself, because simple was too simple and the demand for feature sets was and is still extremely high? Do we not demand complexity when given simple?