In In Defense of Hard PJ Onori questions the oversimplification of interfaces, issues, and software. One quote especially stood out:

If a subject is naturally complex, work to make it no more complex than it needs to be, but no less.

It reminds me of another quote by the famous Astrophysicist and educator Neil Degrasse Tyson. Roughly paraphrased, Neil argues that chemistry, biology, and most other forms of science (I’m looking at you economics!) over-complicate science by giving new ideas and discoveries complex, fancy-sounding names. But in astrophysics, they name things simply. You can’t see and objects that enter its radius are lost forever? We’ll call it a black hole. It sends out a pulse of intense radiation periodically? We’ll call it a pulsar.

I’ve always loved that about space - how approachable the subjects are. A 6 year-old can read about topics at the forefront of science, how amazing is that? If only all systems and subjects were designed to be as accessible as space. So while I understand PJ’s point of view, and I agree that some products are oversimplified, I think that erring on the side of oversimplification is safer than designing for complexity.

We stand in a room full of doors. As highly curious people, we want to see what is behind every door. This is our desire as artists—to satisfy our curiosity and solve the problems we haven’t previously solved. On some level, however, we know that if we are to drastically reduce our competition and benefit from the resulting power shift, we must pick one door, walk through it and never look back. Our personal desire for variety is suddenly placed at odds with the fundamental need of our business to focus. Is it possible, however, that on the other side of the door we face there is not one long gray hallway, not one empty boring room, but more doors—more choices? Is it possible that what lies on the other side of the door is not the death of our creativity, sure to be snuffed by routine and boredom, but just enough focus to harness the full potential of our talents?

The answer, of course, is that it is possible, but we will never know for sure unless we walk through the door and close it behind us.

I remember reading this book a year ago and it instantly resonated with me. The above is one of my favourite quotes, and one of the most important lessons I’ve learned.

The whole book is a fantastic read, not just for agencies or clients, but for anyone interested in improving professionally.

Wouter de Bres from Gibbon.co on the Grumpy Designer Syndrome:

I look at my own design and Instead of being proud that we came this far and that we pushed forward to launch fast, I feel terrible, gutted even, that the design I created is just not good enough. I see flaws and inconsistencies everywhere and can’t help the feeling that I should start all over, from scratch.

I have that feeling all the time when I make things.

I really like Facebook Search, but from what I’ve seen of the way my friends use Facebook, none of them have even noticed the change.

My suggestion for Facebook would be to generate search queries on each of the pages that users visit.

Often times that hardest part about designing a new feature is encouraging exploration.

The great Moore’s law compensator (TGMLC), generally referred to as bloat, and also known as Wirth’s law, is the principle that successive generations of computer software acquire enough bloat to offset the performance gains predicted by Moore’s law. In a 2008 article in InfoWorld, Randall C. Kennedy, formerly of Intel, introduces this term using successive versions of Microsoft Office between the year 2000 and 2007 as his premise. Despite the gains in computational performance during this time period according to Moore’s law, Office 2007 performed the same task at half the speed on a prototypical year 2007 computer as compared to Office 2000 on a year 2000 computer.

That is insane.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Rule #1 of Product Design: Never make your users tag things.

It doesn’t work (Facebook, you are the exception). Either auto-generate tags for the user or let the them create groups and place the entry into a group.

A lot of the work you see at design showcase websites are great examples of well executed decorations that lack substance. The people that can perform this type of work are countless and the skills highly commoditized. Avoid pixel-pushing at all costs – your job is to solve problems. View your work through that lens at all times.

…

Good designers solve problems, great ones ensure they are solving the right ones. Accurately defining the problem goes a long way towards solving it.

P.J. Onori

That’s quite unusual, most of our competitors are interested in doing something different, or want to appear new - I think those are completely the wrong goals. A product has to be genuinely better. This requires real discipline, and that’s what drives us - a sincere, genuine appetite to do something that is better. Committees just don’t work, and it’s not about price, schedule or a bizarre marketing goal to appear different - they are corporate goals with scant regard for people who use the product.

Jonathan Ive

Matt Gemmell wrote a great article about true design. One of his points stood out:

Our industry isn’t young anymore, but it’s still full of fear about whether so-called non-technical people will be able to use its products. I think we’ve been trying to get to less adorned, more information-centric interfaces for quite some time, but we’re still making the same tired old arguments from the golden age of human-computer interaction, about how humans need faux three-dimensional cues about the affordances of on-screen objects. Buttons apparently have to look “pushable”, or no-one will push them.

The problem with flat designs isn’t that interactive elements have to look three-dimensional to be understood, it’s that interactive elements have to look different than non-interactive elements. When you remove depth from designs, you remove one more possible tool in distinguishing different elements from each other.

Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question – you have to want to know – in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.

Clayton Christensen