The Laws of Simplicity
I just completed “The Laws of Simplicity” by John Maeda. John is MIT Professor and the founder of the Simplicity Consortium at MIT Media Lab.
LOS is a beautiful 100 page book where John lays down the 10 laws and explains the different designs and products in todays world use them, knowingly or by chance. John has been called the “Master of Simplicity” for understanding the importance of simplicity in our daily lives and working towards bringing corporations and designers imbibe it in their products. I strongly recommend it to everyone, irrespective of your domain and expertise.
My favourite quote from the book: “Simplicity is about removing the obvious, and adding the meaninful.
The Power of Abundance
Suddenly we all got used to so much of email capacity. We could now store thousands and thousands of emails without worrying about … well anything. They are going to be there as long as we want. Sheer abundance of space had changed our very perspective to email… we began to use it much more, realized that it appeared much more convenient that it did before and we could stick to one or two accounts instead of having to manage 5-7 accounts just because of capacity issues.
Abundance showed what its really capable of in a way it never has. Email capacity got transformed from a luxury, a sacred and scarce resource to something that we no longer concerned ourselves with. We now had the time and energy to concentrate on the actual details of the email, on our businesses and personal lives. Imagine the number of man hours saved each year by stopping people from having to worry about email capacity. With reference to my post on “The Feels Good Factor”, email had now turned into something that felt good to use, something that did its job and bothered you no more with unnecessary concerns.
Technology should be enabling and that is what email became. Enabling us to focus on the problem at hand rather than the mode of communication used to talk about that problem. The providers did end up installing huge servers to address the new capacity needs but to make the business going fine did a few things to stop the users from going crazy with the large capacity they had. One was to restrict the attachment size to 10 MB thus stopping us from emailing large movie or music files. If you wanted to share video or music you had YouTube and Google Video among the other numerous options. The other was the ability to archive emails. That saved quite some space on the servers and yet the users always had access to all their emails.
What other technologies you believe brought abundance to your life and helped you stop worrying about them? And in what domains do you feel abundance needs to step in and relieve you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Links that caught my attention today
Don Norman just posted the Table of Contents of his upcoming book : The Design of Future Things.
Autoblog posted some really cool photos from the Peugot Design Contest 2007.
For the Windows/Mac enthusiasts…Robert McLaws reports of Gates and Jobs appearing together at the D5 Conference.
Steve Pavlina talks about the Law of Attraction and the No.1 mistake people make in using it.
Lifehacker points to The Simple Dollar for some good pointers on what you can do right to help your career.
The “Feels Good” Factor
There are a number of things we do just because it “feels good” to do them. Recycling waste, smiling at your colleagues at work or catching up with friends on a weekend are just some of the examples. These and many other activities might have other reasons why you would do them but if you think about it for a minute… you do feel good after having completed them.Isn’t it a good experience to share a favourite movie scene or hum the lyrics of a mutually admired song? You can spend quite sometime recalling your college days and make jokes about your professors, discuss some of the cool ads you have seen lately or the tasty food you had last time you were at a restaurant.
The point I want to make is that People talk about what makes them feel good. And they don’t mind talking about it over and over again. Actually if it’s something that makes them feel really good…you will have a hard time stopping them from talking about it. Even people who crib all the time do talk about the few things that make them feel good.
But how many things out there really make us feel good. Everyday we interact with so many devices, gadgets, websites, applications and tools. But do you end up talking and I mean talking with full passion about even 25% of them. Probably not. With technology creeping into every nook and corner of our life, there should be many such experiences which make us feel good by making “life easier” but that does not seem to happen. We all have devices that do a lot but don’t most of them end up making you feel like you aren’t doing a lot just because you use the device for your basic needs. And the countless “frustrating” experiences you have as you use the different softwares on your computer.
I believe a product should be designed to make the audience feel good about using it. To make the experience enjoyable, something they recollect with pleasure and share with their friends and family. Google and Ipod have been talked to death about this so I thought let me pick some other examples.
Kayak.com is a simple example. It finds airlines from about 15-20 sites and brings them on a single page with options to restrict based on cost, arrival/departure time, number of stops etc… So you no longer have to search on so many sites to find the best deal and you can make ur decision quickly. It saves you a lot of time and you feel great not good about it.
Windows Live Map Search is another example. If you instal their virtual Earth plugin, you can navigate cities in 3D using your arrow keys or your XBox controller. You can fly like a superman over streets. But more importantly, you can travel around in a city just as if you are driving around. So if you are going to a new place, this gives you the opportunity to familiarize with roads and landmarks so your real trip would be much more comfortable. Feels Good 
Feels Good is the extra gesture you did for the user without he asking for it. He probably wasn’t even thinking about it but now that you offered he loves it. Its the perk of using the product and the perk goes a long way in making a loyal customer.
What was the last thing you used that made you feel good and what about it made u feel good? what made you feel worse? Post your experiences in comments.
If you love great ads!!
I have always loved ads… ofcourse if done well. And some companies know just the right way to capture your attention, highlight their product and then make you feel…”wow..now thats the way to talk about this product”.
Check out Honda’s ads…we have all see the Honda Accord ad but thats only one of the many creative ads that honda came up with. However, Cog was one of those ads you would want to watch again and again
Then check out Sony…the Bravia Ads (Balls and Paint) are also one of a kind. We have always known sony for it’s picture quality and color but this time sony really talks about its color well…like no other.
Dove talked about beauty like no one has….for the first time someone acknowledged that our perception of beauty is distorted and manipulated. I love this ad of theirs as it really brings out the behind the scenes in a way which is so obvious yet so hidden from our minds.
Finally… check out businessweek for the most memorable ads of 2006.
Where did the Vista Wallpapers come from ??
Long Zheng interviewed Hamad Darwish, the photographer who contributed to some of the Vista wallpapers. Check out his Flickr gallery and you will appreciate the sheer genius this person is. He has made his gallery open to all and we can download those wallpapers for free 
Experience Vista in a browser
Check this out!!… Made from Dec CTP of WPF/e….this is one of the best applications out there. If you don’t have the ctp installed..the website will take you to page where you can download this from. Btw, the Feb CTP is out so download that and this app will show you that if a CTP is so powerfull..just wait till the final version is out
Click to enlarge:
A better presentation tool
For who knows how long we have been using PowerPoint for our business presentations. Unless you are well conversant with Flash and other fancy multimedia tools, a “cool” presentation usually means slide transitions in power point.
Electric rain addresses this with their new product Stand Out. Check out the demo… of course its a Windows Vista App but will run on XP with .NET 3.0 installed.