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Giles Colborne
Usabilty and human
computer specialist |
Of all the current trends in user interface design, the most interesting, most beneficial and most difficult is simplicity. If designers are going to successfully embrace simplicity, then we have to understand where this trend comes from and the principles behind simplifying our designs.
You don’t have to look far to see how eagerly people embrace simplicity in the digital world. A few years ago, Yahoo dominated the Internet. Today, it’s in trouble – thanks to the rise of Google. Yahoo was the archetypal ‘portal’ – a single page with a hundred links leading to all destinations and for a while, every web design project seemed to be about creating portals in Yahoo’s image. Google is the ultimate in simplicity – nothing gets added to the default page without a fight. Today, Yahoo is in trouble and the simplicity of Google has won out.
The same trend is true in physical devices. Last autumn, Microsoft launched the second version of its Zune player to warm reviews. What I found fascinating was that Microsoft chose to drop or simplify features on the device. For example, the music rating system has fewer options. It’s the first second generation device I can think of that has actually gotten simpler.
On the computer desktop, widgets and gadgets are also multiplying – in my opinion because of their simplicity. Weather.com uses 113 links (excluding advertisements) on the page that tells you the weather in New York. A desktop gadget uses just one link to do the same job and is far more appealing.
Whether you’re designing for the web, mobile devices or the desktop, what is clear is that people are crying out for less. And products that offer simplicity win.
Why is simplicity so attractive?
The desire for simplicity has a practical and aesthetic origin. Practically, we don’t have enough time to endure complexity. We play more roles, talk to more people and process more data channels then ever before.
The rise of mobile computing means we are using software in our kitchens, in meetings and on the street. Anyone designing for a mobile phone has to be mindful that the user has to accomplish his or her task in a few seconds or risk walking into a lamppost.
And when was the last time you, or anyone you knew, took time to read the manual before using a new gadget?
Emotionally, I think we are emotionally drawn to simplicity in reaction to the turmoil of everyday life. In his book The Architecture of Happiness, Alain de Boutton suggests that our aesthetic values arise from a search for what is deficient in our lives. The Romantics turned to nature as a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. And we seek simplicity because our lives are ever more complex.
Strategies for simplicity
If you’re trying to make your designs simpler, you need some techniques and strategies to follow.
Just simple enough
The first is try to make something just simple enough – no simpler than it needs to be and no more complex. Ask yourself ‘what is this thing supposed to be?’ and then design that and no more.
For instance, a few years ago I was working on an online bank redesigning the bank statements. On the screen was a control to change the bank statement by selecting the desired date – choose a month from a drop-down menu, choose a year from another menu and press go.
The problem was that this led to two errors – you could select dates a few months in the future, or months that were more than a year ago (the bank only kept statements for 12 months). This really irritated me – the computer let the users do something, then told them off when they did it.
Fixing the problem was about asking ourselves ‘what are we really trying to do?’. The systems engineers who’d originally designed the online bank had said ‘we’re trying to give the system a date’ but that wasn’t right – hence the complex interface. We were really trying to let the users choose from a list of the last 12 bank statements. So we replaced the two menus and ‘go’ button with a list of available bank statements. Simple.
As a designer, what struck me was that by simplifying the user interface, I’d also simplified the programming task (no error messages to write) and improved the user experience (people were no longer faced with error messages that implied they were idiots).
By asking ourselves what we really needed to do and by making the interface just simple enough we’d benefited the users, the developers and ourselves.
Order means simplicity
Another easy technique for creating simplicity is to organise items. In John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity he points out that simply tidying a room makes it feel bigger, calmer, simpler, even though it has the same amount of stuff in it. Organising the items on a user interface into simple sequences or layouts can create simplicity without the need to change the underlying system at all.
Make use of their knowledge
My final recommendation is to make use of the users’ knowledge. One reason that legal documents are so complicated is that they try to spell everything out in minute detail. Day to day conversation doesn’t work like that. People assume shared levels of knowledge and get by with a few words or gestures.
Unfortunately, many interfaces assume that to be simple, they have to treat people as idiots. Someone in the design team say ‘what if the user doesn’t know…’ and so the decision is made to overburden all users with too much information, too many instructions, too many steps.
It is one of those wonderful, counter-intuitive techniques: by stripping away the explanation, the controls and the purpose of the interface often becomes clear.
Go forth and simplify
As a designer, I find that seeking elegance and simplicity in my work among the most rewarding and useful things that I can do. Whatever the practical and emotional origins, and however we achieve simplicity, it is undeniable that simplicity is one of the most powerful tools a designer has. By stripping away the irrelevant, we can emphasise what really matters.
ABOUT GILES
Giles Colborne has been making product more usable for over fifteen years. He was President of the UK Usability Professionals' Association from 2003-2007 and speaks frequently on usability in the UK and overseas. He writes on usability for Revolution magazine and was one of the editors fo the PAS 78 accessibility guide from the British Standards Institute.
