Comments on: What is Good Design – Part 2

By: Jim Dudas

Jim Dudas — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:03:13 +0000

I am decidedly not a designer, but I have worked with some pretty good ones, most notably when I worked closely with some great talent at the PR firm, Hill & Knowlton and the advertising shop, Leo Burnett. To a person, their best work was that which was simple to understand, simple to use and simple to appreciate. The following quote holds for life and design, I think. Henry David Thoreau, once wrote to his teacher, Ralph Waldo Emerson…. “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” Emerson wrote back, “Don’t you think one ‘simplify’ is enough?”

It is not only humorous, it is cogent and compact.

By: David Pohlmeier

David Pohlmeier — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:33:46 +0000

Like the phrase “good design,” simplicity is a very subjective word to use. I know that. It would be nearly impossible to quantify what it means. It doesn’t mean it’s not a good concept and something to continually strive for as a designer.

Fancy functions do not always lure the consumer. The most obvious example of that is the Apple iPod. It’s simple in it’s aesthetic and it’s easy-of-use. As Mr. Rams said, “Less, but better – because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials.” You could argue that the iPod only has what’s essential. Take for instance the iPod Shuffle. It plays music, allows you to adjust volume and skip tracks. That’s it. It works.

By: Sunil

Sunil — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:56:47 +0000

The problem with the idealistic approach to a good design is the business aspect. There are many good designs, like that of B&O for example, aim at a narrow segment of mature consumers. Fancy functions and features lure the mass consumer; even they do not need or do not know how to use them. Consumers are intimated by complexity of consumer products and the need for simplicity is more urgent than ever. How to design simple to use products that appeal to the mass consumer is a dilemma for product managers. In addition to ease-of-use, psychological and aesthetic factors also contribute to simplicity of the experience. Usability is a qualitative measure and not suitable for benchmarking ease-of-use to compare different products. Unless we can quantify simplicity, further progress on this front remains ad hoc.