1、#856899 06/06/06Graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientistJohn Maeda is the founder of the SIMPLICITYConsortium at the MIT Media Lab, where he is E. Rudgeand Nancy Allen Professor of Media Arts and Sciences.His work has been exhibited in Tokyo, New York,London, and Paris and is in the p
2、ermanent collections ofthe Smithsonian Institutions Cooper-Hewitt NationalDesign Museum, the San Francisco Museum of ModernArt, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.He is the recipient of many awards, including theSmithsonians National Design Award in the UnitedStates of America, the Raymon
3、d Loewy FoundationPrize in Germany, and the Mainichi Design Prize inJapan. Maeda is the author of Design by Numbers (MITPress, 1999).Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life seriesthe laws ofSIM PLI CIT YJohn MaedaTHE LAWS OF SIMPLICITYMAEDADESIGN, TECHNOLOGY, BUSINESS, LIFEI planned to skim/s
4、ample John Maedas book, then decide toendorse itor not. I quickly found myself mesmerizedandthence the only issue was deciding what were the strongestwords I could muster in support of The Laws of Simplicity. Thebook is important; and Maeda has made an absurdly complexsubjectsimplicityapproachable a
5、nd usable. Bravo! I hope thepeople who design the products Ill acquire in the next ten yearstake this book to heart.”Tom PetersIf brevity is the soul of wit, simplicity is the soul of design. JohnMaeda uses the concept of simplicity to get at the nature ofhuman thought and perception while drawing o
6、ut tangible appli-cations for business, technology, and life in general. The Laws ofSimplicity is thoroughly optimistic, entertaining, and erudite, justas you would expect from Maeda. It is also the most compelling100 pages of design writing I have read this year.”Rob Forbes founder, design within r
7、eachOur lives and our businesses are faster and broader than ever. Assuch, they are also more complex and dicult to manage, for bothcustomers and managers. Therefore, achieving simplicity in bothour products and our organizations will be crucial for securingmarket share. No one has seen this more cl
8、early than JohnMaeda, the Master of Simplicity. The Laws of Simplicity is a clearand incisive guide for making simplicity the paramount feature ofour products; its also a road map for constructing a more mean-ingful world.”Andrea Ragnetti board of management, royal philips electronics“Finally, we ar
9、e learning that simplicity equals sanity.Were rebelling against technology thats too complicat-ed, DVD players with too many menus, and softwareaccompanied by 75-megabyte “read me” manuals. TheiPods clean gadgetry has made simplicity hip. But some-times we find ourselves caught up in the simplicity
10、para-dox: we want something thats simple and easy to use,but also does all the complex things we might ever wantit to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda oers tenlaws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business,technology, and designguidelines for needing less andactually getting more.
11、 Maedaa professor in MITs Media Lab and aworld-renowned graphic designerexplores the ques-tion of how we can redefine the notion of “improved” sothat it doesnt always mean something more, somethingadded on. Maedas first law of simplicity is reduce. Its notnecessarily beneficial to add technology fea
12、tures justbecause we can. And the features that we do have mustbe organized (Law 2) in a sensible hierarchy so usersarent distracted by features and functions they dontneed. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less.Skip ahead to Law 9: “failure: Some things can never bemade simple.” Maed
13、as concise guide to simplicity in thedigital age shows us how this idea can be a cornerstoneof organizations and their productshow it can driveboth business and technology. We can learn to simplifywithout sacrificing comfort and meaning, and we canachieve the balance described in Law 10. This law, w
14、hichMaeda calls “the one,” tells us: “Simplicity is about sub-tracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.” “Maeda is the Master of Simplicity.”Andrea Ragnetti board of management, royal philips electronicsThe MIT PressMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyCambridge, Massachusetts 02142http:/mitp
15、ress.mit.edu0-262-13472-1 978-0-262-13472-9simplicity = sanityTechnology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time wevebecome uncomfortably “full.”I watched the process whereby my daughters gleefully got theirfirst email accounts. It began as a tiny dropemails sent amongthemselves. It grew
16、to a slow drip as their friends joined theflow of communication. Today it is a waterfall of messages, e-cards, and hyperlinks that showers upon them daily. I urge them to resist the temptation to check their emailthroughout the day. As adults, I tell them, they will have ampleopportunity to swim in
17、the ocean of information. “Stay away!” Iwarn, because even as an Olympic-class technologist, I findmyself barely keeping afloat. I know that Im not alone in thisfeeling of constantly drowningmany of us regularly engage(or dont) in hundreds of email conversations a day. But I feelsomewhat responsible
18、.My early computer art experiments led to the dynamicgraphics common on websites today. You know what Im talk-ing aboutall that stu flying around on the computer screenwhile youre trying to concentratethats me. I am partially toblame for the unrelenting stream of “eye candy” littering theinformation
19、 landscape. I am sorry, and for a long while I havewished to do something about it. iAchieving simplicity in the digital age became a personalmission, and a focus of my research at MIT. There, I straddlethe fields of design, technology, and business as both educatorand practitioner. Early in my rumi
20、nations I had the simpleobservation that the letters “M,” “I,” and “T”the letters bywhich my university is knownoccur in natural sequence inthe word simplicity. In fact, the same can be said of the wordcomplexity. Given that the “T” in M-I-T stands for “technolo-gy”which is the very source of much o
21、f our feeling over-whelmed todayI felt doubly responsible that someone at MITshould take a lead in correcting the situation. In 2004, I started the MIT SIMPLICITY Consortium atthe Media Lab, comprised of roughly ten corporate partnersthat include AARP, Lego, Toshiba, and Time. Our mission is todefin
22、e the business value of simplicity in communication,healthcare, and play. Together we design and create prototypesystems and technologies that point to directions where sim-plicity-driven products can lead to market success. By the pub-lication date of this book, a novel networked digital photoplayb
23、ack product co-developed with Samsung will serve as animportant commercial data point to test the validity of theConsortiums stance on simplicity.When the blogosphere began to emerge, I responded andcreated a blog about my evolving thoughts on simplicity. I setout to find a set of “laws” of simplici
24、ty and targeted sixteenprinciples as my goal. Like most blogs, it has been a place whereI have shared unedited thoughts that represent my personalopinions on a topic about which I am passionate. And althoughthe theme of the blog began just along the lines of design, tech-SIMPLICITY = SANITYiinology,
25、 and business I discovered that the readership resonatedwith the topic that underlies it all: my struggle to understandthe meaning of life as a humanist technologist. Through my ongoing journey Ive discovered how com-plex a topic simplicity really is, and I dont pretend to havesolved the puzzle. Hav
26、ing recently spoken to an 85-year oldMIT linguistics professor who has been working on the sameproblem his entire life, I am inspired to grapple with this puz-zle for many more years. My blog led me to the fact that therearent sixteen laws, but rather the ten published in this volume.Like all man-ma
27、de “laws” they do not exist in the absolutesenseto break them is no sin. However you may find themuseful in your own search for simplicity (and sanity) in design,technology, business, and life.SIMPLICITY AND THE MARKETPLACEThe marketplace abounds with promises of simplicity. Citibankhas a “simplicit
28、y” credit card, Ford has “keep it simple pricing,”and Lexmark vows to “uncomplicate” the consumer experi-ence. Widespread calls for simplicity formed a trend that wasinevitable, given the structure of the technology businessaround selling the same thing “new and improved” where often“improved” simpl
29、y means more. Imagine a world in which soft-ware companies simplified their programs every year by ship-ping with 10% fewer features at 10% higher cost due to theexpense of simplification. For the consumer to get less and paymore seems to contradict sound economic principles. Oer toshare a cookie wi
30、th a child and which half will the child want?JOHN MAEDA - THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITYiiiYet in spite of the logic of demand, “simplicity sells” asespoused by New York Times columnist David Pogue in a pres-entation at the 2006 annual TED Conference in Monterey. Theundeniable commercial success of the App
31、le iPoda devicethat does less but costs more than other digital music playersis a key supporting example of this trend. Another example isthe deceivingly spare interface of the powerful Google searchengine, which is so popular that “googling” has become short-hand for “searching the Web.” People not
32、 only buy, but moreimportantly love, designs that can make their lives simpler. Forthe foreseeable future, complicated technologies will continueto invade our homes and workplaces, thus simplicity is boundto be a growth industry. Simplicity is a quality that not only evokes passionate loy-alty for a
33、 product design, but also has become a key strategictool for businesses to confront their own intrinsic complexities.Dutch conglomerate Philips leads in this area with its utterdevotion to realizing “sense and simplicity.” In 2002 I wasinvited by Board of Management Member Andrea Ragnetti tojoin Phi
34、lips “Simplicity Advisory Board (SAB).” I initiallythought that “sense and simplicity” was merely a brandingeort, but when I met in Amsterdam with Ragnetti and hisCEO Gerard Kleisterlee at the first meeting of the SAB I saw thegreater ambition. Philips plan to reorganize not only all of theirproduct
35、 lines, but also their entire set of business practicesaround simplicity. When I tell this story to industry leaders theconsistent feedback I get is that Philips is not alone in the questto reduce the complexities of doing business. The hunt is on forsimpler, more ecient ways to move the economy for
36、ward. SIMPLICITY = SANITYivJOHN MAEDA - THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITYixTEN LAWSreduce The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction. organize Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. time Savings in time feel like simplicity.learn Knowledge makes everything simpler.dierenc
37、es Simplicity and complexity need each other.context What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.emotion More emotions are better than less.trust In simplicity we trust.failure Some things can never be made simple.the one Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and add
38、ing the meaningful.THREE KEYSaway More appears like less by simply moving it far, far away.open Openness simplifies complexity.power Use less, gain more.12345678910123WHOM IS THIS BOOK FOR?As an artist, Id like to say that I wrote this book for myself inthe spirit of climbing a mountain “because its
39、 there.” But thereality is that I wrote it in response to the many voices ofencouragementeither by email or in personfrom people thatwish to better understand simplicity. Ive heard from bio-chemists, production engineers, digital artists, homemakers,technology entrepreneurs, road construction admini
40、strators,fiction writers, realtors, and oce workers, and the interest justseems to keep on growing. With support there is always dis-couragement: some worry about the negative connotations ofsimplicity where it can lead to a simplistic and “dumbed-down”world. You will see in the latter part of this
41、book that I positioncomplexity and simplicity as having importance relative to eachother as necessary rivals. Thus I realize that although the ideaof ridding the earth of complexity might seem the shortest pathto universal simplicity, it may not be what we truly desire.I originally conceived this bo
42、ok as a sort of Simplicity 101,to give readers an understanding of the foundation of simplici-ty as it relates to design, technology, business, and life. But nowI see that a foundation can wait until Im 85 like my professorfriend, and for now a framework will suce which you nowhold in your hands. Al
43、so, in the course of completing my MBA,I found that the majority of books on innovation and businessare published by a single authority. I have been mellowed bymany sobering events in my otherwise extremely fortunate life,so I was looking for something that was more heartful than abook specifically
44、aimed at the technology or business market. JOHN MAEDA - THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITYvMy good friends at the MIT Press were supportive of asofter and more creative approach to the developing arena ofsimplicity and here you have the first step in such a series. Theprice-point and design of these books were
45、 carefully targetedfor the distinguishing reader that is looking for something newand dierent. At the heart of the series is a focus on the busi-ness of technology, grounded in an experts knowledge ofdesign, and with a light touch of curiosity about life. I welcomeyou to this creative experience.HOW
46、-TO USE THIS BOOKThe ten Laws outlined in the body of this book are generallyindependent of each other and can be used together or alone.There are three flavors of simplicity discussed here, where thesuccessive set of three Laws (1 to 3, 4 to 6, and 7 to 9) corre-spond to increasingly complicated co
47、nditions of simplicity:basic, intermediate, and deep. Of the three clusters, basic sim-plicity (1 to 3) is immediately applicable to thinking about thedesign of a product or the layout of your living room. On theother hand, intermediate simplicity (4 to 6) is more subtle inmeaning, and deep simplici
48、ty (7 to 9) ventures into thoughtsthat are still ripening on the vine. If you wish to save time (inaccordance with the third Law of time), I suggest you startwith basic simplicity (1 to 3) and then skip to the tenth Law ofthe one which sums up the entire set. Each section is a collection of micro-es
49、says that clusteraround the main topic presented. Rarely do I have answers, butinstead I have a lot of questions just like you. Every Law beginsSIMPLICITY = SANITYviwith an icon of my design that represents the basic concepts Ipresent. The images are not a literal explanation of the con-tents, but may help you to better appreciate each of the Laws.There is also associated Web content at where you can download the artwork as desktop patterns incase that will help to motivate you.In addition to the ten L
