Comments on: Law 1: Reduce

by: stefano

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:15:36 +0000

The simplest CD player I owned had twelve buttons for the first twelve tracks.
Its interface was so smart I could play any track with a single click on the device. I miss it.
Now I have to use the remote control to skip to the next song, even if I am a few inches distant.
My point is, does simplicity mean you have to REMOVE buttons at all? Isn’t it about making USER EXPERIENCE simpler ?
Personally I wuld like to use a DVD player with ONE single button: a large touch-screen with a simple, context-sensitive, informative, obvious, elegant software interface …

by: Chitranshi

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 06:38:52 +0000

hi - Just speak the action you want from dvd player or any product and that will take place. Same is shown in the movie’i-rorbot’.
I believe -’the day is not so far when all novel imaginations will be outdated.

Regards

by: maren sanneh

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 22:16:13 +0000

hi john, i’ve met up with your book simplicity today when i was looking for something to read that would help my work to progress. your book got my attention because of the title (as well as it was reduced to 50%

by: Ken Girard

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 23:03:32 +0000

How to reduce the number of buttons: Replace FF, play, reverse, pause, eject and off/on buttons with a rotating knob with positions for each of those replaced functions.
Now you have all the controls in a single simple control knob.

by: andrew

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:46:18 +0000

Hey John, I’m impressed with Jesus’ simplicity when he said “Love your neighbor as yourself- this sums up all of the law and the prophets” (very paraphrased version). If you have ever read any of the traditional Jewish law- it is a case study in complexity. But to sum it all up in one phrase or mantra like that is, in my opinion, a beautiful example of simplicity. This may relate to your law 10- but it seems like simplicity is when you hit at the heart of a matter, and even expose it.

by: Tean

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:21:12 +0000

It’s ironic that you’re you’re making simplicity so complex just by talking about it.

by: maeda

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 15:07:08 +0000

Hi Charlie, The fact is that I do love Scratch and have seen all the evidence of children’s ability to make it do wonderful things. I took the viewpoint from a college art/design educator — which is different, and also different from Scratch’s original intent. Was wearing the wrong hat that day. Thanks for the great link. -John

by: Charlie

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 11:20:31 +0000

I attended your talk yesterday at the Scratch conference. I respect you for speaking your mind about your concern that Scratch is not “simple” enough. However, I am an elementary teacher, and if every single child in a third grade classroom can use the tool, and be energized and engaged, then it’s simple enough.

You may enjoy this: (dedicated to the Scratch team) http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/c3morse/225033

by: Nick

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 02:36:17 +0000

Your DVD remote can be simplified to 2 buttons, but no fewer. As there may well be a DVD present in the machine when you start you will need an EJECT button. Pressing this will slide-open the disc tray, or half-spit the disc out if it uses a slot loading mechanism. This disc can be removed and the desired one put in its place; pushing it into the slot until the mechanism “accepts it”, or nudging the tray so it closes. The DVD does not start to play at this point and if the remote is not quickly used the machine resumes its hibernation state (where it powers down all, but the parts needed to detect the remote’s use - this obviates the need for an ON / OFF button). Note: that the symbol for the EJECT button is rotated ninety degrees anti-clockwise, so that it appears to be a solid triangle pointing to the left followed by a vertical bar. A large visual gap ensures that this symbol is graphically isolated from the second button, which is a solid triangle pointing to the right - i.e. a PLAY button.
Amazingly, you can do everything you want to with just EJECT and PLAY if you allow their behavior to be context-dependent.
So, let’s assume we didn’t push the disc tray closed, if we press EJECT it can’t open the disc tray, so it is reasonable to have this case mean REMOTE-CLOSURE and it we press PLAY it may as well attempt to play what is in its tray, so doing this will also close the disc tray. However, if there is no DVD in there it should put a message on the television, and a “NO DISC” message in its display panel, if it has one (it may be so simple as to not have one…), yet if there is a DVD it will circumvent any “menu” encoded onto the disc and start playback.
Now assume that you get a phone call. If you press PLAY whilst it is playing it will PAUSE (if you are away a long time it should fade the display to prevent it from damage), on your return you may press PLAY to immediately resume from where you left it, but as you may have forgotten where you were, or stopped it mid-dialog, it would be nice to go back to the beginning of the scene. This is where a reverse picture-search button would come in handy, it doesn’t matter all that much if we rewind too far, so a forward picture-search button can be eliminated on the grounds of simplicity.
However, you don’t need a reverse picture-search button if you can only use the EJECT button to stop and eject when the DVD is already paused (or ceased playback due to it coming to the end). Therefore, when you return from your phone call you resume playback by pressing PLAY and then hold EJECT, which in this context will perform a single-speed reverse picture-search for as long as it is held down and resume playback on its release.
If you tire of the DVD before you reach the end then you will need to pause it by pressing PLAY and stop and eject it by pressing EJECT, remove the DVD from the tray, replace it with another and push PLAY again to play that instead. When you are finally finished, you may have opened the tray with EJECT to remove the DVD you can either push EJECT again to close it (or manually nudge it closed) and after an interval the machine will auto power-off - i.e. “sleep”.
This complex operational semantics is the cost you have to pay for extreme, nay, ultimate simplicity. It is in accordance with Law 5: DIFFERENCES, where you make your product complicated under the skin and encode sensible choices for the user into the behavior of the system. Ordinarily, you can push a separate REVERSE PICTURE-SEARCH button at any point, like when the machine is OFF, even though that yields no behavior.
Note: this is merely intended as a thought experiment in UI-design, I think it would be quite likely that normal users would struggle to learn these “contexts” and get irritated at the machine ejecting a DVD that they intended to reverse picture-search through; as it would lead to them losing their ‘place’ and there would be no way to scan forward to get to it. Feedback of on-screen displays to show what behavior you had initiated would be enough to warn you of an eject, which could be escaped by simply not acting on the signal until a countdown had elapsed. The user who had meant to picture-search would see this and have time to react and release the EJECT button that they were holding down.
Apologies for the long post, but simplicity is complicated.

by: Mathew

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 18:37:40 +0000

My mom had one rule for ‘dressing up’ to go out. Just when she was about to leave for a dance or a party she would look in the mirror and take one thing off. A brooch, a necklace, a hat, a scarf. This way, she felt she wouldn’t be ‘overdoing her outfit. She always looked lovely.