I had a chance to listen to Josh Holme’s talk The Lost Art of Simplicity at the KalamazooX Conference, which I covered here. It’s a great talk, and if you get a chance to listen to it, I encourage you to do so. Josh recently posted his slides from the talk, which are worth a peek.
I think all of us – designers, programmers, marketers, businesspeople, consumers… get caught up in complexity. In making our products, our businesses, our websites, our lives complex. Often I think we believe that people won’t pay for simple. We need to add lots of features, lots of value-adds, lots of freebees.
If we take a few minutes to look at some of the most successful products, we see that they are inherently simple. The Apple iPod. The Sony Walkman. In their design. In their features. In how easy they are to use.
Simple is not easy. It can be very difficult to make these as simple as possible. But simple is a delight to use, too look at, to be apart of.
How can you be simple?
(photo by Sarah Jane)
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