The Simple Way of Design

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UI
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The Balance Between Simplicity and Complexity 🔗︎

Every designer should have a bible in their heart that describes the charm of simplicity and defines the meaning of simple versus crude.

The Relationship Between Function and Design 🔗︎

From a functional perspective, allowing for complexity is necessary - no one likes crude features that can’t meet their needs. But do complex functions necessarily mean that the design cannot be simple? Not at all. As this book describes, there are four strategies:

  • Hide
  • Remove
  • Transfer
  • Reorganize

Through these strategies, we can definitely design simple and easy-to-use user interfaces.

Considerations for User Interface Design 🔗︎

No one likes complex and difficult-to-use interfaces. But it must be pointed out that it’s often not easy to tell from a design draft whether it is simple and understandable enough. It often requires the designer to describe a user story to deeply understand whether the design is simple or not within a specific scenario.

A complete design must take into account various complex conditions, so some design drafts will look very complicated, with a lot of writing and drawing. As I said: “The complexity of design (considering various logics for different scenarios) is for the simplicity of use.”

About User Groups 🔗︎

The Highest Realm of a Simple Interface 🔗︎

The highest realm of a simple interface is that it is suitable for everyone, everyone finds it easy to use, and there are no problems with it at all. If a user interface is smooth for both expert users and mainstream users, then it is an extremely outstanding design.

The Misconception of Expert Users 🔗︎

Regarding expert users, if you read this book in its entirety, later chapters will explain why you should be cautious about their needs:

  1. Designing for expert users often makes designers feel that what they are doing is cool, and the media (who are usually experts themselves) also like such things.
  2. But expert users are a minority overall.
  3. Many products that designers get excited about and that the media also think are great, ultimately fail because they ignore the majority of mainstream users.
  4. If a product believes its greatest value lies with expert users, then it is basically difficult to succeed.