User Interfaces : Simplicity vs Functionnality

Well, let's start with my first post on our blog.

One of the interesting aspects of tools, including (especially including) applications and web applications (that macromedia called during the glorious Flash years "Rich Internet Applications") is usability, not in terms of accessibility, respect of web standards, etc... , nor in the radical terms of Jakob Nielsen , but in the terms of simplicity of use for the end user.

Being simple is not simple : it needs to know what is useful and what is not. What is needed, and what is just functions you implement because challengers have it. Being simple is a everyday question about relevance. For that, you can check The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda.

Simplicity seems to be one of the main paradigm of Web 2.0 : get simple, get useful. Do one thing, but get it done RIGHT. Just think of GoogleMaps. Just check Remember The Milk (i love that name!) application. Just check Fluxiom (video here), an assets management software, by Wollzelle, the guys of Script.aculo.us, the designers of the astounishing new Gucci website which reinvent the paradigm of web shop, and even found a way to have a Luxury e-commerce website that is Luxury. Just check the 37Signals products, and their blog.

The guys at 37Signals are amazing ones. They got a full and deep understanding of simplicity as beauty, from programming to software products, from entrepreneurship to productivity.

They are the creators of Ruby on Rails. Check that keynote about beauty in programming.

They just published a book, Getting Real. The kind of book that make people write things like : "Every once in a while, a book comes out of left field that changes just about everything. This is one of those books. Ignore it at your peril." or , by the New York Times online : “If you want to have a first hand look at how this industry's working methods are changing, this is the book to read.”

What they show, is that simplicity must be everywhere : the engineering (programming), the product, the distribution, the marketing, and the pricing must be simple. And that's not simple. It demands to understand the consumer and the people you work with. It demands to care about details. It demands to keep a distance from the competitors, from the market, and to say : "I'm making that kind of product, and that kind of product in its market is done that way". It's saying : "Let's Reinvent". Let's find new ways, new paradigms, to make things. Let's have a philosophy. Simply.