The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)

"Several years before I even met John, he was a hero of mine that I followed on Twitter. He is a true polymath, and was a polymath well before it became a popular notion. He emanated from the MIT Media Lab with a fascinating mixture of computer science and art. His artwork is still shown worldwide, and very much so. That is a rare multidisciplinary pairing! He has worked at MIT Media Lab, as president of RISD Rhode Island School of Design , and spanned many disparate roles, from becoming the first design partner in Silicon Valley to joining Automattic , and more recently the CTO of Everbridge , a crisis management company. That’s definitely wrestling with world events, like Covid and other crises around the planet, to which he’s leveraging design and computational technologies as problem-solving resources for good. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter I came across Laws of Simplicity , one of his many seminal works, several years back, at a time when I was really trying to get to grips with these multidisciplinary yearnings that I was feeling, wrestling with how design could fit into my professional puzzle. To find this book, one that really embraced the intersections between design and the power of computation, and which described vividly how these elements can fit into systems, be it enterprises or institutions, simply bowled me over. John offered a hierarchy through these ‘laws of simplicity’ that helped me understand the world through a different filter. I really appreciated it at a time when I needed the book at a professional crossroads, and I appreciate it even more now. Highly recommended for any aspiring or established designer. Absolutely. All professions are currently grappling with what exactly a digital product is, or should be, right? A dematerialised product which is nonetheless often different from a service. Even in services, however, whether it is legal services or financial services, the digital challenges are many. Perhaps the tendency for all of us in businesses is to think about challenges in terms of managing scope-creep and complexity. For that, it is immensely helpful to have some basic rules beyond the typical UX/ UI sort of patterns that we are familiar with in the trade. This derivative set of principles helps bring us as designers back once again to that human place that we desperately need."