Simplicity
Posted on December 17, 2016We love simplicity. As consumers, we love technologies that are simple—the telephone, the television; We love choices and processes that are simple—research says that users will likely to drop the process after three clicks; Meanwhile, we are spoiled by media by their pandering to simplification by reducing everything to sound bites without any complex issues.
We are attached with different kinds of things. Some of them support our lives, and some are probably just taking place of both us and the space we are in. It is the occupations of us and our space in both ways. We are not told what to do by these things, instead we decide what to do by ourselves. It’s the reason why we feel more focused, free and peaceful when we own less things.
The idea of simplicity will have powerful benefits on environmental degradation in our scarce nature, and making our lives more sustainable. According to the Global trends 2030, “demand for food is expected to rise at least 35 percent by 2030 while demand for water is expected to rise by 40 percent. Nearly half of the world’s population will live in areas experiencing severe water stress.”[1]
“You know you’ve achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away. ”
– de Saint-Exupery.
Simplicity is a process, not the goal. The process starts from discovering the core of a problem, and then remaining authentic to that essence in your solution. In order to find the core of a problem, designers need to think in the complexity—complex systems in different scales and wicked problems that are existing in them. And then provide simplicity for people to build on. The reduction through the process is removing the non-essential. It’s not less for the sake of less, but less for the sake of remaining authentic. No matter what we deliver to the world, either a product or a service, it should be stackable, extendable, cheap, functional and interconnectable with simple design. There is no absolute simplicity, only simpler than another in a certain context and measurement.
Simplicity doesn’t pursue efficient, but effective. Businesses like centralization because conceptually it seems simpler and therefore more efficient: one uniform company structure and one culture. Everything has to have solutions, a game has to have a winner. A story has to have an ending. We design complex solutions only to make them look superior. While in complex systems, efficiency is enormously vulnerable to all the unforeseen and unknown forces. It is inevitably unsustainable. That’s why nature is effective, not efficient.
There is a shift in business to implement the idea of simplicity on both the resources being used and the thing being created by using these resources. As is defined in Natural Capitalism, “Increasing resource productivity means obtaining the same amount of utility or work from a product or process while using less material and energy.”[2] As the thing being created, Sean Kibbe said in his article The Implications of “More”: “Whether it’s new product features or burger selections on a menu, businesses around the world routinely take on unnecessary expenses to develop products they don’t need. When Proctor & Gamble cut the line down to 15 options, brand sales increased by 10 percent.”[3] Business can actually save money from the simplicity if they produce only what is needed from people, and consider the full costs of implementing new choices and the expected returns the new option will bring.
Some artists are bringing this idea one step forward by putting it in the invisible factors and different contexts, like the connections between people in a community. Instead of using inconceivable resources to build a new space(like Hudson Yard), Theater Gates, a potter in Chicago, transformed abandoned buildings to create community hubs that connect and inspire those who still live there (and draw in those who don’t) on Chicago’s South Side.
Theater Gates, transformed abandoned building to community hubs
However simplicity this idea is never successfully implemented in media, advertising or technology. Mainly because of the challenges from competitors and market share, the relatively low costs of innovations, adding to spoiled consumers, each company is bustling about more and more outstanding and unique ideas of advertisements, excessive campaigns and stereotyped marketing strategies to win customers, even just in a short period of time. While high technologies always mean complex algorithm, big data, artificial intelligence with complex layers of information and so on.
Simplicity faces more and more challenges in the current complex and entangled world. Muji and Apple’s simplicity idea is being challenged because of that Muji’s products are not affordable by most of the people in any country except Japan, and the learning curve of Apple products becomes much longer than before.
Different countries have their own definitions of simplicity, though they all share the same idea of “less of things”. Simplicity this word is from western countries; minimalist is the idea from post–World War II Western art and now becomes a lifestyle; Jugaad innovation from India proposes looking for alternatives; Shibui and Dan Sha Ri (Detach from material possessions) from Japan; Pu (means unworked wood; inherent quality) from Daoism of China has been existing for more than 1500 years; Even a new career called clutter consultant can be found in Japan, and muji’s designer Kashiwa Sato is its advocator. What we can learn from those solutions and existing ideologies are:
- keep it simple.
- Look for alternatives. How to require less resources to achieve the same goal, and be more sustainable?
- How to even do more with less?
- Think and act flexibly.
- Reduce our sense of power and control. Fragmentation and alienation often come from over-control.
- Include the margins of society.
- Look right under our noses and learn from nature.
- Reduces our confidence in the predictability of the future.
[1] Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds, office of the director of national intelligence, https://www.dni.gov/index.php/about/organization/global-trends-2030
[2] Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, L. Hunter lovins, Natural Capitalism, P12
[3] Sean Kibbe, The Implications of “More” , http://www.seankibbe.com/
Haijing Zhang