The Power of Simple

November 22, 2004 | 13 Comments

If there is one thing that’s bothered my professionally it’s over-engineering. I’ve worked with too many products, too many processes and to many designs that are simply too damn much.

Today Mike pointed out Adam Bosworth’s ISCOC04 speech which he talks about, among other things, one of my favorite acronyms—KISS.

He defines KISS as “Keep It Simple, Sloppy” and goes into some detail as to how it all relates to software design. It’s a terrific read.

Sriram Krishnan’s follow up (also pointed out my Mike) The Tyranny of The Geeks puts all of this into a perspective that is a little more along the lines of Web design.

As well, I think some of the same principles could be applied to many disciplines. I’m a firm believer that the more simple and, more importantly, the more flexible you can be in most of what you do, the better off you’ll be.

Filed under: News

Comments

1. Keith said:

Looks like this is a common theme today. Gerry McGovern published something similar this weekend.

Posted on November 22, 2004 09:56 AM | #

2. Dave P said:

Keith: Although I’m with you and Mike on KISS (I thought it was Keep It Simple, Stupid?), I can’t bring myself to accept Sriram’s views at all.

Humans don’t think in two cases? Really? Ever heard of a thing called grammar? Can’t figure out why not to use tables? Have you tried?

Sorry, but while keeping things simple is good, that doesn’t mean that everybody should be able to do everything without any effort. (make sense?)

Simplicity is found in Case Sensitive and well formed XML, not in malformed HTML. Simplicity is scalable, not just forgiving of errors.

Keeping things simple doesn’t automagically mean they’ll be easy to use. A web app for an insurance industry might be designed to be simple, but it won’t be easy to use if you don’t understand the industry.

I’m with you, but there’s a fine line. Microsoft’s products highlight what happens when you over-promote simplicity.

Posted on November 22, 2004 10:01 AM | #

3. Justin Perkins said:

In my coursework we all said Keep It Short, Stupid. Our teachers didn’t want to call anyone stupid, so they tried to brainwash us with Keep It Short & Simple…it didn’t work.

> Microsoft’s products highlight what happens when you over-promote simplicity

Sure, while trying to cram as many “features” as you possibly can into a single product.

Posted on November 22, 2004 10:19 AM | #

4. Dave P said:

To clarify my point though Justin, Windows isn’t really any more or less capable than OSX, but MS wanted it to work for everybody, all the time. Apple, in the name of being simple sacrificed hardware selection. Two different ways of interperting “simple”. Take the resulting OS’es (and their impact on the world) as you will.

It’s the same attitude of wanting HTML to work for everyone, all the time. (Of course I’m oversimplfying this argument, but you get my jist.) There’s simplfying in terms of building extra complexity into the browser (which is an oxymoron if there ever was one), or by simply choking on the code. Two differing schools of thought I suppose.

Posted on November 22, 2004 10:32 AM | #

5. jimmyd said:

If Sriram’s article really says “the average joe/jane doesn’t care about what’s under the hood, just as long as it looks good and works”, then mission accomplished.

Otherwise, I thought it was a lackluster article, particularly the views expressed about CSS. “No one really explains why it’s bad to use a table tag…” There’s only about a million online resources that explain what the “problem” is with using tables for layout control.

I agree with Dave P’s comment above…simple is fine, but it’s not (and cannot be) everything. If building the web were as easy as blinking your eyes, we’d all probably be doing something else.

An attitude that is shared in the art world that applies to technology (and as noted by Brian Eno): that once something is widely accessible to the masses and is as simplified as possible, it is no longer the thing to be doing.

Posted on November 22, 2004 01:31 PM | #

6. Joshua Porter said:

Reminds me of the writing quip: “I would have made it shorter, but I didn’t have the time”.

Posted on November 22, 2004 05:00 PM | #

7. Philipp Keller said:

I like this answer to his post. I am on the “Semantic Web” side and think that if the web is going a step further, then, the things get a little more complicated.

Posted on November 23, 2004 07:19 AM | #

8. Mike said:

As a great philosopher once said:

The more simple the project, the more difficult it will become.

I can’t remember who said it, but I remember that every time I do something I consider a “project”.

Posted on November 23, 2004 08:33 AM | #

9. jimmyd said:

That’s pretty good…arriving at simple is difficult. Arriving at difficult is simple.

/*yinyang*/

Posted on November 23, 2004 09:06 AM | #

10. Nano said:

“The more simple the project, the more difficult it will become.”

I don´t think so - it´s a question of organisation ;-)

Posted on November 25, 2004 06:10 AM | #

11. jimmyd said:

Good example of simple design that took approx 25000 person-hours to complete:

Ideo Defibrillator

Can’t remember where I read the specifics of this project, but the high number of hours for a start to finish caught my attention for something that looks so simple.

Posted on November 30, 2004 06:21 AM | #