Simplicity is not a simple concept | Hacker News Reader

Simplicity is not a simple concept

raganwald.posterous.com

71 pointsfogus28 comments

Simplicity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplicity) is the result of understanding. As our understanding grows, our designs become simpler. It seems that a lot of smart people are aware of this and find it significant.

Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life chasing a simple equation, "perhaps no more than one inch long," that would explain all physical phenomena. One of his famous quotes is, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

Rick Hickey recently gave a talk entitled "Simple Made Easy" (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3135185) where he contrasts simple and easy.

In Steve Jobs' memorial, he was quoted as saying, "Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPUsuY8JZJI).

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Einstein

http://www.smileecards.com/card/einstein-on-simplicity

That was not Einstein but a drastic paraphrase: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein#1930s

I agree with you. That's what I think about when I think about simplicity. It's really about having a deep enough understanding of what you are doing so that you can eliminate all the unnecessary bits. Sometimes the initial version of code can be like a Rube Goldberg machine, and it gets this way because we don't fully understand the problem or solution yet. The code works, but it's complicated. You can make it simpler only by coming to a better understanding.

Sometimes the initial version of code can be like a Rube Goldberg machine

I like that -- "Rube Goldberg" would be a good moniker for initial releases :)

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." --Leonardo Da Vinci

"Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep." -- Jony Ive

Intressting topic.

Here are some intressting things to look at all about Simplicity and maybe programming.

Stuart Halloway: "Simplicity Ain't Easy" (https://blip.tv/clojure/stuart-halloway-simplicity-ain-t-eas...)

Again from Stuard Halloway but thistime more about programming less about what Simplicity is.

Radical Simplicity (http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/radical-simplicity)

Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey (http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

I'm with this right up to the part where it shows an iPhone and pronounces it magical. Anyone who's ever seen a technophobic grandparent use a smartphone knows this is ridiculous. The iPhone (and smartphones in general) sucks rocks as a "simple telephone".

The "small number of affordances" point in the post seems equally silly: I count 20 (!) icons on that screen and five hardware buttons, only three of which have anything at all to do with making a phone call.

Now, it's a great device. And it's far more than a phone. And maybe there's a so-subtle-it-isn't-even-made-in-the-post point to be made about the "scalability" of simplicity. But as it stands I don't follow this at all.

I don not think it's that simple. My dad have never been able to figure out any phone before he got the iphone. Now the calls for support have stopped completely.

But of course it's not the iphone only as much as it is the touchscreen. That is the game changer, Apple was just the best company to take advantage of that.

I haven't had the same experience with my mom. She tried for a month to get along with her iPhone, until she gave up.

The touchscreen is great because it can expose only the controls relevant for the action you want to perform. However, the UI's organization is not flat anymore. Instead it's a tree. And older people that have problems coping with modern devices usually rote learn the path they have to take for the common use-cases ... and in the case of iPhones or Android phones that complexity has grown exponentially.

The touchscreen is also quite annoying for me at times. On my older Nokia I could dial a number or answer a phone call or hang-up without looking at the screen. Now I have to look at that screen every time, otherwise I need extra help, like voice recognition, which doesn't work so well for me as these things are optimized for people who's native language is English.

OP's point is that there are multiple definitions of simple. The rotary has one use case, the iPhone many.

A rotary phone is a simple telephone, so it's an example of Economical Design. The iPhone is not a "simple telephone", so it's an example of Elegant Design.

(^-- this is paraphrasing the article, not my opinions)

My main takeaway is to stop using the word "simplicity."

I use it a lot and will cut back on it now because, as the author makes clear, people have pretty different notions of what simplicity means.

This is especially important on cross-functional team.

Anyone who touches product design would benefit from reading this article and being much more careful in their use of the term "simple."

I allready posted it in this thread but I just cant help myself.

Stuart Halloway: "Simplicity Ain't Easy" (https://blip.tv/clojure/stuart-halloway-simplicity-ain-t-eas...)

This Talk is all about what simplicity acctually means. He compares what people think it means and he looks at the words origin to find out what it acctully means. Then he shows a quick example.

Two of my favorite quotes of all time:

     “Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.” – Alan Perlis

    “Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.” – Charles Mingus

I like how confusing it can be to read about simple. Or rather, how complex a subject it is to discuss :) By definition simple is made of a single element (from latin simplex). There are quotes coming to my mind, like 'less is more', 'perfection is when there is noting left to be removed'. It's a lot about mental model: to be able to manage a project one has to be able to keep it all in one's head, thus simplifying is mastering chaos It often is multi-layer though. It's a loss less mental model compression An example that I have in mind is monotheism evolving from other older models, it's simple in a sense, and also more portable across different cultures, but it's deep (no proselytism intended). PS: cannot find where 'simplex' comes from :(

Are phones the new cars when it comes to analogies?

Also, I take exception to the idea that old rotary phones were in any way shape form or fashion simpler than a more modern landline phone. In particular, a modern phone is able to take a lot of what you as a person used to have to remember about its state, and instead echo it back to you. (Specifically, what were the last X buttons I pressed? How did you do this in the rotary days, you hung up and started over.)

Rotary phones were simple in that their implementation was fairly clear and self-contained. Though I'll grant you, that didn't often make them simpler to use.

Also "there's a way to do that, even if you have to hunt for it and it's weird" isn't necessarily simpler than "don't do that."

1. Metaphors are to mechanisms as transvestites are to my mother

2. You simply have a different idea of “simple” than other people, which is why I said that the rotary phone AND the modern handset AND the iPhone are all simple, just simple in different ways.

And that’s the premise of the OP: There is more than one kind of simple, therefore yes, a handset is simpler than a rotary phone but also yes, a rotary phone is simpler than a handset.

I still don't buy that a rotary is really any simpler than any other phone. It is quaint by today's standards, sure, but far from simple. Skipping the difficulties you would have in creating it and the system that had to be built to support it, can you imagine being able to talk to someone in another city for the very first time? That is a concept that goes so far beyond simple that it is magical.

So, I think I can accept "simple is what you are comfortable with, even if you are ignorant of many details." How do you keep stuff cold in your house? Simple, put it in the fridge. How does the fridge work? Well...

Another way is to redefine the problem so its solution can have a simple mental model.

This is similar to the subset approach of the first case (Economical Design), but it might not be a subset (i.e. it might overlap with other uses), and it might not serve only one user scenario, perhaps not even the most common case. It requires a wider perspective. For this to actually be useful, it needs to interact with other solutions to other problems. That is, it refactors the set of problems, shifting different aspects to different places, in such a way that it changes the information required from the user, to make a simpler mental model possible.

IMHO the key questions are:

  - What information is needed from the user?
  - How can we arrange things to minimize that?

Surprisingly often, it can be reduced to zero - automation.

BTW: The iPhone doesn't have a "small number of affordances". You can touch the display in 1,000's of distinct places, with many simultaneous touches registered distinctly. What the iPhone has is flexibility and power: instead of a specific grammar of interaction, it enables the specification of many arbitrary grammars of interaction. IOW it's programmable.

I think the key thing to remember is that capabilities, ease of use, and simplicity are not the same thing. Heck, we could even separate simplicity of interfaces and simplicity of implementation. For instance, the old phone have a very simple interface. But implementing the circuit switching behind it is no picnic.

From then it is easier to know what you want: capabilities and ease of use are good, at least in the short term. But simplicity (both of interface and implementation) is likely to lead to even more capabilities and ease of use in the long run: a simple system is easier to modify or expand, and a simple interface is potentially easier to use once you get past the initial learning curve.

A final advantage of simplicity is that we can give it a more formal definition than ease: it is the part that doesn't depend on us messy humans.

The first version of everything is simple. Then things are piled on. New ideas are experimented with while the old ways are left for legacy's sake. Look at OSX. There are 4 ways to launch an application. The dock, launchpad, Applications, and spotlight.

5 if you count the terminal

Elegance > Shortcuts (obviously)

If it were the first time I saw an iPhone and a multi-use phone, I'll figure out faster how to use the iPhone for sure. Elegance should be the goal to achieve for every developer.

Jack Dorsey made a pretty good statement during his interview on APD. it went the along the context of "trying to take a really complicated idea/process, and making it simple". And that is very hard.

Maybe simplicity is a choice.

Imagine you consult with two colleagues asking for an explanation of a problem.

Colleague 1 begins, "Well, it's complex, ...." Colleague 2 begins, "It's simple, ..."

All else being equal, just based on how they introduced their explanantion, which one seems the more appealing one to listen to?

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