Accessibility and the Laws of Simplicity
On the home page of the Standard Ease website is written the title “We are easy“. I am thinking of changing it to “We are simple” having this weekend read John Maeda’s “The Laws of Simplicity“. Using the phrase “We are simple” as a marketing slogan may have a slightly negative connotation. But why is Maeda’s book a must read for the digital media industry? Because it challenges the “logic of demand” – why pay more and get less? The answer is that you’re not getting less at all - you just don’t see the bigger picture.
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful”
Maeda introduces the book with the startling fact that manufacturing giant Philips has a Simplicity Advisory Board. This exists not only to deal with the simplicity of a product (e.g. an electric razor) but the necessary processes that surround it. The simplest way to achieve simplicity, Maeda goes on to say, is through “thoughtful reduction” – that is to remove functionality. However one must understand context and that simplicity and complexity need each other.
Maeda gives the example of Google where the little search form on the home page gives no obvious indication of the complexity of the function itself. The complexity of Google is in its periphery and Maeda goes on to say,
“What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral”
Imagine a situation where a marketing “digital agency” was to attempt to “design” Google. I have no doubt that they would arrive at a visual layer that was “designed” to be “eye candy”. The majority of effort and budget may be sunk in treating “design” as a visual exercise when in fact it is something much bigger and less obvious. Web accessibility (the Philips electric razor) and best-practice (the necessary processes surrounding it) are in this periphery of web design as Maeda might recognise.
This is where web accessibility suffers in the realm of digital agencies and clients. Frequently neither understands nor wishes to strive for it. The majority of marketing work originates and resonates with a narrow band whose narrowness is defined an inability to overcome the logic of demand and to look beyond the obvious. That narrow band is likely to have a heritage of television and print where considerations of networks, accidental applications and appropriate design (in the Coco Chanel sense – “to pare down”) are counter culture and where value is not as easily understood as the cost of air-time and paper.
How can anyone counter this? The field web accessibility is awash with emotion and morality. Nothing will tire a marketing executive more than liberal values. I have a much simpler way. For example, a best-practice project that I worked on last year saw ticket sales rise 28% in the first quarter after launch. I also saw one client drop their best-practice solution in favour of the “non-indexable format” (Flash) and their traffic dropped by about 70%. There, I have subtracted the obvious and added the meaningful – to executives that is.
I like to think that Maeda’s attitude of “less is more” relates fundamentally to the Web Standards movement which encompasses web accessibility. As a web standards developer, if you are asked “Yes, but can you ‘design’?” tell them that it rather depends on whether they understand the “Laws of Simplicity”. Commerce can and does benefit from “the Laws of Simplicity”: Google, Apple and 37 Signals as Maeda points out.
Best-practice and accessibility must be initiated by commissioners who are able to break out of their long standing habits of dealing with the obvious. Nicholas Negroponte once advised Maeda to:
“Become a light bulb instead of a laser beam.”
Good advice don’t you think? This is a great book because it will make things, well, very simple. Simply read it.
“The Laws of Simplicity ” - John Maeda, MIT Press, 2006. ISBN 0-262-13472-1
Tags: Accessibility, accidental applications, digital agency, digital media industry, John Maeda, MIT, MIT Press, Nicholas Negroponte, simplicity, Simplicity Advisory Board, Web accessibility, web standards developer, Web Standards movement
