Tag: simplicity
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The Three Design Principles and The Simplicity Myth
We are confusing usability with simplicity and capability with features. This is faulty logic, says usability and ‘cognitive design’ expert Don Norman, and our interpretation of our needs is mistaken: the goal is not simplicity; it is appropriateness, usability and enjoyability. Suggesting that what consumers really want are frustration-free, capable devices that tame our complexity-rich…
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Letting Go of Goals
Designed to help you find focus and tackle “the problems we face as we try to live and create in a world of overwhelming distractions” is focus : a simplicity manifesto in the age of distraction. This is Leo Babauta‘s latest book and he is producing it iteratively online. One issue I have is that…
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Price Reductions and Cognitive Fluency
If the mental calculation required to determine the discount given on a product is difficult then we often misjudge the magnitude of the reduction. This “ease-of-computation” effect for judging price reductions is obviously related to other recent studies looking at ‘cognitive fluency‘ and is another way to manipulate and be manipulated through product pricing. Consumers’…
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The Influence of Cognitive Fluency
We’ve seen before how the cognitive fluency (how ‘easy’ it is to think of or comprehend something) of restaurant menus, stock ticker codes and physical exercises influence how complex, risky and even beautiful we perceive them to be. A recent PsyBlog article provides a summary of a number of cognitive fluency studies and here are…
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Typography, Pronunciation and Cognitive Fluency
How easy something is to read and understand significantly affects how we perceive it in terms of its risk, beauty, difficulty, credibility and truthfulness. Factors that influence this cognitive fluency include typography (typeface choice, contrast, etc.), ease of pronunciation, familiarity and how much the words rhyme. The cover story of this month’s The Psychologist is…
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Simplicity in Japan
Simplicity, says Kenya Hara, creative director of Muji, is a “central aesthetic principle” in Japan and is what differentiates the visual appeal of the East from that of the West. In an interview for The New York Times looking at the unique design of Japanese bentō, Hara provides a comparison of the East and West’s…
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Laziness, Impatience, Hubris
The three virtues of a programmer, according to Larry Wall (in Programming Perl): Laziness The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don’t have to answer so many questions about…