When we think of ‘crowdsourcing’ some of us think of leveraging crowds to do work like oDesk or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, sites that help you outsource jobs globally. Another way crowds are leveraged is to allow companies create massive focus groups, garner fresh ideas, and even predict the future. Major brands such as Dell, Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Best Buy leverage collective insights to shape business strategies.
Graphic designer, visual artist and computer scientist John Maeda is the founder of the SIMPLICITY Consortium at the MIT Media Lab where he is a professor of Media Arts and Sciences. His work has been exhibited internationally and in in permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
His book “The Laws of Simplicity” is a great read for anyone, especially if you are Internet professional. The book explores the question of how we can redefine the notion of “improved” so the it doesn’t always mean something more, something added on. Maeda’s first law is REDUCE. It’s not necessarily beneficial to add technology features. “It’s all about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful”.
The principals in Maeda’s book we see permeating Web 2.0 design trends. Peer to peer sites, Ajax applications and Web 2.0 start-ups all seem to be sporting a new look with large simple text, minimal design elements, short registration forms with large input fields and submit buttons.
In design simple is often harder. Everyone is a designer, not just visual artists. You design the folder layout on your computer, how your desk is arranged, your email signature, your look - this is a great book for making simplicity a focal point, reducing the distracting and increasing the meaningful stuff in our lives.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
About this blog
An early pioneer in interactive media, Dean Whitney is a Web 2.0 and Social media technology evangelist. Start-up veteran, President of Garfield Group Interactive a Boston-based digital agency.
There are sites that provide this kind of functionality such The Industry Standard. a predictive marketplace (like the Hollywood Stock Exchange) where members track startups and technologies and place bets on which will succeed. Continue reading »
