The Laws of Simplicity

MIT Media Lab professor John Maeda, also a graphic designer, sets out ten laws, plus three keys, for weighing simplicity against complexity across design, technology and business. He takes up the simplicity paradox: people want products that are easy to use yet can do every complex thing they might ask of them. The first law, Reduce, warns against adding features just because it is possible, and the second calls for organizing the features that remain into a sensible hierarchy. Law 9 admits that certain things will never become simple, and the tenth, which Maeda calls The One, holds that simplicity means subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful. Maeda asks how improvement can mean something other than more.

Ryan Len, founder and design director of The Workbench, named it among the many books that shaped how he lives and sees things.