On Simplicity
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Three quick thoughts on simplicity.
- I've been reflecting on something my friend Jeff De Cagna quotes often. "What is the simplest thing that could possibly work." I dug up this old post from Jeff's blog, Radical Simplicity. It's worth reading again.
- Social web design expert, Joshua Porter, posted this week on Gall's Law - “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. The inverse proposition also appears to be true: A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be made to work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.”
- I recently did an interview with Andy Sernovitz that will be a feature article in the January issue of Associations Now. I asked him why some member-get-a-member campaigns work while others fail. His answer came back to simplicity, "The more forced and difficult they are, the less likely they are to work...That’s one of the biggest rules of word of mouth marketing—you’ve got to make it easy."
3 comments:
Miss Lynn
said...
I completely agree! Simplicity is always the best policy.
When I think of simplicity I immediately start thinking of theatre. (bare with me a second here) One of my favorite directors is Mary Zimmerman and I love her work because it is simple. She can take a stand up fan and a large white sheet and turn it into Mt. Olympus, seriously, it's powerful. Why does it work? Because it lets the user(audience member) be creative and engages them to be a part of the process.
I think that's one reason I'm starting to like Blogger as a platform more and more. It's simple, easy to use and I don't have a headache trying to customize it for myself and my purposes. I know people love and rave about Wordpress, but I can at least use flash widgets in blogger. Sure the themes may not be a refined, but it does the job and with a little creativity and little simplicity you can turn it into something that represents you. Your blog is a great example of that.
December 4, 2008 12:38 PM
When I think of simplicity I immediately start thinking of theatre. (bare with me a second here) One of my favorite directors is Mary Zimmerman and I love her work because it is simple. She can take a stand up fan and a large white sheet and turn it into Mt. Olympus, seriously, it's powerful. Why does it work? Because it lets the user(audience member) be creative and engages them to be a part of the process.
I think that's one reason I'm starting to like Blogger as a platform more and more. It's simple, easy to use and I don't have a headache trying to customize it for myself and my purposes. I know people love and rave about Wordpress, but I can at least use flash widgets in blogger. Sure the themes may not be a refined, but it does the job and with a little creativity and little simplicity you can turn it into something that represents you. Your blog is a great example of that.
Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE
said...
Hey Lindy,
I've been thinking about this myself a lot recently, not least of which because my current job gives the daily opportunity to suffer from overly complex systems. And it reminds me of the famous Blaise Pascal quote: "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter."
Simplicity takes time and thought and planning and preparation, but when it's achieved, it's a beautiful thing.
Lack of time, thought, planning and preparation? Usually results in an overly-complex mess.
December 4, 2008 2:15 PM
I've been thinking about this myself a lot recently, not least of which because my current job gives the daily opportunity to suffer from overly complex systems. And it reminds me of the famous Blaise Pascal quote: "The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter."
Simplicity takes time and thought and planning and preparation, but when it's achieved, it's a beautiful thing.
Lack of time, thought, planning and preparation? Usually results in an overly-complex mess.
Peggy Hoffman
said...
So let's create a simplicity barometer we can apply to our programs, our initiatives, our associations! I'd like to see us start with one for governance and particularly for governance/structure at the chapter level. Who's game? Hmmm
December 4, 2008 4:32 PM
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