Life Before Death (Designed) Wireframe PDF →

LAWS OF SIMPLICITY
Laws 7 & 8: Emotion and Trust

Emotions are a constant within the design sphere. It’s about breaking people’s attachments to things, so they can form new ones, or reinforcing the good feelings that are a part of certain brands. From a rational perspective, then, simplicity makes both good economic sense as well as emotional well-being. Something clean, or free of clutter, allows the mind or the eye to have room to breathe, to not be so assaulted by the blinking, large, colorful and complex designs which are out there. Simple objects are easier and less expensive to produce, and those savings can be translated directly to the consumer with desirable low prices, and simple products— as evidenced by furniture retailer Ikea. Emotion is found in every facet of our lives: in our faces, our intonation, our writing, our gestures. It can be the tilt of a smile or the simple use of an emoticon in a text. Emotional intelligence is now considered an important facet of leaders today, and the expression of emotion is no longer considered a weakness but a desirable human trait to which everyone can immediately relate. If the best art “makes your head spin with questions,” then it is clearly the same with design.

Trust is something people want to have. Trust in products, trust in design, and people. If design is a system, then the more a system knows about you, the less you have to think. Conversely, the more you know about the system, the greater control you can exact. Privacy is sacrificed for extra convenience when following the lead of a master. Alternatively, the sort of undo action which we all strive (impossibly) to have in our lives, allows us to become the masters of ourselves by gently learning to trust our own knowledge of a system. The placement of faith goes both ways.

LAWS OF SIMPLICITY
Laws 5 & 6: Differences and Context

Simplicity and complexity need each other. Without one, we cannot see the other— in design we need a little of both so the audience can recognize what they see because of what they don’t.  Take, for example, the Japanese tea traditions that Maeda explains when he visits his old friend Tanaka; the tea cups are black, garish, and complex, and Maeda is unsure of how to even drink from it. But because of its asymmetry and unneeded complexity, it “made everything already impossibly simple, become even simpler.” To translate this into data-form is to say that people need information or data to be simple in order to understand its complexity. As designers, this is our ultimate and ongoing task, to visually explain complex ideas in an informative and simple manner.

What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral. Striving for excellence usually entails the sacrifice of everything in the background for the sake of attending to the all-important foreground. So, essentially, much like the simplicity/complexity dynamic, when there is less, we appreciate everything much more. There is an important trade-off between being completely lost in the unknown and completely found in the familiar. “Too familiar can have the positive aspect of making complete sense, which to some can seem boring, too unknown can have the negative connotations of danger, which to some can seem a thrill.” Thus on a design scale, we must be able to find a balance between how directed we wish to feel, and how directionless we can afford to be. Complexity implies the feeling of being lost; simplicity implies the feeling of being found. Everyone knows you must be lost in order to then be found, and in this same way, we must have complexity in order to have simplicity— and we as designers, it is our job to navigate the in-between.

"An important aspect of design is the degree to which the object involves you in its own completion."

Brian Eno

Information Architecture on site experience.

Categorization Methods for organizing the information collected on Bucket Lists.

PDF Presentation →

List: Myhra

My current bucketlist is:

• To swim with dolphins
• Climb/ rock climb up a huge mountain peak
• Learn to speak urdu
• Backpack around a few countries with friends
• Spend a few weeks at sea
• Learn to snowboard
• See the northern lights
• See all the wonders of the world
• Buy back my old house in the UK and restore it to how it was
• Be able to cook as good as my mum
• Learn how to raise one eyebrow
• Be able to wiggle my ears
• Not sound absolutely awful when i sing
• Do a back flip
• Be able to bust out break dance freezes mid way in a conversation
• Go on a proper roadtrip
• Be able to drive a stick shift
• Try parkour
• climb to the other side of the monkey bars without falling
• Go to a third world country and be able to aid the children there
• Enjoy going to work everyday
• Go camping
• Travel to all the continents
• Buy my dad a really nice car
• Whistle a song
• dance ballroom
• be an extra in a show
• go on a treasure hunt
• gained exposure in the real world to all forms of design
• Become a art director
• Learn to surf
• Be financially comfortable
• Live in a foreign country

List: Jennifer

Currently my Bucket List is:

• Run a marathon
• White water raft down a river
• Learn to snowboard
• Learn a foreign language (fluently)
• Own a really nice car
• Fall in love
• Experience total happiness
• Climb a mountain
• Have a job that I can’t wait to get up in the morning & go to
• Stay in touch with my friends from college
• Get married
• Have a family
• Leave the world better than it was when I entered it
• Have my name be known for something worthwhile
• Travel to Canada, Peru/Macchu Pichu, Egypt, London, Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Antarctica, Great Wall of China, France, Greece, Boston, Portland, Seattle
• Watch all the Harry Potter movies and Lord of the Rings movies consecutively in one day
• Take my mom somewhere she would never take herself— overseas
• Own a cat/dog
• Grow my own garden
• Go camping
• Learn to fly fish
• Go to a winery and drink wine
• Live in a foreign country
• Book signing/Diana Gabaldon
• Be an actress in a film
• Go to an actual opera
• Learn how to surf
• Experience Mardi Gras in New Orleans
• Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany
• Graduate degree in Art history
• See the Mona Lisa
• Grow my hair out extremely long
• Go to a Mascarade party
• Fly in a hot air balloon
• Build my dream house
• Take equestrian lessons
• Etiquette classes
• See the Northern Lights
• Go on an archeological dig

List: Carina

Currently my Bucket List is as follows:

• Write a book
• Publish a collection of poems
• Get an English degree
• Become absolutely fluent in Swedish and French
• Ski or snowboard
• Visit France (and the Louvre!)
• Go to Australia
• Dance on the roof of a NY skyscraper
• Feel utter contentment
• Scuba dive
• Work for an amazing design firm
• Work at a publishing firm
• Learn to waltz/ballroom dance
• Tan on Grecian beaches
• Skydive
• Go to an opera in Italy or Germany
• Lay in a field of sunflowers
• Grow my own garden
• Drive a car in England
• Hug a Panda
• Go on a cruise
• Learn to sail
• Go on a road trip
• Go camping
• Go back to Italy and visit a vineyard
• Meet Neil Gaiman
• Go to an observatory to see the rest of the Solar System
• Have my own gallery exhibition
• Visit the Grand Canyon
• Tour of Highgate Cemetery in London
• Ride in a hot air balloon
• Get quoted
• See the Northern Lights