Of course simplicity’s great, and John Maeda flies the flag in his book The Laws of Simplicity, and at the MIT Simplicity lab. I think complexity’s getting a rough ride, so here is some of complexity’s side of the story.

Complexity sometimes produces better results

Forgive the woodwork geek example. Normally a dovetail joint is made with angled cuts, with each cut angled perpendicular to one or other side of the wood, which makes it simple to calculate, measure, and cut.

In this joint though, the cuts are angled both across and down at the same time. Much more complicated to do, but the final result looks good and strong. An example of “Complexity is better”.

[Thanks to Kendrak for the Creative Commons image on Flickr]

Simplicity isn’t one thing

What is simplicity? In the last conversation I had with a client about making something simple, by my reckoning it could have meant one of three things: aesthetically simple, technically simple, or simple to produce. And there are others … simple to maintain, simple to use.

We don’t like simplicity as much as we say we do

A while ago Scott Weiss posted his study “New Yorkers Value Mobile Ease Of Use 3 To 2 over Appearance” to the Usablemobile Google group. Apparently they’re crying out for simplicity, but the discussion group members rightly got into a discussion about what people say they want versus what they really want. I forget who, possible Scott again, did a study on the Motorola Razr and found that despite the device’s poor usability, participants reported high levels of usability. Most likely the Halo effect in action because they like its looks.

Marketing departments use feature lists to sell products, and consumers buy them. Since feature-richness and simplicity are usually contesting forces, we’re actually choosing complexity. We think we like simplicity, but in our decision process we can equate the number of features to bang-for-buck.

One man’s simplicity isn’t everyone’s simplicity

My great friend Trish got a new mobile phone the other day. She wrote the numbers from the old phone on a piece of paper and then typed them into the new phone. Simple, and it worked, but not everyone’s idea of simple.

Complexity is a tool

Language is an example where complexity is actually a tool. People are able to measure others by the way they handle language’s complexity.

Complexity is entertaining

What is geekery? I got the word from these geeks at Last.fm. It’s to do with indulging in the technical. Wikipedia suggests perhaps “using multivariate calculus to determine how [to] correctly optimize the dimensions of a pan to bake a cake.” Geekery most probably thrives on complexity.

For the non-geeks. What is it about the garden at the Ryōan-ji Temple in Kyoto? There’s something captivating about the layout of the stones, and I think that’s because the layout is quite complicated. People contemplate those stones for hours, and I doubt they would if the arrangement were simpler.

[Thanks to Oishi Kuranosuke for the Creative commons image on Flickr]