In an earlier post I wrote about invisible design and it might have seemed that I am a big proponent of invisible design. It is, however, important to distinguish between invisible design as a design approach where designery attributes are not being articulated and design where the sole purpose is to design experiences with no user interface at all. (Visible) user interfaces may actually play an important role in creating seemingly undesigned and invisible experiences by making them frustration- and stressless; invisible can be frustrating.
The technology that powers the promised invisible interaction is not really “just not there”. To understand how something works it is sometimes good to reveal something about how it works, instead of hiding it away. Especially since every now and then, how well designed a system may be, ‘errors’ can occur. These errors may be technical errors, but also…
Wired explaining that the movement towards invisible design1 should be nothing new to desingers:
> In the early 1980s, Dieter Rams laid out his now canonical 10 Principles of Good Design. Rams taught us that great design is as little design as possible. It doesn’t draw attention to itself; it merely allows users to accomplish their tasks with the maximal amount of efficiency and pleasure. At its best, it is invisible.
btw: the link to a less secondary article was added by me, it is Ram's 10th principle
Wired is stretching Dieter Rams famous “less is more” design attitude to the logical max: nothing left (the extreme of less) is invisible. Hence follows: good design = invisible design.
Rams is popular among designers in de digital sphere. [Oliver Reichenstein, famous for his design agency iA and …
I don't know that much about economics, but I do have (a bit of) common sense. In a Harvard Business School article, Clayton Christensen writes about "How Will You Measure Your Life?" It ends with a bit of religion inspired thinking (to which I, even as an atheist, can somewhat relate to (stay true to your principles)), but let's not focus on that. The start of the story is on how to think of investments, and how different thinking about investing is between start-ups (with few assets) and established companies. He takes Blockbuster as an example (an old-style video-rental store in the USA):
> Blockbuster's mistake? To follow a principle that is taught in every fundamental course in finance and economics. That is, in evaluating alternative investments, we should ignore sunk and fixed costs, and instead base decision…
Dit artikel van murblog van Maarten Brouwers (murb) is in licentie gegeven volgens een Creative Commons Naamsvermelding 3.0 Nederland licentie .