The Laws of Simplicity Applied to VR
Inspired by John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity.
- Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
- Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
- Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
- Learn: Knowledge makes everything simple.
- Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
- Context: What lies on the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
- Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
- Trust: In simplicity we trust.
- Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
- The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
I first read “The Laws of Simplicity” 15 years ago.
I was an art director — for a lack of a better term — designing early versions of online services for big brands. It was a time where few digital services were available and most were hard to use. Interfaces were done by graphic designers trying to learn “interactive” skills, the back-end was usually constrained by old legacy systems, and companies were still figuring out how to organize themselves to take advantage of the new medium. As expected, the user experience of most online services were overly complicated and frustrating. Dr. Maeda’s book came as a breath of fresh air. Not only it put in clear words methods that we’d go through instinctively as designers — it gave me a reason to continue fighting the good fight. Simplicity truly mattered, and now I had the arguments to prove it.
I carried the learnings from the book throughout my career, as I found them equally relevant for designing online services, mobile applications, interactive displays, or chatbots. But it wasn’t until I started to work with VR that I felt the urge to re-read it. The challenge of designing for a multi-display, multi-modal, multi-user, multi-purpose platform felt equally exciting and overwhelming. Virtual spatial interfaces have no physical limits — displays, buttons, menus can technically appear anywhere, close or far away, within or beyond the user’s field of view. Inputs can vary from physical controllers, direct or indirect hand interactions, gestures, gaze, and voice commands. Having multiple users adds to the complexity of coordinating how avatars move, travel, and navigate privately or in a shared virtual space. Top all that with the fact VR can be used for many purposes from entertainment, to work, to fitness, to communication, and you have a recipe for complexity disaster.
“Technology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time we’ve become uncomfortably full.” — John Maeda
After having worked through many of these challenges myself, I decided to write these notes to pay it forward to other designers, developers, and XR enthusiasts. The notes are not a direct application of the book’s laws and methods, but my own observations on the same topics. I focused mostly on VR interfaces and user experience, although some notes expand beyond UI and UX, and are relevant for MR and AR as well. To keep it simple, I chose a single subject, such as virtual window management or virtual presence, to discuss in each law, and while I could have gone much longer on each one of them, I restrained myself to avoid breaking the first law. For those who read it and feel hungry for more, I’d highly encourage reading or re-reading the book and going through a similar exercise, updating the examples described with the virtual challenges of today. These notes are not in any way a substitute for this classic design book I so highly recommend.
Lastly, I wanted to disclose that I don’t consider myself an expert in VR. I’ve always been passionate about designing for emerging technologies, and VR in particular was so exciting I couldn’t resist diving in. I spent three years working with the best VR designers, prototypers, artists, researchers, scientists, engineers, and product managers in the industry — extraordinarily talented people who created what VR is today and are driving what it will become. Many of the insights you read here I learned from sharing headsets with these brilliant minds, and I hope to pass them on to you.
Note to John Maeda.
Dr. Maeda — I hope the ocean of the internet leads this bottle to you. You had a tremendous impact in my career, and for that I’ll be forever grateful. Sorry if I butchered any of the laws in an attempt of keeping things simple. Hope we get to meet and discuss these topics one day — in real life or in the metaverse.
