The Laws of Simplicity Applied to VR
10. The one
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
As developers embark in VR / AR, they should continue to ask the simple question: why should people care?
In the past decades, we looked down at our phones and watched the mobile app gold rush. As the iOS and Android platforms were introduced, companies of all kinds and sizes rushed to build their “killer apps”. And while many were able to get their piece of the pie, the vast majority quickly became irrelevant, to no-one’s surprise. From pointless gimmicks, to one-time heroes, to no-business-model tools, we saw apps die before we knew there was an app for that. It seemed that, in the urge of being first, companies and developers forgot to ask themselves some basic questions, like who are we designing for, what problems are we solving, and why should anyone care.
Subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful, as Dr. Maeda’s book suggests, is the essence of simplicity. It is also the essence of any successful business. Cutting out the things people don’t care about and focusing on things people can’t live without is much more than a design goal, it’s how most businesses thrive. And as hundreds of new developers embark on their first VR / AR adventure, I truly hope they take this law to heart.
There is obviously no recipe for success, but I believe the types of virtual applications that people will care about are the ones that enable or enhance real-life experiences. Enabling people to properly do things together without being physically close, as one long year of lockdown showed us, is a big deal. Being able to be virtually present, for work or for fun, and perform tasks that are harder to do from afar is a glaring need waiting to be fulfilled. Enhancing people’s current experience in ways that are more economical, practical, or effective, like watching a movie on a theater-size screen or working with multiple monitors, or training with real-life-like instruments, is also another wide-open road to explore.
Then there is the challenge of execution. Execution alone can be the difference between an app becoming “another photo app” or Instagram. The idea of jumping in a virtual brainstorm meeting with your co-workers is great. Unless you have to spend the first thirty minutes trying to get everyone connected, then trying to figure out how to present, to then having to decipher who said what since the sound didn’t match the avatar’s mouth movement. So ask not what can be done in VR, ask what can be done better in VR. And remember that one thing done really well is better than many things done poorly. Subtract the obvious, add the meaningful. Then simplify, simplify, simplify.
The Laws of Simplicity Applied to VR
Introduction: 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.
