summarizes the information
space in which users must travel
in order to complete their tasks.
Like any design process, the
information-architecture work is
iterative. We’ll draw a representation and ask users and domain
experts for feedback. Comments
like “no, these two things aren’t
related,” “you forgot X,” and “the
relationship should be stronger
over here” are all clues that we’re
making progress toward a sensible organization. It’s hard work,
and it often requires immersion
in a complex domain in order
to understand the details and
create structure. The individual
features from the original design
will be reordered, regrouped,
and restructured to form a more
usable, comprehensible product.
That’s conservation of complexity in action—not just reducing the number of features,
but also reducing unnecessary
complexity. The complexity has
to go somewhere: The designers
shoulder the burden of understanding and untangling it, making sense of it, and constructing
a system that is aligned with
users’ understanding of the
domain. As Leonardo da Vinci
wrote, “Simplicity is the ultimate
sophistication.”
convoluted and intricate problems in order to make them
understandable and manageable.
Architect Christopher Alexander
influenced a swath of designers
and computer scientists with
his work on design patterns and
incremental improvement. He
points out that “there is a deep
and important underlying structural correspondence between
the pattern of a problem and the
process of designing a physical
form which answers that problem [ 4].” He goes on to argue that
the “number of factors which
must fall simultaneously into
place are enormous [ 4],” but that
documenting the pattern of a
problem is inextricably linked to
developing a design solution.
The inherent complexity has
to go somewhere, and it’s the
burden of designers to take
on the complexity on behalf
of users. Making sense of the
intricate interrelationships
between features and reorganizing them so they’re rational
is a critical task.
[ 4] Christopher
Alexander, Notes on
the Synthesis of Form,
Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University
Press, 1964
Complexity in the World
Imagine that there’s a certain
amount of complexity inherent
in any task. Worse, the complexity is increasing as we use
a bit of technology to bootstrap
ourselves to a higher tier. Once a
technology provides something
that users didn’t have before, we
begin to extend that functionality as a means of continual
improvement. First, we were
satisfied to even have automobiles at all. Then we could worry
about fuel economy, safety, and
comfort. Eventually, we can
tackle social and environmental
concerns. As this inherent complexity increases, where does
it reside? In the worst case, the
burden will all be on the user,
as the consumer of the product.
This is the classic case of feature
creep. There are at least two
other more appropriate places
where complexity can reside.
First, it’s appropriate for a
product to take on much of the
burden on the user’s behalf,
especially as the product
becomes more mature. Initially,
we had to learn to pump our
brakes if we needed to stop our
car on a rain-slicked or snow-covered street. Now antilock
brakes contain that complexity
by improving on our abilities and
allowing us to focus on other
parts of the driving task. It’s not
that the need (short stopping distances on slippery surfaces) went
away, or the complexity was
removed (the physics of stopping
a vehicle without locking up the
wheels). The complexity was
conserved—the burden shifted
from the driver to the car.
Second, consider the process
of design. A lazy approach is
simple and straightforward
from the designer’s perspective:
Design each feature individually,
jam all the features in a single
box, and call it a product. But
now every user has to contend
with the difficulty of using the
thing. At best, it will be cryptic,
confusing, and inconsistent, if
not frustrating and unsuccessful
as well.
The process of decomposing,
understanding and reorganizing the system is a formidable
weapon in our battle against
complexity—it lets us distill
ABOUT ThE AUThOr
David Bishop is the director
of the Human Sciences
Group at MAYA Design, Inc.
He has been an interaction
designer at MAYA since
1996 and is particularly interested in the
positive effects that come from having the
fortitude to resist feature creep and the
insistence to focus on features that users
truly need. His first love is hands-on information architecture and user interface
design work for MAYA’s repertoire of clients;
he has been extending that work to include
training in human-centered design processes and measurement of organizations’
usability maturity level. Previously, David
was a designer of high-end project-man-agement software at Primavera Systems,
Inc. He holds a B.S. in applied mathematics
and computer science from Carnegie
Mellon University.
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