The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, LifeDesign, Technology, Business, Life Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

John Maeda (Author), Nick Podehl (Narrator), Brilliance Audio (Publisher)

Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We’re rebelling against technology that’s too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, and software accompanied by 75-megabyte “read me” manuals. The iPod’s clean gadgetry has made simplicity hip. But sometimes we ﬁnd ourselves caught up in the simplicity paradox: we want something that’s simple and easy to use, but also does all the complex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maeda offers ten laws for balancing simplicity and complexity in business, technology, and design - guidelines for needing less and actually getting more. Maeda - a professor in MIT’s Media Lab and a world-renowned graphic designer - explores the question of how we can redeﬁne the notion of “improved” so that it doesn’t always mean something more, something added on. Maeda’s ﬁrst law of simplicity is reduce. It’s not necessarily beneﬁcial to add technology features just because we can. And the features that we do have must be organized (Law 2) in a sensible hierarchy so users aren’t distracted by features and functions they don’t need. But simplicity is not less just for the sake of less. Skip ahead to Law 9: “failure: Some things can never be made simple.” Maeda’s concise guide to simplicity in the digital age shows us how this idea can be a cornerstone of organizations and their products - how it can drive both business and technology. We can learn to simplify without sacriﬁcing comfort and meaning, and we can achieve the balance described in Law 10. This law, which Maeda calls “the one,” tells us: “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”

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Page 1 of 1Start OverPage 1 of 1

Listening Length	2 hours and 44 minutes
Author	John Maeda
Narrator	Nick Podehl
Audible.com Release Date	February 10, 2012
Publisher	Brilliance Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B0077PC45K
Best Sellers Rank	#36,860 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) #14 in Industrial Engineering (Audible Books & Originals) #30 in Industrial Product Design #101 in Industrial & Product Design

Customer reviews

5 star		60%
4 star		16%
3 star		11%
2 star		6%
1 star		6%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Read and think

I book about the author, not about simplicity

Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2014

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This book is about this astonishing author! The author is a fantastic parent whose kid sends him all caps "I LOVE YOU" email, is an incredible teacher who teach the brightest of the world, yet still manage to remains amazingly humble (he says that he has at time learned from his students: can you can possibly believe that such as genius could ever learn anything?). The author does not lose an occasion to mention in passing that he met so-and-so celebrities. He enjoys expensive restaurant and the most expensive toys.
What else do you need to know about the Great Author?
Oh, what was the title of the book again? Oh yes, simplicity. The title of the chapters is just about the only interesting content there is in the book about the subject. All the rest of the books is trite and superficial and unwarranted self-agrandisment by an insecure author. Even his further reading list, shows how superficial the author is.
The only ray of sunshine here is that I was able to return it for a full refund.
Nevertheless, the impostor has succeeded in robbing me of precious time.

43 people found this helpful

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L. Reding

Not worth your time

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2019

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Maeda is in the driver's seat but he has no idea where he's going. Each chapter careens and spirals in ways that had me repeatedly flipping back pages to check the chapter I was reading. There are plenty of 'examples' in the book that haven't aged well in the few years since the books publication or are at best tenuously related to the chapter's topic. Maeda's apparent fascination with finding words in other words--the word implicit is contained in the word simplicity!--and creative cute acronyms is at best distracting and at worse makes me question how the author spent his time preparing to write this book.

4 people found this helpful

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A S.

Did anyone edit or proofread this?

Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2020

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This book occasionally stumbles on actual relevant points that the title suggests. However the author spends most of this book name-dropping, making un-cited broad generalizations on human mentalities and psychology, and undermining himself by using the same examples to support opposite ideas.

This was a mess that was topped with a cherry of the author basically calling out his terrible approach at the very end.

I feel motivated to write my own book on simplicity in UX design because apparently the bar is so incredibly low.

2 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

This book drag me back from being over complicated

Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2019

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I was a person who always want to design something unique and spent lots of time, but the results were not desired. With the recommendation of my professor, I read this book and I was also involved in Community-Built project at the same time. During the process of working in studio and woodshop, I generally realized something. Being simple does not mean I do not need to think, it may mean that when I raise a solution for a question, I should dig deeper to decrease the complexity of this solution. Finally the form of the solution becomes simple, while it still solve that problem perfect. I would say "user friendly" is a kind of being simple. Keeping that "balance" is really important.

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Experienced seminar leader

Fluffy rather than profound

Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2014

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This book was okay as far as it went, which was not very far. The "laws" are adequate and valid - except for law #7, which I found incomprehensible. However, the commentary on the laws was light and superficial rather than deep and provocative. I wish he had discussed when simplicity amounts to a profound achievement and when it is simply simple. I wish he had gone beyond objects to also discuss language and ideas being simple or complex. I wish he had explored when simplicity pleases us and when it becomes rather useless and uninteresting. For example, poetry and advertising succeed most when they are simple on the surface but with many layers of meaning.

10 people found this helpful

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AJK

Save yourself the trouble and skip it

Reviewed in the United States on October 10, 2020

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A complete waste of time. It’s a book that seems to be written to promote Maeda’s framework rather than help the reader. It’s almost slanted towards functioning as an ad campaign for future speaking engagements.

One person found this helpful

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Utkan Uluçay

looks like a checklist...

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2015

Verified Purchase

I agree the core messge : Make it simple!
I remember Einstein as well : not more simpler, meaning do not sacrifice the core.
I remind that it is required a smart effort to make sth simpler, but it is easy to make sth complex.
It is a repetition with nice acronyms for me, not very productive experience of learning.

4 people found this helpful

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Bear B.

Simply not that great

Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2012

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I expected quite a bit, based on the breathless reviews. As some of the other reviewers wrote, however, I found it to be meandering stream-of-consciousness stuff, without much by way of concrete conclusions. I found myself reading carefully to see whether I could extract a deeper underlying point to each of the chapters, then skimming a paragraph at a time, then flipping pages at an increasing rate... and finally setting it down, never to be picked up again. Twain is reputed to have written that he wrote a long book because he hadn't had time to write a short one; this one strikes me as a short book written because the author didn't even take the time to write the long one.

12 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Amazon Customer

Thought provoking for all technologists

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 3, 2013

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As engineers, technologists have a habit of looking through the lense of the "function". Maeda encourages more than a sideways look through the lense of the "form" of an application/device/process. With simple examples and down to earth anecdotes drawn from relevant personal experience, this quick read is thought provoking and backed up by online content for those interested enough to go looking.

dmc63

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2018

Verified Purchase

A simple book with a good message

Can Burak Bizer

Nice to read, conscise

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2009

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A nice to read book from John Maeda - as he mentioned on a short flight. Simplified approach to simplicity is nice and well organized thoughtful approach. Consciseness is a plus.

4 people found this helpful

May

Subtly fascinating!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2014

Verified Purchase

Maeda has intelligently and concisely formalised the rules for visual design, a must-read for designers as a reference for achieving great work or to recap on what you already know :)

David Burdon

A Simple Approach to Simplicity

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 6, 2016

Verified Purchase

A clear and direct framework for simplifying business life.

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The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, LifeDesign, Technology, Business, Life Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

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