 We are an IT services organization, we develop software for enterprises and also for consumers. And we believe that we have to deliver meaningful solutions to our customers in order to create and societies to flourish at the end of it. So that's the company that I work with and in the desired space within the user experience practice it might be believed that we have to teach computers more about humans. I think there has been a time when humans have learned about technology, learned about computers and learned about how to use mobile phones which never existed 20 years back and then I think you've done enough amount of learning already and it's a time when computers have to learn about us and that's what we're trying to do. So today's topic that I'm going to be talking about for next 20-25 odd minutes is around simplicity. Now you would be wondering as to what is this word, simplicity. Has anybody heard this word before? It doesn't exist in Oxford dictionary by the way. So there are a few books, I know people are raising hands. There are a few books which are written around simplicity. So I'm going to take a design angle to simplicity and talk about as to how we understand how you bring simplicity in the design solutions that we create for our customers and they talk it divided into three parts. We'll probably start with talking about what simplicity is really all about and why it cannot exist without really thinking about complexity. And then how do you do as designers sitting here how do you really work with complexity and simplicity at the same time to create solutions that are meaningful and experiential and simple at the same time. So those are the three things that I'm going to be talking about. So I'll be like a little sort of a taxing moving towards the laptop and if you have a clicker, that'll be great. You need a USB, skin to wear. Skin to wear. Let's see why the time it comes up, technology at the end of it. So I thought that every design if you go back in the literature of design you don't find documentation 50, 60 years back and so on and so forth because design never exists as a dump beyond that. So we said okay fine let's talk about what are the other design disciplines that existed at that time and can we learn something from them. So if you really talk about some of the design disciplines which existed more than 300, 400 years ago we were talking about architecture, innocent design and communication design. So what is it that we can learn from there? Can't see part of it. So if you look at beyond, you can't actually. So the way design actually started I'm talking about the pre sort of ornamental layer when things were made to look beautiful. They were very, very ornamental. Everything was sort of possessed, created for the beauty that it has and so on and so forth. And then during 1900s we sort of experienced something called modernism and there were designers, there were thinkers who started working with things like how can we sort of follow the form, following the function, pure as the international style. Can we design products and buildings that are not very, very specific to a region or a culture they actually go across boundaries. Something that can be experienced in the U.S. can also be equally experienced in India without having people to sort of learn, unlearn what they know already about the product and so on and so forth. Like today if you experience iPhone it works equally well in India as well as in abroad. Because it's truly an international product, truly an international style. People were following minimalism, absence of decoration and all that and that is the time when designers were saying, hey you know what, less is more. So you have to work with less and achieve more. But then there was completely different thought process came into picture. There was completely different school of thought and people said that you know what, less is actually more. You need to do more. So you would see lot of fusion of forms, mixing of classical and modern forms and so on and so forth. So you could see buildings, you could see designs. Those were equally ornamental and equally functional at the same time. Being usable. And now we live in an era which is called new model wherein we believe that there's not a steel, there's not a form, there's not a styling that is again very, very international but we are creating intelligent buildings. We are also looking at as to how do we revive older styles and so on and so forth. So what you see is that it's also cycle. It's also different school of thoughts. Something, you can't say that you know less is more or less is more at the same time because it's going to repeat again and you will experience the same ornamentalism, simplicity, something which is very, very international. Keep coming back and keep going back where it came from. So I don't know how many people recognize this picture here. There's a great German architect and a designer called Taitan. Ludwig Wenderhoff Mies, popularly known as Mies. And Mies is this building called Farnsworth House in the U.S. as first of his own work in the U.S. and this work became such a classical thing in terms of thinking about minimalism. So if you look at this building, it's pure, white, it's forced concrete, it's done on pillars and columns and pillars and it uses glass. This whole thinking about making buildings looks very, very minimalistic. It was something which was new in its own sense by that time. This was the guy who sort of said, you know, let's push ornamentalism back, let's sort of eliminate complexity out of the products that we create and let's create something which is very, very functional, simple and straightforward like this building. But then somebody actually challenged him and that guy was Robert Wintoury and who actually coined this word called less is more. And this is a building that you see in Wuhan, which is in Princeton University, very close to New Jersey, New York area. And you see this building uses elements of ornamentalism, elements of beauty, elements of form, elements of function and so on and so forth. Because this guy was completely against Mies saying that, you know, less is actually more. He said that if you don't do more, you will actually add a lot of moreism to the life of people and that's the reason why you've got to do more. You've got to do more with what you have. And at the same time, there's another thinker who was set up taking emerging and I'm sure that many of you would have heard of him, would have appreciated his work, would have read about him and that guy was Dieter Rams. Who came up with this term called do less but do it for better? And how many of you know that, you know, are you aware of who Dieter Rams is? Everybody's aware of it obviously. So Dieter Rams was the head of the design for Braun and as part of his 40 years of career at Braun, he created a range of products which was so minimalistic, so straightforward, you know, form follows function or function follows function. He never believed in those things and he said that all you've got to do is that you've got to design for people and you have to make things extremely simple. So one of his quotes which I really loved is simplicity is about, you know, hopelessly subtle and many of its defining characteristics are implicit that it hides in simplicity itself. Very, very deep comment, very, very something that if you go deep inside it, you understand as to what he really meant at that time. One of his products, something that I really admire, is actually a blender and you can see the simplicity of it. It doesn't even have any sort of instructions, not even instructions around, you know, the dial of the product. You can see two forms fusing inside each other, you know, one laying on top of the other. There's a sense of balance here and I don't know whether how many of you can notice because of display quality, but there's only a red dot there and that says all. Simplicity is also about subtracting what is obvious and adding to meaningful to back to it. For example, these are two products from the same brand from the same company and you see something that is on the left side which was designed by the Diterons. Can you guess it well? The new one was designed in 2009, the right one, that you see the blue one, was designed in 2009. The one that you see on the left hand side was designed in 1969. So that's when he designed it. But there was a survey done sometime back and people showed these two pictures and asked consumers as to which one would you buy, everybody said the left one. Look at the guy brought in, the designer brought in to his design which obviously as a brand, you know, this whole cycle of making things simpler and making things complex at the same time will probably happen at all times. You can't really avoid yourself going through it. The left hand side which is a pocket radio first invented by a brand designed by Diterons was created again, sometimes in mid-70s and Jonathan Ives used it to create the first generation of iPod because he obviously believes in its work. You would see the same set of thinking also going back into communication design. So it's not limited to buildings, it's not limited to products, it's equally applicable when you design communication for this. So you would see Starbucks logo and you would see that from where Starbucks started in late 1990s and all that and where it is now and the logo is becoming more and more minimalistic. In fact, to an extent that they have eliminated Starbucks as a name from the logo itself which is a big step for a consumer's company. And today, you know, gurus are predicting that tomorrow you may see just mummages crowned with a, you know, green circle behind it and nothing else and people will still recognize that Starbucks is a brand. Simplicity is also about standing for cool values. How many of you know what this is? Beyond this an eye, beyond this a peeler. Okay, yes. So it's a peeler from a company called Oxo. How many of you know Oxo? No? Some? Yes, many. So Oxo is a company. They founded out last year, Sam Febber and Sam Febber believes in standing for the cool values of the product. So Oxo creates a variety of products for kitchenware. So women working in kitchen or anybody who's working in kitchen would use a variety of tools to work. And he said that while you're working in kitchen you're self a little messy, your hands could be wet or could be messed up with other things and you need solid grip on the products that you use in kitchen. You need to design kitchenwares very, very differently. So Oxo is a company that took that as a good value and designed everything that they designed keeping the grip on the handles or on those kitchenwares products very, very differently. So all Oxo products are not known for anything but the grip that they have. Just want to add on that. So they also, I think they are friendly for people who have dyslexia. Absolutely. So Sam Febber's wife, she was actually had a problem in her hand. She was not able to use some of these products and that's where he got inspired. So love makes people travel long distances and that's where Oxo is today. You know, it's not my talk. Just like the gentleman, if anybody wants to add something please go ahead and add. So I think we understood simplicity. We understood as to how it has sort of grown and evolved over a period of time. I think it's also a matter of time complexity to understand, we should give it our thought. Because if complexity does not understand you'll probably never be able to understand what simplicity is really about. I believe that you can learn about life through various ways. Sometimes you can learn a lot of books, a lot of journals about, you know what the meaning of life is all about. But sometimes a quote can do a better just as understanding life. So this is something from Oscar White who I really admire. I think it's a stage when unnecessary things are only necessity. As human beings, we keep desiring and as designers, we keep designing and we keep producing stuff that we don't need but we still go and buy it whether it is iPhone 6 or 6 Plus. Things that seems complicated can be very, very simple and things that looks very simple can actually be very, very complicated. For example, if you look at any typical hand watch like a manual watch, you would sort of pull it up, open it up and you would see the cogs and the gears and the wheels and the springs. All of it is so complex. The structure itself is so complex the mechanism is very, very complex. But then what it really does that whole complexity, what it does it just allows those two hands to move accurately and that's the only job. But if you look at those two hands would tell us a very, very important information that runs our life that it's 10-10 and I have to do something at this time. So, if you look at the complex, stuff can drive very, very simple things, can drive as life as complex as ours. For example, I think Ganesh already spoke about Google. Why Google's search experience, which means spitting a few keywords, firing a search getting results, that sounds so easy. But is Google simple? I don't think so. The kind of work that has gone behind making that search experience possible in terms of the algorithms that are working behind scenes, the kind of scientists and data scientists that are working behind scenes to make that experience possible for you I think that level of job is very, very complex. However, we don't recognize that we don't realize it. For us it's just firing a simple search. And as human beings, I think we all love complexities. I'm sure that people sitting in room here would like to listen to philosophy, would also like to listen to poetry, and they also like relationships. Any of it is simple? No way, right? Sorry? But the last one you agree. I know. Last one I think everybody would agree here. Yeah. But I believe that philosophy is equally complex and arbitrary, but relationships are super complex. But we love them. So the three principles to it. One is content versus control. And if you look at all the games that we design, delivered, we say that content has to be very, very complex. If you design games to be simple, there are no takers of them. Nobody would buy games that are simple to execute, command and simple to play. The content has to be very, very complex. But it does not mean that the game controls the jockies and the gaming consoles and all the things that you will design around it in terms of giving ability to people to play those games. You have to design them to also be complex. No, you don't have to. And similarly, I don't know how many of you are bike riders. What's the fun in riding a bike on a straight road with no traffic? Nothing. Right? Speed can give you thrill, but it can also give you kill. It's just the right. Right? It's just the right. It's just the right. So why do you think that the tracks that you enjoy seeing people driving Formula 1s and everything else are designed to be fairly complex and not straight? Because you enjoy curving. You enjoy maneuvering your bikes and that's the fun in it. That's the fun in it. Alrighty. Now, simplicity you cannot achieve, honestly, without adding complexity in your life. It's just not possible. So imagine somebody said you know what, we have lots of currency in our pockets. Wallets are filled with currency notes and everything else. Let's define that concept. Let's introduce credit cards. Right? So credit card will allow you to sort of carry the same or maybe more amount of cash or buying power just by carrying the card and that's about it. Right? So we thought the simple concept is simple, but really it wasn't. We're trying to replace people with plastic. But then what happened? We had multiple cards. We have multiple banks that we're dealing with. We have surcharges. We have loyalty points to manage. We have payment cycles. We are constantly forgetting. We have cost centers to deal with. We have frauds we've theft and we have overspending to deal with as well. Right? So while the concept of changing paper to plastic sounded so simple, but then it resulted into a lot more complexity as we never imagined. Was it designed with the thought of simplicity? I mean all of these are benefiting some of the groups. See an intent that would have started from an economic need. Right? So today we introduced Google as coming with payment systems and so on and so forth. Now that Google is trying to simplify your life although they're selling it like that to you that your life will be simplified but they're saying that every transaction that you'll make I'll take 3% of it in my pocket. But obviously we buy simplicity and not Google's promises. Complexity also required because the point that you were just touching upon businesses want to make more safe in the end of it. Right? So they want to sell these cars this car has about 32 controls on the steering wheels out of which probably I'll probably use only 5 and so on and so forth and equally well for washing machines like these ones. But then the idea is that people believe that if there is a product that has more features or less number of features it's less capable. Less features means less capability in that product. And people don't want to compromise on capability of a product. At the same time people always want to be the control of what they use. So they don't want things to become automated while they can while technology can allow things to become automated. We as users, we as consumers don't want it to happen automatically. What we want is that I should be in the control of those controls which I can handle the product with. So businesses you start as a way to make more sales. So it's simplicity and complexity that needs to co-exist. We need some way to sort of deal with it. We just can't design products without thinking of complexity and simplicity at the same time. That many ways to achieve simplicity and this is my own version, my own sort of way of thinking like a structure and you should just look at it and forget about it. Don't try and use it. It's not going to be useful to you. If you look at you have complexity and simplicity on one side and utility and function in the light of a product on the other side. This is where probably you will start where in your thinking of complexity that's complex and you are also thinking about utility and features that it allows you to give. But if you look at the second quadrant which is simplicity and utility and function you will get usable products in differentiation. And if you look at if you have a very, very complex product like an SAP or Oracle CRM and what not and if you say that let's just forcefully make it delightful by adding some gamification features to it. That's actually fooling yourself because that's not going to drive any sort of a consumer behavioral change if the product value is not going to increase. So this is not going to help you. So I think the designers as part managers as people who are building products where you need to really focus is where you can deal with delight and simplicity at the same time and honestly that's not going to come easy. So there are possible ways in which you can achieve making products making services much more simpler while dealing with complexity at the same time but as like many other human created laws these are also breakable you can mend them you can use them, you can forget about them as you work on this meeting or as you work on this talk. One is move it far so why people think that you know iPhone is a slightly more simpler product to deal with as opposed to Android or any other operating system is because what they have carefully done is that they have moved the complex part of it into a software like an iTunes which allows them to do like little more complex jobs managing, moving backup and what not but all of it you can't do on iPhone so what you do is that you don't deal with complexity it's like you know you have a problem with traffic you build a flyover you're not really solving the problem you're just letting people, letting the traffic from one side go to the other side and that's about it second is you have to eliminate you have to eliminate but you have to eliminate thoughtfully the more you eliminate the more product value that you will reduce and at some point in time you have to decide whether people will still buy that product or not so you don't have to downgrade you don't have to make it more but you have to think about how do you still be able to eliminate to make it simple don't give people too many choices and that's the challenge how do you know the whole concept of paradox of choices how do you give less number of choices to people to make much simpler make things much more visual what's wrong with this information totally clutter right you remove the clutter you get something like this and confusing and instead of bringing some more organization you get something like this so what you do you have data you convert it first into information and that tells you inside and if you know that if you're running a school that's probably wisdom for you because that's going to make you a lot of money making information more visual so instead of giving people as to you know what sort of coffee it is you know how much fruit it has how much milk it has how much cream it has you can actually convert it into a simpler much more visual format and that you would see that you know people are able to compare and compare it very well design for speed anything that is fast or anything even that looks fast like you know there was a time when people were experimenting with forms that looked fast right the fridge used to come in an aerodynamic shape and so was your irons and so was your sewing machine and so and so forth and the whole purpose was you know define a styling deception which means that the thing doesn't work so fast therefore it looks fast instant gratification don't have time but this is my favorite guy Brett Victor I would encourage people to go and search for Brett Victor on Vimeo look at living by principles and you'll find a lot of interesting stuff said by this guy who works for Google give people scarce you know make things scarce for people you know again something which is connected to the build-up of choices why Dribble is so popular among designers community because it doesn't allow you to upload stuff in bulk it says that you have only 4 slots once you finish all 4 slots once you get X number of flights on those slots for you that you can use to upload one more piece of your work and that looks perfect to people because it is scared it allows people to work inside constraints and it's not free flow they recognize patterns but the question was is it simple in terms of simplicity for me in this work too would be whatever I want to do how many pages probably I want to upload it's simple I just put it yeah so so running out of time but immediately after that we'll have a description make things much more human have conversations not with very systematic conversations like you know this setup which gives you very very it's sort of technical way of having conversations with you you can have very very human ways of having conversations and we said that make it visual so this is a site in US if monk and it allows you to search for flight information very very differently instead of a list it shows you a very visual format of price versus the timings at which the flight is applying in it makes it very easy for you to make those choices hip monk always think of context when you're designing for users always think of what they're trying to achieve in this case there's a shipment and you're trying to track a shipment somebody's designed lousy grid to show shipment information however had you sort of thought about it how can I make it much more visual and experiential probably would have come up with a design like this which shows you different shipments using a set of colors using a set of graphics and using a set of visual cues to inform you guide you educate you as to where your shipment is lying and what could be a possible next best action that you can perform to manage your shipment so I love this design we were thought about it genius designer and this is last I think adding humor to conversation makes things much more lighter and simpler that's what my personal belief is and if you see the signage is on the left one says no parking while this will be towed away at the expense the other one says cuffs I pick up only all the others will be crushed and melted right so you like it you enjoy it and this one is directly from southest.com I'm going to read it for people who can't obviously read it in the event of sudden loss of cabin pressure oxygen mask will descend from ceiling, stop screaming grab the mask and put it over your face if you have a child traveling with you secure mask before assisting with this if you're traveling with two small children decide now which one you love more ladies and gentlemen if you wish to smoke the smoking section on this airplane is on the wings and if you can like them you can smoke them and there may be 50 ways to leave your lover relationships but there are only four ways out of this aircraft right so what happens is that now this was a very sort of a boring piece of information something which could be sometimes technical as well you can try and tell this to people in four simple manner or you can try and teach this to people but people don't remember these things but if you add little bit of humor I think that conversation becomes much more simple right so that's all that I had I wish I could spend more time but you know that's the only legend that we have 30 minutes any other discussions I'm available on the floor please come over and we'll have it thank you very much