Simplicity

John Maeda, President, Rhode Island School of Design, former Co-Director, MIT Media Lab, engaged guests in a discussion about how the design and context of all our everyday experiences can manifest in a feeling of either simplicity or complexity. Inspired by the Glass House architecture and landscape, participants discussed business models, the Web, design process, science and art as they explored their personal and collective comfort zones of both simplicity and complexity. Everyone agreed that simplicity is a complex topic! The conversation was free flowing, wide ranging, and inspirational. Maeda’s publication, “The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life” offered a framework as guests shared the following recommendations and reflections:

* Don’t make long lists.

* Listen to suggestions and then throw them out.

* The best suggestions will keep coming up again and again.

* Read it. Understand it. Now throw it away.

* Great wine is simple. You don’t have to strain the brain to enjoy it.

* Never publish a syllabus. Read/discuss only the articles and books that are important THAT DAY.

* People are gifts. People are novels.

* DELETE is the most important key.

* Knowledge is the beginning of practice. Doing is the completion of knowing.

* Completion is overrated.

* The best universities are nomadic and life-long.

* Think about the future, but don’t write it down.