1. Is less really more? Minimalism as a perspective in HCI design
Ian Hosking and P.John Clarkson - = +
Background
Minimalism has grown over the last 100 years in different disciplines (See Figure 1)
This research concerns its specific application in the field of human-computer interaction (Oberndorf, 2009)
In a World of increasing complexity how effective is minimalism as an potential antidote?
Figure 1: Culturomic Trajectories of “minimalism”, “Minimalism”, “less is more” from 1900 to 2000
Google Ngram Viewer. English Corpus from 1900 to Smoothing set to zero. Y-axis is usage frequency (Michel et al., 2011) - +
Less of what?
More of what?
Obendorf (2009) defines different forms of minimalism:
Functional
Structural
Architectural
Compositional
This research will probe their validity and consider conceptual minimalism and the application of CASSM (Blandford, 2008)
In the context of HCI ‘more’ is defined in terms of:
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Satisfaction
Learnability
Based on ISO 9241 and Dix (1993) - = + ? = ?
Example
Research
A mixed methods approach is proposed to determine the presence and efficacy of minimalism in HCI:
A basic culturomic analysis (figure 1)
Analysis of current HCI principles, guidelines and standards
Case studies of designs where minimalism is evident
A grounded approach to understanding HCI professionals use of minimalism
Empirical study of HCI designers tackling a menu design problem comparing 2 different minimalist interventions
Figure 3: Apple TV remote
Figure 2: Sony Google TV remote
These examples highlight Obendorf’s (2009) 4 types of minimalism. The Apple TV product has:
No web browser (‘functional’)
A simple consistent menu system (‘structural’)
Broadcast TV provided by other means (‘architectural’)
Apple TV used with a projector for presentations (‘compositional’)
Bibliography:
Blandford, A. et al., Evaluating system utility and conceptual fit using CASSM. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 66(6), pp.393–409.
Dix, A.J. et al., Human-Computer Interaction, Prentice Hall.
Michel, J.B. et al., Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books. Science, 331(6014), pp.176–182.
Obendorf, H., Minimalism: Designing Simplicity, Springer-Verlag London.
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