Really like the simplicity of the video. Glad to see these new displays benefitting NYC. Most major cities of the world have had them for 15 years. Worth the wait I’m sure.
Elegant information design nicely complements the general improvements to NYC subway such as the new map improvements.
That’s my kind of remote too. 1977 technology. Hat tip to @bud_caddell
Simplicity is not necessarily obtained through a reduction of information: it can be provided through order and aesthetics, as in the beautiful stained glass of a Gothic church. This argument frames exactly the need for reductionism in experience design — the entire segment illuminates the value of order and aesthetics.
Alessandro Valli on simplicity:
Italian artist and designer Bruno Munari used to say that progress is when things are made simpler. Less is more. Simplicity leads to an easier and more sustainable relationship with media and technology.
In current interfaces, contents are often immersed in a bunch of audiovisual objects (e.g. widgets, notification sounds) associated with functions and information; this draws people attention away from the content itself, and makes aesthetics and functional integration with the overall environment difficult, if not impossible. Moreover, this is similar to contemporary culture, where things are always immersed in many opinions and comments: it is necessary to unleash the power of things, the power of contents, by putting these back in the foreground, following a Thomistic approach. The higher the level of abstraction of the interface, the higher the cognitive effort required for mere interaction.
The first direction in which simplification takes place is the removal of any kind of mediation between the person and the machine, to achieve the greatest immediacy. This happens at different levels: interaction schemes, representation of content, information organization, disappearing of devices into interaction-related objects (devices not perceived as technology-related devices). As technology becomes invisible at all such levels, from a perceptual and cognitive point of view, interaction becomes completely natural and spontaneous. It is a kind of magic.
One of the characteristics of a successful natural interface is thus the reduction of cognitive load on people interacting with it. Simplicity is not necessarily obtained through a reduction of information: it can be provided through order and aesthetics, as in the beautiful stained glasses of a Gothic church.
USDA Farm Service Agency Hay Net website developed this website for producers to list information concerning the need for hay or the availability of hay.
It’s that simple, need hay or have hay. From an inspired JBove
Mint is an extensible, self-hosted web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, popular pages and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint’s flexible dashboard. But today this lovely PHP program wiped out the database for the last 12 months. Now we are figuring out how to magically restore it all.
Oscar-winning cinematographer Sven Nykvist, who often worked with director Ingmar Bergman, has died aged 83. Nykvist won Academy Awards for Bergman films Cries and Whispers in 1973 and Fanny and Alexander in 1982. He also worked on several films with Woody Allen and was the cinematographer on 1993’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? Other film work included The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Chaplin and Sleepless in Seattle.
