Mei + Kevin | Time, Motion, and Communication

Second Law - Organize post

The second Law is Organize which means Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. Which I think it has some soft of connection between this law and the first law, Reduce. Before we could organize, we should reduce the unimportant stuff. Then we can develop meaningful categories out of the complexity at hand. Maeda offers a process to facilitate “seeing the forest from the trees” – SLIP: Sort, Label, Integrate, Prioritize.

SLIP: Sort
Use post its. Place them on a flat surface so as to find easily the appropriate association, i.e. the grouping in categories. It is very useful when we able to see what we have instead of guessing or predicting. It is very useful if we designing website as well.

SLIP: Label
Each group deserves a short name. If this can’t be found then try with an arbitrary code, such as colors, numbers, letters. Since we have so many things in life, it will be helpful to have something easy to remember. It will help whenever we try to look for the thing that we need.

SLIP: Integrate
If possible integrate similar groups into one. The fewer groups the better. It is part of the law 1 – reduce. The less groups are better than too many groups, if not, what is the point of group then.

SLIP: Prioritize
Collect the highest priority items into a single set on which focus the most attention. According to Pareto 20-80 Principle, there are always a few things that have a priority on the whole. It can be apply to website as well where we are able to the priority buttons on the top or in a brighter color. But at the same time, each user has its own preference on what is their priority. That is where thing get more complicated but problem can be solved by focusing the type of audience or get set up the features where the user able to adjust the priority.

Maeda goes onto give examples of simple organizational methods (the Tab key, tabular data) as well as an examination of “the gestalt of the iPod” (regarding the design of the click wheel). He finishes with advice to “squint to open your eyes”, claiming that all good designers squint when they look at something to find balance and see the forest from the trees – to see more by seeing less. This is such a good advice.

-mei-