“John Maeda is a professor at MIT’s Media Lab, and a nationally recognized computer scientist. His early computer art experiments, for example, were a precursor to the interactive graphics common on websites today.” [...]
“Maeda is now a “repentant” technowhiz and a leading apostle of simplicity. In 2004 he founded the MIT Simplicity Consortium at the Media Lab, which works with major corporations to design technologies for simplicity-driven products. He’s just published a book called “The Laws of Simplicity,” a guide to simplicity in the digital age. He ruminates about simplicity on his Simplicity blog, and next week he’ll discuss strategies for making products simpler at a panel discussion in Boston on the future of design and technology sponsored by Core77, a New York-based design networking organization that publishes an influential design blog.”
“There is huge pressure to make products smarter and more technologically imbued, which ends up almost backfiring,” says Allan Chochinov, a designer and partner of Core77. “End users feel they can’t use them. They make us feel dumb or incompetent.”