The Laws of Simplicity (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life) Later prt. Edition

This book is about this astonishing author! The author is a fantastic parent whose kid sends him all caps "I LOVE YOU" email, is an incredible teacher who teach the brightest of the world, yet still manage to remains amazingly humble (he says that he has at time learned from his students: can you can possibly believe that such as genius could ever learn anything?). The author does not lose an occasion to mention in passing that he met so-and-so celebrities. He enjoys expensive restaurant and the most expensive toys.What else do you need to know about the Great Author?Oh, what was the title of the book again? Oh yes, simplicity. The title of the chapters is just about the only interesting content there is in the book about the subject. All the rest of the books is trite and superficial and unwarranted self-agrandisment by an insecure author. Even his further reading list, shows how superficial the author is.The only ray of sunshine here is that I was able to return it for a full refund.Nevertheless, the impostor has succeeded in robbing me of precious time.

Maeda is in the driver's seat but he has no idea where he's going. Each chapter careens and spirals in ways that had me repeatedly flipping back pages to check the chapter I was reading. There are plenty of 'examples' in the book that haven't aged well in the few years since the books publication or are at best tenuously related to the chapter's topic. Maeda's apparent fascination with finding words in other words--the word implicit is contained in the word simplicity!--and creative cute acronyms is at best distracting and at worse makes me question how the author spent his time preparing to write this book.

This book occasionally stumbles on actual relevant points that the title suggests. However the author spends most of this book name-dropping, making un-cited broad generalizations on human mentalities and psychology, and undermining himself by using the same examples to support opposite ideas.This was a mess that was topped with a cherry of the author basically calling out his terrible approach at the very end.I feel motivated to write my own book on simplicity in UX design because apparently the bar is so incredibly low.

I was a person who always want to design something unique and spent lots of time, but the results were not desired. With the recommendation of my professor, I read this book and I was also involved in Community-Built project at the same time. During the process of working in studio and woodshop, I generally realized something. Being simple does not mean I do not need to think, it may mean that when I raise a solution for a question, I should dig deeper to decrease the complexity of this solution. Finally the form of the solution becomes simple, while it still solve that problem perfect. I would say "user friendly" is a kind of being simple. Keeping that "balance" is really important.

This book was okay as far as it went, which was not very far. The "laws" are adequate and valid - except for law #7, which I found incomprehensible. However, the commentary on the laws was light and superficial rather than deep and provocative. I wish he had discussed when simplicity amounts to a profound achievement and when it is simply simple. I wish he had gone beyond objects to also discuss language and ideas being simple or complex. I wish he had explored when simplicity pleases us and when it becomes rather useless and uninteresting. For example, poetry and advertising succeed most when they are simple on the surface but with many layers of meaning.

A complete waste of time. It’s a book that seems to be written to promote Maeda’s framework rather than help the reader. It’s almost slanted towards functioning as an ad campaign for future speaking engagements.

I agree the core messge : Make it simple!I remember Einstein as well : not more simpler, meaning do not sacrifice the core.I remind that it is required a smart effort to make sth simpler, but it is easy to make sth complex.It is a repetition with nice acronyms for me, not very productive experience of learning.

I expected quite a bit, based on the breathless reviews. As some of the other reviewers wrote, however, I found it to be meandering stream-of-consciousness stuff, without much by way of concrete conclusions. I found myself reading carefully to see whether I could extract a deeper underlying point to each of the chapters, then skimming a paragraph at a time, then flipping pages at an increasing rate... and finally setting it down, never to be picked up again. Twain is reputed to have written that he wrote a long book because he hadn't had time to write a short one; this one strikes me as a short book written because the author didn't even take the time to write the long one.

As engineers, technologists have a habit of looking through the lense of the "function". Maeda encourages more than a sideways look through the lense of the "form" of an application/device/process. With simple examples and down to earth anecdotes drawn from relevant personal experience, this quick read is thought provoking and backed up by online content for those interested enough to go looking.

A simple book with a good message

A nice to read book from John Maeda - as he mentioned on a short flight. Simplified approach to simplicity is nice and well organized thoughtful approach. Consciseness is a plus.

Maeda has intelligently and concisely formalised the rules for visual design, a must-read for designers as a reference for achieving great work or to recap on what you already know :)

A clear and direct framework for simplifying business life​.