**2. Simplicity**

The social and economic impact of information systems in society is a reality in part due to the progress in telecommunications in its most recent shapes: internet, television, computing systems and mobile phones. However a new challenge arouses in the digital era, related either to Design, Engineering, or Technological level application, which consubstantiates the need to attain Simplicity, either of contents, either above all of the designing of related interfaces.

Actually Simplicity is also a quality that not only arouses the passionate devotion for product aesthetics and design, but also became a strategic key tool to allow businesses to confront their own complications (Maeda, 2006).

Hence, we can state that Simplicity is something we all long for… For example to refer to the unquestionable commercial success of Apple's iPod – a device that has less functionality than others available in the market with the same function: a digital music reader. People want and prefer products they can use with simplicity.

The first time someone described how things are in fact simplicity-related was, back in 1870, Claude Bernard. But simplicity as usually referred can be everything but simple.

According to the meaning pointed out by Portuguese lexical online dictionary (*http://www.lexi‐ co.pt/simplicidade/*) simplicity is a feminine substantive that may signify three qualities:


In the realm of this chapter thus it will be transmitted to the reader the idea that necessarily individuals who work in science have to speak or write or act mandatorily in a complicate and not complex way, makes no sense when one just wants to communicate.

Today, the requirement is to know how to communicate with simplicity, with clarity, interest and repetition, if thus is necessary, to achieve the main goals to transmit understandably (Kotler, 2000).

Already Priest António Vieira, in one of his most important sermons, "*O Sermão da Sexagési‐ ma*", spoken in Lisbon at the Capela Real, back in 1655, were he vindicated clarity, simplicity, syntactic and dialectic rigor, rigor in logic thinking, and what he defined as an oratory art of aesthetics simplicity, advocating that the preacher should opt for a single matter, define it, share it, confirm it by the Holly Readings and with reasoning, the preacher should always use, if possible always with examples and rejecting contradictory arguments, hence he might be able to conclude and persuade…

It is this persuasion capacity that by nature is present in human life through different degrees and combinations that allies simplicity and complexity.

But what is effectively Simplicity? Having also apprehended how really complicated it is to establish a measure of Simplicity, Maeda (2006) was able to describe Simplicity in ten (chapters) laws:


Simplicity is also related to a system of beliefs, and as such it will always be associated to the on-looker that applies it or observes it. Hence one can state that "Simplicity" is relativist, once it's System of Beliefs' are dependable and that variants from the same System of Beliefs can be understood as a School. It will suffice that a set of designers or engineers share the same

The social and economic impact of information systems in society is a reality in part due to the progress in telecommunications in its most recent shapes: internet, television, computing systems and mobile phones. However a new challenge arouses in the digital era, related either to Design, Engineering, or Technological level application, which consubstantiates the need to attain Simplicity, either of contents, either above all of the designing of related interfaces.

Actually Simplicity is also a quality that not only arouses the passionate devotion for product aesthetics and design, but also became a strategic key tool to allow businesses to confront their

Hence, we can state that Simplicity is something we all long for… For example to refer to the unquestionable commercial success of Apple's iPod – a device that has less functionality than others available in the market with the same function: a digital music reader. People want and

The first time someone described how things are in fact simplicity-related was, back in 1870,

According to the meaning pointed out by Portuguese lexical online dictionary (*http://www.lexi‐ co.pt/simplicidade/*) simplicity is a feminine substantive that may signify three qualities:

In the realm of this chapter thus it will be transmitted to the reader the idea that necessarily individuals who work in science have to speak or write or act mandatorily in a complicate and

Today, the requirement is to know how to communicate with simplicity, with clarity, interest and repetition, if thus is necessary, to achieve the main goals to transmit understandably

Already Priest António Vieira, in one of his most important sermons, "*O Sermão da Sexagési‐ ma*", spoken in Lisbon at the Capela Real, back in 1655, were he vindicated clarity, simplicity, syntactic and dialectic rigor, rigor in logic thinking, and what he defined as an oratory art of aesthetics simplicity, advocating that the preacher should opt for a single matter, define it,

Claude Bernard. But simplicity as usually referred can be everything but simple.

**•** Quality of what is easy to understand or do: a work's simplicity;

not complex way, makes no sense when one just wants to communicate.

arguments for each one of them as well as the same weight.

**2. Simplicity**

118 Advances in Industrial Design Engineering

own complications (Maeda, 2006).

prefer products they can use with simplicity.

**•** Luxury absence: to live with simplicity;

(Kotler, 2000).

**•** Natural, spontaneity: to speak with simplicity.


Then he adds three more components, which are:


Still according to Maeda, simplifying a design is harder than making it complicated. The great majority of examples he uses are the result of experiences and problems he underwent.

However his considerations about simplicity in life, in business, in Technology or in Design or Engineering, are not to be considered as having been obtained in the basis of a method from a scientific nature.

As well as we do not consider a science that same method of gathering the catalog of squared angles registration that we referred in the framework of this chapter.

It finds out that, as to the meanings of simplicity, we are allowed an infinite variety of data, and as such the information we have is still short, so being before an in-equation as it has an infinite number of solutions.

In this chapter we will be led to know, as Pythagoras did through his theorem, that there is also a way that allows us to be objective, measuring, on the contrary of the description from Maeda (2006), one can describe Simplicity as it has been sustained by Fisher (1925), as the first definition of information amount.

When we want to transform data into Information, we must bear in mind three basic rules

Measuring Design Simplicity http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54753 121

**•** Organizing data: when confronted with a set of grades these must be numerically ordered; **•** Data description: when comparing two or more sets of grades these should be referred in

**•** Interpreting data: upon seeing punctuation tests in a graphic way one must bear in mind that the visual representation is an interpretation in full respect to numerical tests.

Information and knowledge are the result of human action while aggregating data (symbols or facts) in a social or physical scope, out of context, not directly or immediately significant (signs). Data setting in a determined context acquiring meaning and value, being thus designated as Information. Knowledge comes from the successive accumulation of relevant and structured Information capable of action production, partially based in experience. The data transformation in Information and therefore in knowledge requires a cognitive effort in

Information can thus be grouped at several "levels" from the most basic shape to the most complex one. In these different levels we refer (Bernoulli, 1713; Quinn, 1980; Waibel and

**•** Context: it is a situation in which something occurs, using any relevant Information to characterize the situation (state description of relevant entities) of an entity that might be a person, a place or an object, to an interaction between a user and an application and

**•** System of Beliefs: as it will be further explained it refers to the arguments and their own

**•** Context: the situation in which something happens using any relevant Information to characterize the situation (state description of relevant entities) of an entity that might be a person, a place or an object, for an interaction between a user and an application, and

**•** System of Beliefs: as it will be further explained, it refers to arguments and their relative

**•** Objectives: the goals (or the objectives) refer to what we seek to achieve and when we have results to achieve in mind and no reference on how the results must be achieved. It represents

**• Bits and Bytes/Signs** are (SINGH, 2007) the raw material, representing binary Information in the format understood by computers, i.e., zeros and ones that correspond to waves of electric impulses. Zeros represent no current going on and ones represent current going on, like an electric switch. It's the lowest existing level in computers and, for that reason, the one that exists in higher quantity. It is impossible to the observer to distinguish what is

the perception of the structure and of the allowance of a meaning and a value.

weight. The System of Beliefs is relativist, varying from each observer.

weight. The System of Beliefs is relativist, varying from the observer.

what should be obtained but does not specify how to do it.

A possible structure for Information levels is shown above.

(Snodgrass, 2007):

the same scale;

Stiefelhagen, 2009) to:

including both.

including both.

In a predictable future, Simplicity is thus doomed to be Design and Engineering's motto, of a whole Industry, as it has been featured in it's own time, the discovery of Pythagoras's Theorem… Shortly, we aim to give to the reader's understanding that simplicity is not something intuitive. In fact, today we possess and have access to great data complication, on the other hand the same data are complicated to process, hence we have very little information, which by analogy leads to conclude that if we are facing an enormous simplicity, a few data set will give a great amount of information about the instrument, or the system, or whatever.

Simplicity, like easiness, hardness, information or complication is a matter of the observer's measuring. It depends on his own system of beliefs.
