Instructional Design: Two questions

This post is written by Sandipan Ray. Sandipan is an e-learning professional with more than 7 years of industry experience, in almost all disciplines from Graphics, Quality, programming to ID. Presently working in a product development company for their internal training needs.

I am little bothered with two common words:

Simplicity:

Instructional Design, as I understand, is make sure that the learner is listening to what I am saying, and the way to that is to keep the course simple. But I am just wondering, with the ever-increasing complexities involved in creating a course, are we really achieving that target of "simplicity"? Is it time for us to become little "lean"?

Plagiarism:

Ever since I joined this field, I had been hearing about the sin called plagiarism. But till date, I haven't come across a clear definition about it. Wiki says: "Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." Well- close imitation of the language and thoughts-- isn't that very subjective (how much is close enough)? And in the field of learning, can we be really sure about who the original author is? And if a thing works in a X way, or has X attributes, no matter whatever language and in whatever way we say it, the fact remains the same. So, I wonder, can we really avoid plagiarism?

Waiting for you all to throw some light!

Simple Designs - a myth or a reality?

At times, I use the white board at my workstation to scribble interesting quotes that appeal to me. A few weeks ago, I wrote this one:

"There are two ways of constructing a software design. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies. And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. (Charles Hoare)."

The quote led to an interesting discussion amongst the ones who read it. The curious question was – what is ‘simple’ design. I pondered for a while. I knew that simplicity was far complex than I thought. I wanted to understand what is means to have simplicity in content design, media design, functional design, web design, and any other design that we ought to do! So I started my journey to explore what is simple design…here is what I found on my way. An interesting definition.

This is an excerpt taken from an article titled, “Keep it simple, stupid!” by Pär Almqvist.

A Definition of Simplicity
What is simplicity? It could be defined as "the absence of unnecessary elements," or even shorter "the essence." Simplicity doesn't equal boring. Simplicity doesn't equal shallow. Simplicity is especially important when designing information- and media-rich interfaces. Simplicity isn't a design style, it's a perspective on design, an approach which often creates the most beautiful and the most usable results. A common mistake is to think that obtaining simplicity is a matter of reduction, of reducing something which is more complete than the "simple" end result. On the contrary, simplicity requires serious thought and effort. As I wrote in my article Fragments of time; "A modern paradox is that it's simpler to create complex interfaces because it's so complex to simplify them."

How to Obtain Simplicity
Simplicity isn't easy to obtain. I have, however, roughly devised a formula that lays the foundation for simplicity. Albert Einstein said; "If A is to succeed in life, then A = x + y + z. Work is x, y is play and z is to listen.
"A functioning formula for simplicity (where A equals simplicity) could be A = x + y + z. x is good research and prototyping, y is play and z is the reduction of unnecessary elements.

In the above definition, the author reiterates that simplicity requires thought and effort. Another example to support this definition is here, where the author (Nika Smith) discusses the evolution of Gmail chat and specifically how the Gmail chat window was designed.

The author reiterates, “Often, the features we launch seem so simple that you might think they're the result of blatantly obvious design decisions. In fact, every feature is subjected to a healthy dose of scrutiny within the Gmail team, and usually that includes rapidly iterating on designs by collecting user feedback, learning what works and what doesn't, and improving on our work based on this knowledge.”

From what I gather, I believe simple designs:-
- appear intuitive and easy to make - but they take time to build
- involve multiple iterations of review and feedback
- are meant for the purpose (meet requirements)
- are naturally usable
- have more impact because they have less distractions

So, what does simplicity mean to you in the context of design?

Are simple designs better than complex ones? Do our users appreciate simplicity? Is simplicity the need and the reality of the day?

OR

Is simplicity simply an overrated aspect of design? Does simple sell or do our users want more features? Is simplicity a myth?

What do you think?