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The search for what satisfies us in a job well done.
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The search for what satisfies us in a job well done.
Many of us yearn for simplicity. Modernism aims for it, cutting away decoration in favour of pure form motivated by function. Writing about simplification often borders on the mystical.1
The architect Christopher Alexander, inventor of design patterns, looked for a word to describe the timeless, natural and human quality he sought in buildings and environments.
He runs through a series of words, none of which fully satisfy him: alive, whole, comfortable, free, exact, egoless, eternal.2
It’s all of those things, but more. So he settles for the quality without a name.
He’s thinking about buildings, of course. But in adapting his pattern language for software engineering and interfaces, we seem to have lost its soul.
Information designers often choose their path because they want to use their skill for good. For helping rather than selling.
I wonder what words we’d consider in our search for the quality without a name.
I’d keep whole, exact and egoless, and perhaps add fair, human, considerate, kind, and balanced.
1. John Maeda’s The laws of simplicity strikes me this way (MIT Press, 2006).
2. Alexander, C. (1979). The timeless way of building. Oxford University Press.