minimalism
Less, but better
Raw size isn't enough
Omit needless words
Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible
Morioka Shoten
Minimum
A Book by John PawsonAdd Less
An Article by Cassidy WilliamsA few people have asked me what I did to make this [website] so fast.
The answer is: nothing.
I just didn't add anything to make it slow.I kept it simple.
The pages are pre-rendered.
The CSS is inlined.
I didn't add unnecessary javascript.
The work was done before you got there.Your websites start fast until you add too much to make them slow. Do you need any framework at all? Could you do what you want natively in the browser? Would doing it without a framework at all make your site lighter, or actually heavier in the long run as you create or optimize what others have already done?
Tanikawa House
A BuildingPhotos of the Tanikawa House, designed by architect Kazuo Shinohara.
Built in 1974, this summer house materializes the act of covering a piece of earth, making it an inhabitation only by means of a roof protecting the dirt soil of the ground. The house lies on a slope in a middle of a wood and grows through an exposed timber frame structure which supports a large pitched roof. Under the roof, a minimal section of the house located on a side hosts some specific living functions concentrated on two floors: a bathroom, a kitchen, a bedroom and a staircase. This section lies in parallel to the main “earth room” (or “summer room”) and overlooks it.
Do We Need This?
An ArticleUltimately this redesign has been a study in less, trying to dig deep and find out what it is I actually want for this site. A momentary visual “wow”, or quality content that is worthy of your attention? I decided on the latter, with less visual clutter it is far harder to try obscure bad or shallow writing behind a veneer of pretty images and effects. Posts may take longer to write but I hope this new design will push towards content that is worthy of your time.
Software that nobody wants
Finding value is the result of enabling individual and group-level discovery attempts. It's not the result of everyone following one leader's gut.
What just happened is a new software product/feature was created that no customer wanted. This happens way too often. In fact, most hyper important software projects that must be done by date certain or else, have deep flaws that cause some variation of this phenomenon, flaws that include:
- Not wanted - Company specified a solution to a problem that customers don't actually have
- No Rarity - Company is pursuing an iKnockoff of existing products. The market already has two scaled competitors with working solutions, customers naturally spend budget on products that are already successful to avoid risk
- Incorrect Packaging - Customers need a website, but the company created an iOS app instead
- Incorrect Pricing - Customers need SaaS pricing, but the company created a shrink wrapped, on-premise solution with CapEx and maintenance agreements instead
The 'date scrum' anti-pattern
Date Scrum is an R&D pattern where developers are asked to estimate software project requirements upfront for the entirety of the project. After the project is green lighted and the budget is set based on the final estimates, the team then holds daily scrums to status and manage risk as they “iterate” the solution toward the release date. To some, this approach is described as doing Waterfall in sprints.
The fundamental problem with Date Scrum is that the team is de-focused from discovering the best solution. Instead they are heavily focused on delivering Something™ by the Date™. Engineers are problem solvers, and if the primary problem becomes delivering Something™ that will pass QA by the Date™, they will, with enough pressure, solve that exact problem.