Conflicts between the business interest and aesthetics often push one or the other to the backseat. But it can be resolved using Dieter Rams’ principles.

How often have you heard someone say ‘Less is More’?

I am sure as a designer, you must have heard it a lot while ideating for a product or creating the UI for it, or even while enhancing or introducing a new feature into the product.

It may not seem new today. It was first laid out by Mies van der Rohe, the famous German architect. Dieter Rams imbibed it and made it a crucial part of the digital product design process. In fact, he went a step further to focus on ‘Less, but Better’. This philosophy has been one of the primary inspirations behind all the product designs at Apple.

Dieter Rams, the legendary industrial designer of the German electrical products company Braun, followed this philosophy while overseeing and building around 500 innovative products during his tenure there, spanning four decades (1955–1995).

As a designer, Rams used to ask himself the most important question: is my design good?

To answer the question, Rams came up with some parameters. It’s true that a good design is subjective and can’t be accurately measured, but Rams attempted to express what he believed and laid out 10 most important design principles that have inspired designers across the world.

His principles inspired the design team at Talentica (https://www.talentica.com/). They have been using the below-mentioned 4 principles to create innovative and useful products for start-ups.

Here are the top 4 principles that inspire us the most and how we use them:

Good Design is innovative.

Whether physical or digital, almost all products have one core feature that makes them stand out from the crowd. For start-ups, this core feature is the unique feature they develop to solve a persistent problem for their end-users.

When we hash out the core feature, we ideate on a different tangent, like thinking about how this would work in 2050 with the ever-evolving tech? Sometimes, we approach problems with no boundaries to make our offerings truly innovative for the end-user.

One of my clients came up with the idea that has its premise set in manufacturing and distribution. However, while developing the design, I quickly realised that he was spending more time on ancillary features than making his core feature stand out. So, we dug a little deep and got the essence of the product right.

We realised that the product could benefit more from a proper depiction of how different aspects of manufacturing and distribution are connected and interdependent. With a normal card-based dashboard, it was not possible.

So, we came up with the following 3D design. We made it interactive and more engaging with music.

We either re-used or tweaked the prevalent design according to the requirements for other standard features (like settings, profiles, tables, etc.).

A good design always complements an innovative core feature and helps it to get noticed and lauded.

Things to keep in mind:

• Innovation should be intuitive to use. The greater the learning curve, the harder it is for the user to adapt to the idea.
• Analyse the environment in which the innovation needs to be implemented. There may be times when we will have to hold back to give alternate solutions.
• Make it more interesting by exploring gestures, music, light, micro-interactions, 3D animations, etc. Sometimes giving a different perspective to a more straightforward solution paves the way for innovation.

Good Design is unobtrusive.

One of the primary aspects of design is to help the user perform a task and complete it. Instead of thinking about the decorative aspects of the design, one should focus on providing the right experience. Using colours to call the user’s attention and giving them a clear path and actions to perform are more important things to do.

For Talentpool, we had to go through a lot of iterations. Talentpool is a recruitment software that brings recruiters, interviewers and hiring managers for a better recruitment process. To stay in sync with it, we came up with a design with all the information showcased. Then we started zeroing in- we created segments, filtered information for primary and secondary data, arranged them accordingly, moved to and fro about how much weightage the primary data should be given, how the space should be used, and other steps only to come up with the following design.

Also, we got user feedback. We showed different drafts to people to understand their take and accordingly tweaked the design.

We went through so many steps just to ensure our users get to optimize their time and effort. Our efforts were directly guided by what Dieter Rams says about product design- “products should fulfil a purpose, their design should be neutral and restrained to provide room for users’ self-expression.”

Things to keep in mind:

• Help the users either by asking them what they want to do or by telling them what needs to be done. Either one of them should be the starting point for performing a task.
• Keep simple and intuitive interactions. The more the complexity, the higher the chances of the user dropping out.
• Actions and information shown should be accurate.

Good Design is honest.

Many websites and products trick the user into taking unwanted actions and eventually end up not keeping the promises that they have made. As designers, it is our responsibility to provide an experience to the user that puts them at ease and build trust by giving them a safe environment to explore.

I have seen several sites offering a free trial period to their end-users. Then, when you click on it, the page directs you to the site’s pricing page, which is misleading. Such actions break trust and make users lose interest in a product.

The instructions, messages, and actions should be unambiguous for the user to proceed and trust the product for their job. Dieter Rams believes that users react very positively when things presented to them are clear and easily understandable.

Things to keep in mind:

• Provide feedback where necessary. It could be as toasters, inline messages, or banners. The most important thing is to let the user know.
• Type hierarchy is essential. Wrong weights used for showing information might disorient the user.
• Use minimal colors and try to avoid a lot of gray variations.

Good Design is as little as possible.

Minimalism, as a concept, is derived from architecture, and it plays a major role in designing products and interfaces. If you try to analyze the works of Dieter Rams, you will find that his works always speak favourably for minimal elements and never burden the products with non-essentials.

People often confuse minimalism with innovation. Minimalistic design centers around the user’s intent, whereas innovation, could be your means to achieve that. Sometimes innovation is necessary, and sometimes, a slight tweak can do the job for you. For instance, think of the ripple effect that Google has introduced to improve the experience of clicking a button. They just tweaked the original idea of a button getting pressed with the present one to engage the audience more.

When designing a digital product or an interface, we often ask questions about whether a particular element is needed on the interface? How is it going to help? What will be the impact? Only then do we decide what we should keep and what we should remove.

We did something similar while developing Maya, which is a smart hiring tool for managers. Our machine learning team adopted the RASA framework and natural language processing (NLP) to simplify and reduce the steps for query resolution.

We backed their effort with a design that highlights all the essential points and improves user participation. It was simple yet innovative and provided the intended experience to the end-user.

Things to keep in mind:

• Show what is needed and help the user to decide a course of action or take a path.
• Do not mix too many interactions.
• Use type and subtle visual elements to give them a sense of the canvas.

Final Thoughts

Innovation comes from experimentation and perseverance. Every time you make the designs, make sure that there is extra attention to detail, as this is what the user will notice. Think about what could have been and work backward refining your solution, ultimately decluttering and keeping only what is needed.