Reduce to the max
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
I got an Xbox controller in my hand a few days ago, and was puzzled by the unlikely design. It is too big, some buttons are really hard to reach, they can not be pushed as quickly as they should, etc.
Part of what motivated Microsoft to design this was probably a will to differentiate their hardware from the previously released Playstation’s controller. Bad idea. Sometimes you should recognize that something can not be improved - or at least not with the ideas you have right now.
I was surprised when Sony kept the same design across versions of their Playstation controllers: the PS2 one had the same shape than the PS1, and the PS3 is basically the PS2 but wireless. With a new product automatically comes a new design? Not the controllers which remained the same, probably the most ergonomic gamepads ever design (not considering the Wii which is something different). Sony was smart to acknowledge they couldn’t do better, and therefore should not change for the sake of changing.
This reminds me of an old story when a few years ago Swissair collapsed. The national company was taken over by a small and local carrier that hired Tyler Brulé to design a new brand. Swiss was born with a logo made of a white cross inside a red square. Critics started to pile up: how can you pay that much money to come up with such an obvious brand?
Brulé’s thinking was right. Designing for the sake of it is wrong. Swiss best asset were its swissness, an image of quality, reliability, ponctuality. The Swiss flag is one of the most recognized symbol in the world. Going with something else than this would have been wrong.
That is where design is different from other domains. Sometimes doing less means doing better. See the minimalist packaging trend that has been spotted in Japan. Less can be more, or as the world’s best slogan put it back in 1997: “Reduce to the max“.






