Playing off perception

A User experience strategist I'm working with recently lent my John Maeda's "Laws of Simplicity." Maeda's "Laws" are not just great from a UX perspective but can apply to areas where outside of technology because the play off of human psychology.

The first law Maeda talks about is the simple act of reduction. When you can't remove functionality from a piece of technology without a big trade off, you move to shrinking, hiding or embodying. Shrinking, for instance, allows you to get away with more because we expect from something small than we do from something big (the Flip camera is a good example of that).

What made me stop and think about these ideas was that they played off of our perceptions rather than bent them or went at them head on. Often clients (and strategists) will find out what people think, then try to reinterpret it or even change it. Maeda's way of thinking actually uses the way people think to be an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage - it dares them to disbelieve it (and it has faith that if the technology is good enough, people will hear about it and be curious to try it).

Maeda also makes the point that any design that is lighter and thinner creates the impression of being humbler. If that is how we need to relate brands to people these days, howw then can our campaigns become flatter and lighter, yet still be as effective?