• When the user is focused on their objective and not on the actual interface itself
• Invisible (user only pay attention to something intuitive when it’s actually not intuitive. What makes something intuitive is actually something personal. We have to know something about the people we are building for
• When Current Knowledge and Target Knowledge are at the same place. There are two ways to accomplish this: Raise Current Knowledge to meet Target Knowledge (Training), or reduce Target Knowledge to meet Current Knowledge (Simplifying)
• Is all about focuses on experience. Trend/ Pattern we see over and over again: Technology > Features > Experience
• Is a result of constant team critique, and critiques are essential to creating intuitive designs.

Dieter Rams, who was featured in critically acclaimed documentary Objectified is one of the most influential design gurus in the world. He has created countless products for Braun, the German white goods company. And he is a man who has influenced Apple’s head of design, Jonathan Ive. Here’s a piece of what he wrote exclusively for the The Daily Telegraph about what makes Apple special:

“Without doubt there are few companies in the world that genuinely understand and practise the power of good design in their products and their businesses. Probably the first example was Peter Behrens and his work for the German company AEG, in the early part of the 20th century. He might be considered to be the founder of corporate identity. Adriano Olivetti was close behind as he transformed his father’s Italian company, Olivetti. Having become aware of this scarcity at the start of my career in the 1950s, I am sorry to report that the situation does not seem to have improved to this day.

I have always observed that good design can normally only emerge if there is a strong relationship between an entrepreneur and the head of design. At Apple this situation exists – between Steve Jobs and Jony Ive.

I am always fascinated when I see the latest Apple products. Apple has managed to achieve what I never achieved: using the power of their products to persuade people to queue to buy them. For me, I had to queue to receive food at the end of World War II. That’s quite a change.

They understand that design is not simply an adjective to place in front of a product’s name to somehow artificially enhance its value. Ever fewer people appear to understand that design is a serious profession; and for our future welfare we need more companies to take that profession seriously.”

Apple is probably the only tech company with a head of design. This makes them both a tech and an industrial design firm… And actually marketing can be added to the mix…

How often do you come across a t-shirt with nothing but words on it and yet everyone wants one? How important of a role does design play versus the actual message being delivered?

So many designers spend so much time trying to prettify everything without realizing why they are actually doing it? Are you really enhancing the message or are you simply putting lipstick on a pig?

Design encompasses a lot of individual components brought together to solve a problem. The message is simply one of those components, but without it the solution that the design is trying to offer can get lost.

• Illustrations
• Printed paper
• Realism
• Imageless & typography-focused
• Minimalism
• Vintage look
• Large images & photo backgrounds
• Rich & slick user interfaces

While many designers seem to be very against trends and already popular styles, one must understand that these certain styles are popular for a reason. That reason is that there is already something about them that works, whether it be efficiency, viewer-connection, or interesting visual appeal. The goal is to always view popular styles from an intuitive standpoint, and take from them what works best. This is the only way to learn and gain experience as a web designer, even when developing one’s own particular style.

For those looking for some base concepts on the idea of simplicity, here are John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity:

1. Reduce – The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
2. Organize – Organization makes a system of many appear fewer
3. Time - Savings in time feel like simplicity
4. Learn – Knowledge makes everything simpler
5. Differences – Simplicity and complexity need each other
6. Context – What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
7. Emotion – More emotions are better than less
8. Trust – In simplicity we trust
9. Failure – Some things can never be made simple
10. The One – Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful