Back to the basics
Form follows function and less is more, are the core concepts of minimalism that widely influence the modern concepts of industrial design and architecture.
Minimalism has influence everything, from our habitable spaces, to our daily use devices and objects, and everyday is more natural and invisible to out eyes.
This invisibility is result of a good design, the greatest designs are imperceptible, logical, obious. But at the same time, creates a new design problem:
Some designers forget the existence and influence of minimalism and asume the basic core concepts of that, without think it.
This is the root cause about how many products epicaly fails after launch, an why so many people hates his minimalist, bad designed and tiny houses.
Many designers and architects think about minimalism as a way to reduce costs, and it is, but forget the "functionality" principle.
You can't design a good product if simplify at limit of reduce functionality, usability.
And we call that minimalism.
Form follows function, invites you to think about purpose, the purpouse behind an object. How people uses the object, what is the simpler way to solve his needs, and what is the experience of use that solution.
Some designs are simply unbeatible, you cannot create a better way to solve the user problem. Clips, hammers and levers are some examples of that. Everty attempt of rethink it, fails.
I think that this should be the final archieve of every disigner: make unbeatible simply designs.
How many times start thinking a digital product by the login... User and password, social media login, recovery codes, forgot your password, etc. We asume that all that views and logic are necesary, and waste a lot of thime coding implemenations over and over.
Some startups fails because his register process has to many steps. I remember test some fintech apps that pretends fill five forms from my legal data to my taxes numer and status, as a first step, without skip option. The full process thakes more than five minutes, and all majority of users leves before end this step.
All this clientes never come back, and never saw the core functionality of the app, because register is bored.
Other apps enables you to review the full project, before show an skipable option of register. Better startups show his value proposition and postpone registration until has necesary for the user, when he is hooked.
It's very important rethink all things everytime, doesn't make asumptions because something is common.
Minimalism is good, only if you remember the basics. Thats the importance of simplicity with purpose.