WILLIAM OF OCKHAM QUOTES HOW TO

Occam’s Razor cuts down the walls that keep a message from getting through. Why should they want her to write for them? Worse, it would tell them that this person can’t get ideas across properly. Users coming to her site want help they don’t want to have to work out how she can help them. That’s the problem: she’s trying to push all her goodies onto the landing page, not appreciating that the flood of information will make user’s go: “What?” Instead of showing her good name and service in the best way, she got desperate and tried to squeeze ideas in, making a maze - walls, pictures, text, and spaces sprawling everywhere. She’s scared of writers not contacting her. Our author friend is an enthusiastic person, but her enthusiasm gets the better of her.

So, we remove everything that would have got in the way. We want to cut out “noise”, which would distract/confuse users. Using Occam’s Razor, we see that we can fade the ranch into the background so that the images are there, but don’t distract. However, she wants her ranch to feature on the landing page. The phone goes our author loves what we’ve done with the design. We can show the ranch with her contact information, and we can perhaps design a daily writing tip as a pop-up. However, we can move the unnecessary components to other pages using link buttons: We want to present a famous author who can help other writers.

WILLIAM OF OCKHAM QUOTES HOW TO

We have to decide how to prioritize these elements. She loves her ranch and believes other writers will love it, too, so she wants a large photo of it. Our author insists on an elaborate, decorative landing page. Right away, we see we’ve got much to work into her design. She tells us what she wants in her design: For instance, an editor-author who has a fiction career, but who also ghostwrites for clients, calls us. It may be hard to weed out those unnecessary parts - you may say your business has no unnecessary parts look harder.įor designers, using Occam’s Razor is all about careful thinking. Being ruthless about the value that a page or piece of content provides and removing anything unnecessary will make significantly stronger, more effective designs. What companies often ignore is that the overwhelming majority of the users will access about 20% of the content on the site (see the article on the Pareto principle you’ll find the link at the bottom). In an increasingly competitive market, the pressure is on to get the message “out there”. This is commonly an issue where companies feel the need to put everything they possibly could up on the website in the rare case that someone wants the information. One might think the site can do more, but it actually accomplishes less. Designers can end up making very complicated sites or designs that may have a lot of functionality and information, but are difficult to use, build and maintain. With the flexibility and power of the web and our design tools, it’s easy to get carried away.

This should ensure that you remain with elements you have minimized as much as possible but which still work perfectly Therefore, when evaluating your designs, analyze each element and remove as many as possible, without compromising the overall function. So, when two products or designs have the same function, Occam’s Razor recomends selecting the simpler. In design, Occam’s Razor encourages us to eliminate unnecessary elements that would decrease a design’s efficiency.

Named after 14th-century logician and theologian William of Ockham, this theory has been helping many great thinkers for centuries. Occam’s Razor, put simply, states: “the simplest solution is almost always the best.” It’s a problem-solving principle arguing that simplicity is better than complexity. You may have heard of Occam’s Razor did you know that you can apply it to web design? When you’ve got it in your “toolbox”, you’ll have an edge in the marketplace.

William of ockham quotes