{"id":286,"date":"2015-02-09T18:13:53","date_gmt":"2015-02-09T23:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/?p=286"},"modified":"2015-02-09T18:16:06","modified_gmt":"2015-02-09T23:16:06","slug":"ockhams-razor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/ockhams-razor\/","title":{"rendered":"Ockham&#8217;s Razor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Word:\u00a0<\/strong>Ockham's Razor (sometimes Occam's Razor)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Definition:\u00a0<\/strong>A philosophical rule about simplicity. The theory states that when\u00a0choosing\u00a0between multiple\u00a0options, the simpler\u00a0choice should be selected.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Reference:\u00a0<\/strong>The theory is named for 14th-century theologian,\u00a0William of Ockham and is used as a problem solving device.<\/p>\n<p>Ockham's Razor helps\u00a0justify and support design decisions. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson, the duo behind such software as <i>Basecamp,<\/i> utilize this principle in\u00a0their work. They have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.webdesignerdepot.com\/2010\/07\/occams-razor-a-great-principle-for-designers\/\">quoted<\/a> saying,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"<em>We design [our applications]\u00a0to be simple because we believe most software is too complex: too many features, too many buttons, too much confusion.\"<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While a simplistic feature set is not the solution to all design problems, it does not hurt to keep\u00a0Ockham's razor in the back of your mind, especially when determining a feature set and product scope.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Question:<\/strong>\u00a0How do you feel about simplistic design and utilizing such theories in UX practice? Where are the exceptions? What are the pitfalls?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Word:\u00a0Ockham&#8217;s Razor (sometimes Occam&#8217;s Razor) Definition:\u00a0A philosophical rule about simplicity. The theory states that when\u00a0choosing\u00a0between multiple\u00a0options, the simpler\u00a0choice should be selected. Reference:\u00a0The theory is named for 14th-century theologian,\u00a0William of Ockham and is used as a problem solving device. Ockham&#8217;s Razor helps\u00a0justify and support design decisions. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson, the duo behind such [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,17,11],"tags":[93,92,94,8,9],"class_list":["post-286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-product-management","category-psychology","category-terms","tag-occams-razor","tag-ockhams-razor","tag-simplicty","tag-user-experience","tag-ux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":294,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286\/revisions\/294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hannahatkin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}