“The excitement of their art seems to lie most of all in its pure preoccupation with the invention and arrangement of spaces, surfaces, shapes, colors, etc., to the exclusion of whatever is not necessarily implicated in these factors.”

Greenberg urged artists to emphasize the ‘objecthood’ or actuality of their works – whether a canvas in the case of a painter, or a cube in the case of a sculptor. With Minimalism, the former gestural qualities and illusionism of art were no longer important. The emphasis wassupposed to be on shape and materials, and these were to be as pure, plain and simple as possible.

A work, such as Donald Judd’s ‘Untitled’, shows the style characteristic of Minimalism because it is nonobjective, made from industrial, nontraditional materials, it is simple and austere, and because itconsists of multiple and repetitive elements (Obendorf,2009). Minimalism also spread and matured in various directions, with the Arte Povera movement for example, based on the use of few and non-expensive elements, as opposed to the values of established intellectual and cultural institutions; questioning art as a means of free expression.

This paper was motivated not only by an interest in understanding simple design, but also by pointing out what social influence Minimalism have on our way of life. Would it not be much more pleasing, but also far less expensive in both time and effort if simplicity could be part of the plan? The practitioner of Minimalism ought to be able to consciously choose his/her tools and materialsand then make informed decisions about design which 

reflect exactly those aspects of Minimalism the design is trying to achieve. To this end, this paper defines an ideal for design which focuses on reduction as a positive technique, and draws on the idea of Minimalism as a means of differentiating comprehension and simplicity. The resulting minimalist terminology used helps with the comprehension of design qualities and can be used to explain how these qualities are produced in design processes, materials and techniques. In this paper, the concept of Minimalism is proposed as a useful theoretical tool which supports a more differentiated understanding of reduction, and thus creates a standpoint that allows the definition of simplicity in its various aspects, and further, an understanding of a more profound meaning of the philosophical implications of Minimalism.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

When computer artifacts became widely disseminated throughout society, fresh questions were raised. With the coming of informatics as a research discipline complementing computer and computing science, the focus moved from the engineering view of reducing excessive complexity to the designing engineer with the aim of reducing complexity for the end user and so ensuring that they would be in command of the procedures employed. This ease of use of course meant greater sales and bigger profits for the companies concerned. Many of the problems that surface when systems are used are caused by the complexity of engineering solutions being added to application complexity.

The reduction of this sometimes obstructive complexity is the reason for the use-centered design behind interactive systems. Principles such as ‘simplicity’ and ‘clarity’ play an important part in the self-conception in this discipline. Usability is the core of many design concept. The aim of the designer is to create an interactive system that is so non-complex that it becomes unrecognizable as a system, but instead simply fades into the background while quietly enhancing the abilities of the user to get the best out of it. However, such simplicity has proved difficult to define as the meaning is altered according to both the protagonists and their subjects, with both sources and focuses of perspectives. The one common factor to all notions of simplicity is their relative nature, in which all definitions refer to some kind of reduction.