Blink and you’ll miss it

May 2nd, 2006

Having a long train trip at the weekend gave me the chance to read a book called Blink by a chap named Malcom Gladwell. In short, it is one of the most fascinating books I have read, I would especially recommend it to those in marketing or sales fields. It essentially covers the effect of the subconcious mind in every possible scenerio from life and death responses to marketing and sales. It then goes on into detail about the working of the subconcious and how it can be harnessed, the pros and the cons.

Some of the very simple examples got me thinking about web design. Two identical stalls selling jam, one offers a selection of 3 jams and one offers a selection of 10. The stall selling the smaller collection outstrips the sales of the larger stall by a factor of 10. The explanation offered (over dozens of examples) is that too much information will complicate matters and generally lead to worse decisions. I think there is a lesson here in web design with the mantra “The design is complete not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing else to remove”.