Less, but better. Maybe more relevant than ever

Reading Dieter Rams: Less but Better, I found myself stopping again at his ten principles of good design. They are almost fifty years old. And yet in a time of AI, automation and nearly unlimited ways to make things, they feel more relevant than ever.

More is not better

We can now generate dozens of concepts, interfaces or even working products in a few minutes. There have never been more options, and each one costs almost nothing.

But does being able to make more mean we design better?

In my experience, no. Someone still has to pick one of those ten options, and be able to explain why this one and not the others.

Ten principles of good design

Rams described good design as:

1. Innovative
2. Useful
3. Aesthetic
4. Understandable
5. Unobtrusive
6. Honest
7. Long-lasting
8. Thorough down to the last detail
9. Environmentally friendly
10. As little design as possible

What matters most to me is that design is not only about how the result looks. Just one of the ten principles is about aesthetics. The rest are about people, context, needs and the real value of a product.

Technology changes how we design. Not why.

AI makes execution dramatically faster. The responsibility for deciding what is worth making, why, and for whom, stays with us.

The ability to make good decisions, simplify, recognise real value and remove needless complexity may well become one of the most important skills a designer has in the years ahead. Anyone can generate. Few people know what to cut.

How we apply it

This is also the direction of the AI-assisted methodology we are building internally at Argo22. Speed is not the point on its own. The point is using technology to make products that mean more, and a process that wastes less.

Less, but better. Not as an aesthetic style, but as a way of thinking.