This post has been kicking around in my head for a few weeks now, and I’ve only just found the time to finish it. The last few weeks have been very hectic, in fact, since I returned from Phoenix last weekend I have only spent a few hours at home! For most of the week I was up in London at the Future of Web Apps, that was quite enjoyable and I’ll be writing more about that later. Work aside, I have also been working on building some ActionScript classes which will allow easy interaction of some of the Amazon Web Services and starting to play with some things for Apollo. I also attended a brilliant Skillswap presented by Richard Rutter on the state of Typography which was surprisingly interesting. Anyway onto statistics…Over the past month, I think I have become addicted to statistics &endash; there, I have admitted it! Part of the reason, I think, is because of the rental car which I have been driving. Aside from the many facts and figures I could access on my fuel consumption and engine temperature, I also had a Garmin GPS device. Now this is an amazing little box of tricks, not only helping you get from a to b but also estimating the time to destination, current speed and compiling consolidated statistics of your average speed/times. It felt as if I was playing Project Gotham Racer!Within a few days I found myself getting a buzz if I managed to ‘beat’ the estimated arrival time, as well as trying to set new speed records (unfortunately the rental car seemed to be speed limited, which sent me looking for hills…). I wondered to myself what was different, all I could figure is that normally I wouldn’t have access to that kind of data, aside from the speedometer on the dashboard I have nothing which keeps track of my statistics last night. Now, driving around the lovely state of Arizona, I could instantly recall a wealth of information which I had accumulated – I liked this, it was somehow reassuring.One weekend I took a trip over to Las Vegas, spending most of my time on the MGM Grand poker tables, but taking the time out to see an IMAX movie of a US Air Force training exercise. From the AWAC control room, the supervising General had access to real-time data from many different aircraft. All of this data was represented on a 3D representation of the battlefield, with yet more statistics. Its weird but without lots of numbers on the screen, I’m pretty certain it would have looked much less impressive!So, why in a world where many designers preach simplicity and minimalism does it actually feel like a better experience when there is so much additional information at my fingertips?I think its a matter of relevance and importance. I found myself using my GPS to monitor my speed a lot more frequently than checking the temperature of my engine, because that particular piece of information was more relevant to my immediate situation, and also because changes to my speed were more immediately reflected. Also, with regard to driving, it is easily the most important piece of information.If we apply this same principle to interface design, the information presented should be both relevant and important. On a blog post for example, there is value in showing the date of a posting or what it has been tagged with, but there is significantly little value in providing information in perhaps showing the full profile of the poster (assuming blog posts usually come from a single author). Looking at something more technical, such as web reporting, the important pieces of information when monitoring a web site are usually bandwidth usage and page views, so these should be given prominence. Trivial (and often static) pieces of information such as the server’s operating system and processes should be removed from the interface or at least relegated to a secondary page.There is a lot to be said about simplicity, but there is also a lot to be said about providing the user with ample relevant information and feedback on their interactions. (more…)