Simplicity Helps to Focus!

Yesterday I came across one of David Pogue's blog posts, introducing an experimental service called Readability. The idea is simple: You add it to your browser's bookmarks menu or tab, browse the web and whenever you're interested in reading something (particularly an article), click on the added bookmark and you'll see a clear printer-friendly version of the page you were visiting. This helps readers to focus on reading rather than being distracted by logos, unnecessary clutter and ads in particular, especially those animated flash ads that keep blinking, bouncing, vibrating or making sounds, begging you to click them! Advertisers might not like this idea, but I think this feature is what that has always been missing in many browsers. One might not like to use this tool all the time, but when focus and deep understanding of an article is necessary, the availability of such feature is inevitable.
The idea has been around in other forms indeed. For instance, you might have seen the little lamp icon on top of some YouTube videos, mostly those uploaded by official sources such as celebrities, TV channels or governments. What that lamp does is also quite obvious: You click it, and the screen turns dark, so you can pay more attention to the video being played.
All these attempts clarify that sometimes interfaces should let people focus on an area of the display without being distracted by piles of graphics, text and animated icons that are most likely to be ignored by the user. I like Pogue's idea about unnecessary stuff such as animated ads that make him hostile! I do agree with him: Animated ads provoking me to ignore them! They offer nothing but trouble. I, as a user, should have the right to decide what I want to see or where I want to click and go, so animated or buzzing ads won't make me change my mind. They may attract the first-time visitors, but I reckon most professional internet users gradually start hating and ignoring such ads. Readability is a great tool, helping a lot to deny distracting ads and get to the point.
Isn't that amazing? Years ago, good web designers were those who could create web pages with lots of elements arranged together and people tended to love websites that had lots and lots of images, text and video all in one screen. Despite having faster connection speed today, people now seem to prefer simple websites that use minimal graphical elements, but in a proper way. However, simplicity in design is not an easy concept. In other words, it's the art of making things simple, yet elegant and good-looking!
Speaking of David Pogue, it's worth watching one of his videos in which he commenced a speech called "Simplicity sells", covering lots of key points mostly by making fun of Microsoft! In case you opt to watch the video on YouTube's own page, don't forget to switch off the lamp that I mentioned earlier!