MacGyver was a master of doing more with less. Designers should strive for the same.
I never thought I’d see the day that someone would take the valuable teachings of MacGyver and apply it to design, but today was that day.
For those who aren’t aware, Angus MacGyver was a secret agent in the hit 1990s TV series “MacGyver” and had a knack for getting out of the most impossible situations. By using what little was around him, MacGyver was able to piece together important tools to free himself from traps, call for help, or (as was seemingly commonplace in 1990s action TV) disarm a bomb at the last second. He didn’t always have the best tools available, but he made the best of each situation.
According to Emily Pilloton, Founder and Executive Director at Project H Design, MacGyver had what it took to be a good designer.
“In my mind, he’s sort of the original design thinker,” Pilloton said when describing MacGyver. “He had the most minimal resources, the most severe constraints, but there was a result that he needed to get to and his solutions were often so simple.”
To be fair, it has to be stated that most of MacGyver’s solutions on television were highly improbable and might not have ever worked in real life. But in the context of the show, MacGyver’s solutions were simple, and always worked.
If designers were to take MacGyver’s style to the table, however ridiculous and laughable his methods may have been, and tried to learn to do more with less on a page, the end product and user could benefit greatly. We’re so often tempted to flood end users with more than what they need. We try to package information in grandiose ways, forsaking anything resembling simplicity just because we can.
While there are many occasions where this style might be a good thing, we should aim to do more with less, just like MacGyver (though, without the mullet). Eliminate the clutter. Throw out all the unnecessary junk, and solve the problem.