The Beauty of Simplicity: WriteRoom

February 12, 2008

I tend to find great beauty in minimalism. Whether it’s visual design, software design, interior design, or product design in general, sometimes the simplest line is the best line of all. You know, the shortest distance between two points. And few current software applications are more beautifully simplistic than WriteRoom, from Hog Bay Software (Mac OS X only…but keep reading, Windows users – there is something here for you too).

When I first saw WriteRoom, I thought,

“This is lame! It’s just like word processing on my Apple II+ in 1981!”

Then I actually spent some time in the application. And it hit me:

“This is brilliant! It’s just like word processing on my Apple II+ in 1981!”

So where, exactly, is the appeal in that you ask? Consider this: there’s no visible Internet browser icon tempting you to check the latest news. No incoming email notifications. No RSS feeds. No Twitters. No IMs. No clock. No calendar. No iTunes controls begging you to spin up some “slow jams.”

Just beautifully pure and simple words on a page. Zero fluff. Zero distractions. Just you and your thoughts. The word processing equivalent to floating on your back in the middle of a tranquil lake. The perfect writing environment for the ADD-afflicted. Like me.

I do all my writing for eQuixotic in the sublime sparseness of WriteRoom and it’s an excellent environment for writing my eLearning content too.

If you have a Mac and you write a lot, try this beautiful little app. For Windows users, take a look at the shameless (but free!) WriteRoom knockoff for Windows, Dark Room.

After experiencing WriteRoom (or Dark Room), think about how you can apply this same principle of minimalist efficiency to filter the fat from your eLearning projects and distill everything down to its beautiful, bare essence while still keeping things visually interesting and emotionally engaging to your learners. Not easy – but worth it.

In a world of accelerating complexity, sometimes we can learn a lot from the simpler times of the past. Even if “simpler times” means “1980s computing.”

Side note: the green text on black is a little too old school for me. The WriteRoom (and I assume Dark Room too) environment is completely customizable to your liking. Do you want white text on a blue background, a la classic WordPerfect in DOS? Done. Me, I like white text on black. Just like my old Apple II+. Rest its soul.

Posted in Apple, eLearning Design, eLearning Development Tools