The Matryokshka Doll Principle

The Matryoshka Doll Principle, Chinese Box Design, however you would call it. This principle will be a guiding force for the rest of your career.  It forces you into a quality product.  I see it all the time in products, particularly tech products that we all crave, as a technique used to get us hooked.

If you have ever seen a Matryoshka Doll, you will notice some facts about them.  Each doll fits into each other doll in one place, into one series, perfectly.  Each doll is unique in its own special way.  Each doll functions as a piece of art on its own.  One would be perfectly happy, if one did not know what a Matryoshka Doll was, to receive one, perhaps with a trinket inside, because of their intricate yet homespun beauty.  The set together, reinforces this principle of sameness yet differences, and how one could feel totally complete with just one.  Yet if you miss one Doll out of the set, something feels lost.  The set no longer locks together, both in real life, and in a visual way, quite right.  It will rattle when you try to collapse them into one doll. It will look off set when you set them on your shelves.

Much like a Matryoshka Doll, each element of your product must be able to stand alone as something unique and as perfect in and of itself.  They must interlink into a set, that must be greater than the sum of its parts.

However: If you are missing just one part- the project you are working on will be kicked out from underneath its feet.

Here is an example of a modern, Internet product that has this principle working with it.

Each of these products work perfectly fine alone:

Google Search

Google Docs.

Google Calendar

Gmail

Google Chat.

in fact, many people use these products without touching other products Google has.  I would bet that large sums people do use them cohesively.

Through the Google Search, each product is made much better.  One can schedule an event, with a friend, on Google Chat, send a reminder through the calendar with invites that will end up in Gmail, while forwarding through GMail all the documents needed, because Google search is integrated across the board to allow a person to find what they need from each product very quickly and efficiently, in addition to finding it in the “outside web”.  That’s very powerful.  The reason it is powerful is because each product reinforces the other products usability and design.  People want to use it because it makes life so easy when it is all there.

However, as individual items, the power of having a calendar, a document server, an email client, and a chat client accessible and editable from anywhere there is Internet access is still alone a powerful concept and a well designed one.  That concept stands on its own two feet for each product.  One does not need to work with all these products together to see their inherent power on the individuals’ end.  They are each beautiful as they stand as individual products, alone.

That is the Matryoshka Doll Principle.  It is the element to killer design  Each product, alone, must stand for killer design, for something people need. When placed in an ecosystem of other products, it must help stand for something more.

I would give you Zemanta Links, but Zemanta is not being helpful, this is a hard idea to explain and get related content for.  No one is very happy about the idea of locked together design and how it creates more desirable products that people want.