I want to think like Hans.

Hans Monderman, that is, one of the greatest designers of our time.

What, you've never heard of Hans Monderman? Unless you carefully read your Wired in December of 2004, you're probably not alone. I doubt Mr. Monderman would ever call himself a designer anyway. He's a traffic engineer. Most importantly, he's someone who has taken a very intelligent look at the way people really drive, and the way they really react to visual cues around them, and come to the conclusion that the best way to design, say, an intersection is to take all the signage away.

That's right, the best design is almost entirely lacking in the obvious markers of 'design'.

It turns out, when people aren't busy looking at and interpreting signage, they pay attention to one another. And to pedestrians. And apparently it works. The don't run each other over. Children come out of hiding. Traffic still flows, but safely.

Everything about Monderman's design gives ultimate respect to the human over the designer. Let's say it again. It respects the human over the designer. Here's how Monderman puts it:

Who has the right of way? I don’t care,’ said Hans Monderman, a traffic engineer. ‘People here have to find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains.’

Monderman isn't saying what is so often unsaid, but so often present in our design process--the idea that, as the designer I'm a bit smarter than you. I know what's best for you, and I'll give it to you as I see fit. Don't we IA types just love to assume we can make it easy for our users, hold their hands through the process, spoon feed them small bits of information, carry them in our loving arms safely through their tasks? Isn't it pretty much the crux of what we do? But Monderman isn't saying, simplify because your users can't grasp too much, he's saying, simplify, because they can.

And that's the most egoless design I've ever heard of. It goes way beyond the "less is more" sleekness of my sexy new iPod. It goes beyond the glorious"we didn't know any HTML" asceticism of Google's home page. It goes beyond because it intentionally respects human abilities, and never assumes the designer is the smarter one.

As a former project manager with a knack for detail, but zero design training (or some might say, talent) I started my information architecture career with plenty of thoroughness -- holy cow, I had a link for everything -- but very little sense of where to stop. Of how much was too much. As I adopted the popular 'wizard' style of IA, the link count shrank, and I hope the results became more useful. I think I learned a bit about carrying those users in my loving arms, safely through their tasks. But if I'm being honest, that's about it. I still fall back on step-by-step, wizard approach for many online tasks. After all, we all now by know that we must "reduce memory load" and "prevent errors" right? After all, I'm a bit smarter than the "user" aren't I?

I know I'm not alone. Who of us regulary counts on people to "find their own way, negotiate for themselves, use their own brains"? Isn't that what we IA types spend all of our time trying to avoid? The dreaded possibility of users having to think? If we take Hans seriously (and I do, oh I do) this could mean the very end of our raison d'etre and our paychecks too!

Of course, there are limits to the uses of this sort of un-design. It doesn't work in every context, it doesn't scale. Most importantly, its success relies on social interactions:

This is social space, so when Grandma is coming, you stop, because that’s what normal, courteous human beings do.

I honestly don't know if this model can work online. It's not a social space, or not consistently a social space. And before you get all Web 2.0 on me and start screaming about how the internet is all about social interaction now, remember that people still use the internet for all sorts of fairly non-social tasks. They check their bank account balances, they look up who played Wayne in last night's Love Monkey, they put their sexy new iPod in a shopping cart and then pay for it. People still do plain old 1999 style tasks online, often interacting with no one other than the corporate brand.

So what I want to know is, in the absence if social interactions, can a model like Monderman's work? Can I un-design? Can I respect my users' abilities?

Because I want it to. I want to respect my fellow humans.

I want to think like Hans.