The mission identifies a problem and a direction. Here we attempt something more specific: a loose framework for the kind of reasoning digimin encourages when evaluating tools, workflows, and the choices embedded in both. The central concept - the Digitally Minimal Index - is less of a score to calculate and more of a thinking cue. It asks, for any given solution: what does this really cost, and what does it return beyond its function?
The digitally minimal philosophy aligns with those choices that
- On the one hand, are suitable for operation within a given ecosystem - don’t compromise project constraints, don’t block team collaboration and don’t hamper delivery.
- At the same time, actively seek to address the undesired byproduct, including needless operational complexity, dependencies, constraints, risks and mental burden.
Faced with a choice of platform/tool, consider factors such as costs and gains, both physical, emotional and financial, both short-term and long-term, the alternatives sacrificed, and the cost of reversibility.
The decision process may involve structural and stakeholder dependencies, operational requirements (hardware/system/network), system interoperability, architectural complexity, codebase and data transparency, interface options, long-term durability, stakeholder ease-of-use, along with aesthetic and emotional considerations.
Definition: let DMI be the Digitally Minimal Index of a solution’s alignment with the digitally minimal philosophy.
- Because the philosophy considers a range of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, the solution’s DMI will fluctuate across contexts in which it is used as well as across users.
digimin is interested in exploring high-DMI solutions.
Mind the training period.
- The choice of a high-DMI solution may require a period of acclimatization - days to months depending on the tool - before it begins returning value. This is not a defect of the tool. It reflects a general pattern in skill acquisition: unfamiliar interfaces feel slower before they feel faster, and the gap between current friction and eventual fluency is easy to mistake for evidence that the tool is wrong.
It behooves us to conduct DMI analysis of our tool ecosystem even when the act of doing so is unpopular.
Don’t expect DMI to scale across team size.
- What’s desirable for a many-user team of tight and frequent collaboration, is unlikely the optimal for a few-user team of ad-hoc collaboration. And what’s ideal for that few-user team is hardly expected to hold for a one-user initiative interacting with only external stakeholders.
Sometimes, analog is the way to go.
- digimin is open to the idea that even today, there is occasional opportunity for entirely analog or paper-based high-DMI solutions: solutions whose project constraints don’t rationalize the use of complex or even primitive digital tools.
(Related) Sometimes, literally the simplest tool for the job is the best.
- In presence of popular innovation and industry standards, we are liable to neglect that certain, more-than-capable neanderthal primitivism under our very noses.
DMI analysis is domain agnostic.
Take project management: the choice of methodology, communication cadence, and tooling should follow the nature of the project, the team’s distribution and collaboration style, and the stakeholders involved - not industry defaults.
Same as that project manager, we should encourage ourselves to conduct similar analysis not merely within formal project scope but across any domain involving technology.