Testimonial
"Ellen, thank you so much for all of your help with our product documentation -- it was refreshing to work with someone with your years of experience and professionalism." Tim Nufire, MailFrontier
What is Sprezzatura?
Sprezzatura is the art of making the difficult look easy. Software is often perceived as difficult to use. Good design enables users to do their jobs without thinking about the software.
Design is different than "style." Design is deciding what functions are meaningful to the user and should be included, how the software flows from one function to another.
User-driven. Not style-driven.
Sprezzatura is an old Italian term, meaning:
"an assumed air of doing difficult things with an effortless mastery and an air of nonchalance" (Count Baldassare Castiglione in Book of the Courtier.)
"... a deliberate nonchalance, the illusion that even the most difficult things are easy... Anything unessential is disdained. The presentation is so direct that it seems to be improvised, and so natural that it seems it could not go any other way." (source)