IDEAS

Simple Requires Sophistication

Every system has complexity. The real design choice is who carries it. We can absorb that complexity, or make the user manage it.

Think about calling a company with a simple question and getting a menu of departments. Which one do you need? You know your question. They know their org chart. Yet they ask you to figure it out. Software does the same thing. It asks users to understand how the database stores information, which functions depend on each other and what has to happen first. Those things matter to the people who built the software. The user just wants to get something done.

That’s where simple gets hard. Giving people instructions is easy. Click here first. Choose this option. Don’t forget this step. We can build a knowledge base, record a training video and add another tooltip. Absorbing the complexity takes more work. The software has to remember what the user already told it, carry context forward, anticipate what comes next and prevent mistakes rather than explain how to avoid them.

Simple requires sophistication.

A great restaurant works the same way. Someone decided what the server needs to know, how the kitchen gets the order and what happens when something goes wrong. The restaurant carries that complexity. You order dinner. Imagine if the host handed you an organizational chart instead.

It sounds ridiculous, yet businesses do some version of it every day. Call this department. Fill out this form. Give me the account number you already gave the person who transferred you. Log into another portal. Choose a category that makes perfect sense to us and means absolutely nothing to you. We’ve made our complexity your job.

Then I’ve watched perfectly capable people struggle with software and say, “I’m just terrible with technology.”

Why are you apologizing to the software?

The software didn’t make sense, yet somehow the user walks away believing that says something about their ability. I’m bad at technology. I’m terrible with forms. I can never figure this stuff out. A design decision has become a conclusion about the person using it.

That’s why I keep coming back to one question: Who carries the complexity?

What are we asking users to remember that we could remember? What do they have to understand only because of how we built the system? Where are we asking customers to navigate our organization instead of telling us what they need? How much training are we using to compensate for design?

Some work is genuinely difficult. Some decisions require expertise. The goal isn’t to eliminate complexity. It’s to put it where it belongs.

Simple requires sophistication because somebody has to do the hard work. I’d rather it be the people designing the experience than the person trying to use it.