To talk about simplification is to find yourself talking in paradoxes.
One of them is that you can’t distil the complex topic of simplification into three rules.
But I like a challenge, so…
Rule 1: Don't dumb it down. Bring it to life.
The start-point is always complexity. Specialist or large quantities of information, long and difficult forms or processes, or new digital products and services can all become difficult to consume if allowed to grow out of hand.
You don’t simplify by trying to hide complexity – or by hiding from it. You need to embrace the complexity, see it from all angles, and then find ways to bring it to life for the audience.
You’re not there to dumb the content down. You’re there to shine a light on it.
It means doing the hard mental processing so that users don’t have to. Your tech solution might do that processing for them or, even better, you might design out the need for that processing altogether. It’s difficult to do. It takes time, fierce concentration, the ability to assimilate a lot of data and possibly conflicting requirements and constraints, and the skills to distill it all into one elegant solution for the user.
One page from hundreds: sketching, doodling, experimenting. Finding simple ways to capture and express complexity, either through content design or interaction design (or both).
Rule 2: Simple on the surface can be complex underneath: be ready to stand by a simple solution and help people build it.
Creativity is usually seen as making something. But simplification can be more about making things disappear, or ‘adding lightness’.
It’s an act of creativity, but the end result can be intangible. Often, simplicity is derived from somebody having the insight to know when to say ‘no’. Perhaps to a new feature that customers don’t really need or want, or perhaps to a particularly convoluted process that can should streamlined.
As a writer transforms information into knowledge through a carefully organised and precisely expressed progression of thoughts and ideas, so a service designer may take the user on an orchestrated sequence of interactions that feel obvious and easy at each step, but which build into a rich and complex engagement with a product or brand.
When something looks simple, it is easy to underestimate the work that went into it.
On the old Screwfix site, the customer had to read and decipher a delivery options matrix that reflected all the business rules, but made no real attempt to help the user make their decision:
In the simplified version, the task of reading and understanding the mini-spreadsheet is taken away from the user.
The mini-spreadsheet has three axes of analysis: delivery date, delivery service (relating to time of day), and price. The user has to juggle combinations of those three factors to derive the best option for them. That makes the whole thing feel too complicated.
The effort comes not from selecting the delivery slot you want, but from untangling the logic of the spreadsheet.
Making one assumption about the user - that ‘delivery date’ is important - a simplified version can take the user through the same logic but with much less effort.
Starting with selecting the preferred delivery date, available time slots can be shown, with the corresponding price:
If you don’t like the time slots available you can tap another day, until you find the best combination. There’s less to read, and less to think about and the chances of making the best selection are higher
Progressive disclosure allows the designer to hide information that’s not relevant, creating a much cleaner and simpler-looking interface.
This payments page from the Nationwide app presents as simple. Depending on your payment route (to/from account; payment/transfer; new/existing payee), you see only the fields that make sense to your journey.
But the page has moved complexity to the system, which now must manage a rat's nest of different options and potential journeys.
Mapping just three of the journeys shows the hidden complexity that business analysts, designers and build teams would need to get their heads around to get the simple page above built:
It's important to be ready to create this type of document to explain and support simple solutions.
Rule 3: Simplification is a listening game
Although the phrases ‘service design’, ‘interaction design’ and ‘user experience design’ have become hot in recent years, the mental skills required in those fields have been in action for years. Writers and information designers have long been obsessed with simplification. People who trained as writers - journalists, copywriters, technical authors - make excellent simplifiers because empathy, understanding and clarity are their stocks-in-trade.
But anyone can trigger a simplification journey. And it may come from a quiet voice. Not obsessed with adding functions or making impact, simplifiers tend instead to reflect on what is, and what is not, really needed. Their questions often begin ‘This might be a stupid question, but…’
Reflective voices are easily sidelined, but should be listened out for. And they may not be the ones charged with ‘doing’ the UX or design.
Anyone involved in the creation of a new service or product can be a simplifier. Sometimes it can be the job of the UX designer merely to listen out for these voices across the business, and marshal them all into a coherent end product.
The ability to listen actively is key to all of this.
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