COMPLEXITY

As you start trying to solve the real problems, you build to complexity, which is where all the patches and hacks and elaborate solutions fight for your attention. This is the fighter-jet cockpit or the 80-page instruction manual, where you must stop your life for a moment just to understand what’s going on. When you leave things here, they remain really rather complicated.

SIMPLE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF COMPLEXITY

But then, with enough persistence, you push through to the kind of simple that comes next, where it takes on an elegance. It provides a solution to the problem in the simplest form. It’s not surface simple. It’s deliberate, purpose-filled simple. This is the kind of simple that comes from applying insight and expertise to a complex but deeply understood problem or situation. So the result may look simple, but at its core, it holds a strong level of capability and relevance that shapes it.

Take the iPhone, for example. It’s anything but simple, yet it has the appearance of simple. It’s sleek, clear and easy to use. Increasingly complex layers remain hidden, until you need them. Organization, hierarchy, patterns and intuitive approaches all help you make sense of only the bits that are relevant at each moment. This is the simple that requires deep understanding and great effort – as well as great discipline – to achieve.

So, as you navigate the different levels of simple, it’s useful to keep a North Star in mind. So you know what kind of simple you’re aiming for. For us, it comes from John Maeda, who wrote an entire book about simplicity, and then summarized it with one law: “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”