The Dangerous Complexity of Simple
A helpful diagram
In the noonday heat, my roommate usually returns to the flat to take a nap. To dodge the risk of dehydration, it’s wise to take a breather in the beautiful and intense African sun. I usually take this time to return with her: read up on my design books, look at the latest in user interface and experience design, and see where the best designers are going. By way of my living here in Ghana, I’m learning that things have to be simple—more than 250 languages and dialects are spoken here.
I’ve been reflecting more and more upon how to encourage my fellow designers and colleagues who live in the first-world to start thinking about using their gifts—to kindle the developing world for change, even in the slightest of ways. It’s so overwhelmingly lovely to start small, figure out how much of a little impact you’re making, and empower others to empower themselves. To be a Debbie Downer, the majority of the world doesn’t have what you have, or want what you have. And it’s easy to become mystified in this vicious cycle of designing things for the sumptuous, glamorous reasons, and not what the world actually needs. Simple reality and simple design just got boring.
Simple is Best
Everything in Ghana needs to withstand it all. Educational course curriculum, signage, and everyday technologies are great ways to think about how products should be designed to last—they have to survive constraints of life — water, dust, scratches. These make them pinnacles of design. In a way, it’s the opportunity to be pure and just think about the most emotionally primal elements. But inspiration is easy. Implementation and action-based change isn’t. In fact, it’s the hardest thing imaginable. And sometimes, good enough isn’t enough.
“Until there is greater diversity in tech, how are apps for people without voices going to be built if we’re all building apps for our buddies and inner circles? The problems and lives of 20-somethings in tech are not the experiences of people elsewhere. There are still many meaningful problems being left unsolved because we’re busy building a new food delivery service with a slightly different twist.”
I’ve decided it’s time to take a stand for “simple”. Now, I acknowledge I’ve sat at the cool kids table of function, reason, and data, and people have complimented me well on my performance of my career so far with only being 22. Like a bunch of teens sitting around the lunch table, there’s been some smack talk going on about “simple, elite designers”. What do you call a group of designers? An “ego” of designers. I confess, I’ve gone along with this lofty talk in the past, while trying to convince others that I’m not one of “those” pretty bimbo designers. They’re afraid that if they design simply, it’s not aesthetic enough to draw attention as the top pick in their portfolio. It seems at times though that the cool kids of the startup world joined forces, to put their pretty, fluffy designs down once and for all, with their data and logic swords. It is perfectly okay to put down your disposition and complexity and design simple, complete garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.
How does one design simply?
When you’ve got an idea for something simple, your mind is going a hundred miles an hour and you’ve got that cat in the bag. You need to ask yourself whether you have the courage, the strength, the motivation and the passion to make what you want to make. And I mean really ask yourself, because when you first come up with an idea you can get so caught up in it that you can’t see anything else. It’s easy to mistake excitement for passion, motivation and ability. You sketch, you design, you throw things around your art board, you tear down, and you’re halfway through—and it feels like it’s just too artless. When that feeling starts to die down, or you get used to it, you can realize that you don’t have the real raw power to be able to finish and follow through. That’s not a bad thing; there is nothing wrong with recognizing that a project isn’t right for you. Maybe there’s another project that is. But you have to design simple work that to you may look unsexy. Put it in the hands of people who need and want it for change? That’s sexy. You have to be okay with designing something simply to just make life easier. Something unglamorous, but something glamorously useful.
“Our jobs are to care about people and design and to stand on a tightrope between the two. The executives are right. It doesn’t matter what you think is happening. The numbers will tell you how users really behave. You’ll be the one who knows design is a problem-solving exercise, a planning exercise, a profession of results.”
How does one design simply for change?
Design for problems you give a shit about. Leaders don’t search for inspiration. They see the lack of realness in the world and simply did something about it. We all draw muse from around ourselves, but with all of our first-world privilege and first-world instruction, our inspiration may be ineffective. It’s fantastic that we all want to build and design for people who need running water, children without vaccinations, and verbally and emotionally abused women all over the world who don’t know what a wholesome relationship is like. But with our first-world business culture, we have an amazing lack of understanding about the problems that don’t affect us directly. This affects how successful our products are and how we don’t understand that yes, things need to be designed attractively, but fundamentally simply. So when working for social change, take the backseat. Question whether or not you even need to fix it yourself. It sounds bad, but sometimes you aren’t the correct person to work on something, even if you care deeply about it. Design changes entire oceans and societies of people, and the things you design for water, health, and better education can create distress, or even wars. Be conscious of the wider flow-of-effect your work is going to be and understand the indirect impact your design will have on the community. There will always be repercussions, especially when it comes to social change. Do you want people to care? Join forces with a healthy and seasoned team. Bounce off each other’s brains and hold accountability with each other to think holistically, culturally, and rationally. You have to find the simple—find the innovation, the creativity, the opportunity wherever you are. You have to look beneath the surface and avoid the externalities, avoid getting caught up in the “pretty” whirlwind that can distract you from finding how to design the simple for what you love.
“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”