The hidden cost of design complexity

Designing simple products is often prioritized in tech companies, but the team working on it can also be affected by complexity. Complexity prevents understanding and makes it harder for designers to keep the entire product in their head, engineers to think about side effects, customer support to understand how the product works, analysts to find which part impacts measures, and the QA team to go through edge cases. To minimize unnecessary complexity, companies should simplify for both the user and the team. This can be achieved by removing features, concepts, content, visual effects, animations, steps, rulesets, and untangling the UI by composing screens and pages with modular components. A clear conceptual model of the product can also help to simplify it. The goal is to avoid short-sighted thinking that would trap the team in a complexity hole and look one step ahead when making design decisions.

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