Creative Process
Complexity
This hangs on the door of my office. (Please forgive the marvelous quality of my Treo camera.) It is there to remind me to keep things simple.
We almost always begin with 1+1, right? It’s the core. The mission. The clear systems that get us from “A” to “B”. Then things get complicated. We bring someone else into the project or on the team, and they’re now working on a derivation of the original mission. They realize that we need to turn “1″ into “3/3″ because it will give us better pricing. Then someone else decides that “3/3″ needs to be “(9/3) / 3. And this goes on and on until our systems are so complex and there are so many derivations that it’s difficult to remember our original purpose.
We must strive for simplicity in our systems because dissonance - when the “why” and the “what” don’t add up - typically arises from unnecessary complexity.
That’s why I keep this on my dlog. (That stands for door-log… goofy, I know.) It reminds me each morning to keep it simple.
Tags: complexity, simplicity, systems
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This brings to mind the web application company, 37 Signals who are almost obsessive about KISS (keep it simple stupid). They have published a book (web application focused) on the very subject called “Getting Real“.
Everyone is passionate (ideally) about their specific piece of a given project. They want it to be the coolest part. I think that very fact can lead to over-complexity. That’s why it is so important to keep the basic goals visible at every step of the way.
That’s a great reminder Todd. I know this is one thing I’ve been working on the lately. The challenge that I find is when something is simple from my perspective, but complex from someone else’s. It can be tough to get in their shoes and see what would be the simplest approach.
Often getting things into a picture or graphic helps. I’d like to hear other examples and ideas of simplifying things.
Keep that dlog going!
My fear of the simple answer is looking ignorant in front of my colleagues…I care more about impressing with the complexity than achieving the best result using the simplest method. I think that’s kinda sick…
Thinking of this reminds me of John Maeda’s great book, “The Laws of Simplicity.” A very easy read-100 pages-and the content/ideas are very good. They get at the core of keeping things simple.
I myself can get caught in a hole of overcomplexity from time to time, as we all do I think.
The biggest step towards simplicity is awareness. If you don’t see how complex you are making something, you cannot address it. Only when others are brought in can you begin to see.
If other people are confused by what you are presenting, its not simple enough.