ARTICLE SUMMARY: As designers we want to simplify our designs to give the user a smooth and seamless design that’s easy to navigate and use.
The problem is sometimes over simplifying a design does more harm than good.
“Don’t oversimplify designs: how to work around complexity with Tesler’s law” by Kia Wong looks at this issue and helps you avoid over simplification. In his article talks about
- What is Tesler’s Law
- Innate Complexity in a system
- Reducing Obvious Complexity
In his article Kia Wong uses the example of getting your taxes done with that fancy new AI software that only asks for your name, SS number and Employee ID Number only and then presto, five minutes later taxes are done.
That leaves you with a lot of unanswered questions that most people would be inclined to take a closer look at, like what were and how did this program get the figures used for wages, deductions, dependents write offs and so on. It would have save more time having the user put in that information themselves rather than having to verify.
Kia Wong reminds us that sometimes the answer isn’t always to try and simplify further: it’s to design around the innate complexity of the product.
This is a great article that will help enhance your audience’s User Experience.
Let us know what you think in the comments.
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