Simplicity

"Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple." - Albert Einstein

“Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.” - Charles Mingus

 "No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it." - Alan Cooper.

It would seem intuitively obvious that a product that exposes fewer design facets to a user is going to be easier to take in, absorb, and understand than a product with a thousand bell and whistles. Yet, we continue to produce function-laden products and products with overly complex designs that confuse and dissatisfy users. There may be a number of reasons underlying this phenomenon including the perception that the more features available, the more useful the product. Design for simplicity actually requires some hard work.  Here are some approaches.

1. Ask a few questions about the function itself: 
• Is this function really needed? Is there user feedback that substantiates the need?
• Is the function included to simply meet a competitor's offering. Do we know that their customers find this function useful?
2. Sometimes the implementation is being inappropriately pushed into the user interface. Consider making this type of functionality automatic or behind the scenes.
3. When facing a design problem, consider eliminating the problem rather than doing more design to fix it.
4. Hide advanced functionality initially and allow more advanced users to opt in.
5. Avoid visual clutter; have sufficient white space.
6. Most important or commonly used items should get top billing.
7. Avoid deep levels of navigation where possible and appropriate. 
8. Focus on shortening the steps for the most important or repetitive user tasks.
9. Last but not least: test it with users! 

These are just a few suggestions. I'm sure there are many more. Let me know your techniques.

Lose Your Ego

As a designer, your hard work will be easily and often challenged. I can be really disheartening when you've worked incredibly hard to create what you think is an elegant and engaging solution to a design problem and customers, stakeholders or user test subjects pick it apart. On the other side, when reviewing someone's design, it's so easy to see remaining design issues while not really appreciating or pointing out all that is right with the design.

If you have a big ego and therefore you easily become defensive, it'll get in the way of hearing any constructive criticism offered up. Some tips:

• you don't hold a monopoly on good ideas - welcome criticism and others' thoughts
  
• try to stay objective and evaluate (with rationale) others' ideas against your own
• don't become too attached to your design; it'll need to change
• don't design in a vacuum, seek feedback
  

Difficult Design Problems Require Focus

Got a difficult design problem? Step away from the computer for a while, focus on the problem, paint a picture of the design in your mind.

Aside from the obvious distractions on the computer (chat messages, email notifications etc) that can draw your attention away from the problem, I find the computer itself can be a stumbling block and a distraction.

If the design problem is really just too involved or complicated to hold all at once in your mind, try drawing it out with a pencil (remember those?) and paper. If you try to mock it up with a graphics package, Visio for example, that software can also draw your focus away from the problem at hand.

Though this approach doesn't work with every design problem, I've found that it often produces the best results either immediately or by setting a seed in your mind that later 'sprouts' with a solution.