Why Life Can’t Be Simpler

If we accept that complexity is a constant, we need to always be mindful of who is bearing the burden of that complexity.

A third lesson is that products and services are only as good as what happens when they break.

A second lesson is that things don’t always need to be incredibly simple for users.

The first lesson from Tesler’s law of the conservation of complexity is that how simple something looks is not a reflection of how simple it is to use.

Complexity is like energy. It cannot be created or destroyed, only moved somewhere else. When a product or service becomes simpler for users, engineers and designers have to work harder. Norman writes, “With technology, simplifications at the level of usage invariably result in added complexity of the underlying mechanism. ”