Simplify Your UX Through Reduction

Creating a simple user experience requires a method. It’s not enough to say that you’ll create a simple design, that you’ll design like Apple, or that you’ll just remove enough stuff until it feels right. Creating a simple experience that looks easy, feels easy, and actually is easy is quite complicated.

My search for a framework for simple design started when I began studying the work of John Maeda, a computer scientist, graphic designer, and former President of Rhode Island School of Design. Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity presents ten laws that constitute simplicity, and he expounds on how each law contributes to things feeling simple. Inspired by his work, I took a few of his laws and created a three-step method that you can apply to design thinking. I can only hope that my distillation of his ten laws down to three steps would make him proud.

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