Gears of War...or Over Complication
If you want, you can make the simplest task the most complicated waste of time imaginable with almost a guaranteed outcome of non-completion. Now why on earth would we choose to do this? Well, there are a few reasons we tend to do this, and hopefully by identifying them early, you can avoid them and keep it simple. Remember, doing less things perfectly is better than doing more things in a half-assed manner.
“If you are never really done with it, you can never be held accountable for things that don’t work.”
1. By over-complicating the task, you avoid having to “hand it off”, where it now becomes something out of your control. (Control freaks – this one was for you.)
2. By continuing to noodle with a task or adding complexity, you can avoid having to ever find out if you did it right or not. This is a typical “fear of failure” behavior.
3. You think if it’s not complicated, it has less value, therefor you will be seen as less impressive or successful. We all know people like this.
4. You presume to know what the client or manager will say in response to your completed task (be it a statement of work, a design change, or an initial presentation), so you start trying to answer all the hypothetical responses before you ever get the dialog started. This is often a symptom of control freaks or insecurity.
5. You over-complicate because you can’t back your mind out of where you are in the task. You can no longer see it from a big picture perspective (or even a different perspective) so you get stuck trying to find solutions which all require a high level of complexity due to the fact that you are so immersed in the task or process. The only way to avoid this is to ensure you are getting team feedback and input at critical stages of your process.
6. You don’t want to say goodbye. Once you finish something, it’s truly up for critique, criticism and additional input. If you are never really done with it, you can never really be held accountable for things that don’t work, and you convince yourself that even though you can’t complete it, one day it will prove valuable to something else. This is the hoarder behavior.
So, do any of these behaviors describe you? Have you found ways to avoid over-complication? How do you help others follow the path of least resistance? I’m sure I missed some, so tell us – how else do we manage to over-complicate what could be simple? And why?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post and well said. I love the idea of “less is best” or “less is more”, but is it in fact always true and just a catchy design type thing to say?
If less is best and we strive to live in a world where under-complicated is the name of the game, would we have the material items we love most, like an iPhone? Wouldn’t the evolution of the mobile phone have stopped at the ability to make and send calls, as opposed to the computer in our hand it’s become today? And isn’t it sort of cheating to say that the iPhone is the simplest form of the complicated concept that it is? If less is best, there never would have been a swiss army knife.
Are we allowed to have over complicated ideas as long as the solutions are under-complicated?
Twitter is as simple as it gets; but how many of us choose to use a third-party client over the service’s site itself, because simple was too simple and the demand for feature sets was and is still extremely high? Do we not demand complexity when given simple?
Martin,
Thanks for your comment and insights. The iPhone brings up a great example, although I would wager that compared to the Blackberry or the Android, it’s a simpler solution overall. When I wrote the post, I was thinking about how we often over complicate design solutions, proposals, even the simple answering of questions. We tend to fret over them like they are fragile pieces of sculpture. Or we sit and fiddle with solving a problem to the point where we don’t even remember what the original problem was. In these cases, it’s always helpful for me to step back, and look for a simple solution. In the case of the iPhone, I feel like it’s a device giving me lots of simple solutions built into one nicely designed (and simple) interface. A true testament to the iPhone’s simplicity is how much children love it. My nieces aren’t screaming to play with my brother-in-law’s Blackberry. Perhaps “Simplicity is Best” would have been a better title
Ah, yes. #4. It stung. I’m going through this right now. Trying to anticipate my manager’s reaction to some mockups. Not going with my gut because of it. But knowing my gut is better (that might be the control freak part of me). Yes, insecurity…a little. This post came just in time.
Tracy,
Yes – going with your gut is a great skill to always work on developing. I trust mine much more today then I did years ago – I guess it gets better with age and experience. As for control issues, I always ask my team “why” they are concerned about control – what would the out of control situation create? Maybe a little less control (if you have a good team to work with) will get you past sticking points? Regardless – good luck and thanks for your comment.
I think it is important to embrace the act of letting go or, as Seth Godin has termed it, shipping it. Completing something feels wonderful and every step of your process should be in support of this goal. However, with that being said, I think that we forget that design—or any creative profession—is as much about editing as it is about all the other processes that come with it. As humans, I think we overcomplicate because we have become uncomfortable with the idea of absence.
Justin,
Thanks for the comment. Agree – we definitely are a culture that doesn’t like the idea of absence. The hardest thing to do is to let go of (or paint over) your favorite small part in order to allow the whole thing to progress to where it needs to be. A great thing I learned in art school. Taking away is just as important as adding.