I am currently reading the Upanishads which are a collection of more than 200 philosophical texts of the Hindu religion. The oldest of the mukhya Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya were composed during the pre-Buddhist era of India.

While reading this amazing book, I was inspired by the quote above to create a digital Mandala. I’m offering this design here as a free download (high resolution 300dpi) feel free to make take it, print it, make it a crazy wallpaper, whatever you like, just please make it your own, and pass it on.

Truthfully, the picture isn’t as bleak as I’ve painted here. There are a few companies here and there that deliver simple products with a high degree of consistency (Apple, and Google come to mind.) And fortunately almost everyone (regardless of discipline, background, or hierarchy) seems to agree that delivering products that actual non-technical human beings can use is a good idea. There is very rarely any disagreement that simplicity as a goal is important, relevant, and critical to the success of a product within the marketplace.

So the question remains… why is this so hard to do? Why are there so few simple products in the world? Why is simplicity so elusive? Why is it so difficult to deliver a simple, easy-to-use, easy-to-understand product? Realizing the significance of simplicity coupled with its elusiveness and having found what I believe is the answer, I feel as though I’ve unearthed one of the ‘seven wonders of the world’ so please read on.

The answer is quite simple. ‘Define and agree on what simplicity means.’ Sure sounds easy, doesn’t it?

Simplicity as a principle is completely subjective. Everyone has a different idea of what ‘is simple’, and what ‘isn’t simple’. So in looking for a common definition I turned to the dictionary. Unfortunately the explanations found there couldn’t be more complex. I found over 29 different definitions for ‘simple’.

From there I started synthesizing the explanations into patterns, into groups. Almost all of the examples talk about what simple ‘is not’, what it ‘isn’t doing’, what it ‘isn’t being’, what it ‘isn’t’. So by definition ‘simplicity’ is the nature of not being, not doing, it is the nature of non-action; it is the simple act of saying no. This discovery was completely revolutionary for me for the following reason. Simplicity is about what you don’t create, rather than what you do create. Simplicity is about not doing. It’s about your eraser, not your pencil. It is by definition reductive thinking.

Here is my best attempt at a simple definition:

Simple (adjective)

1. Easy to understand and use.
2. Not elaborate, ornate, artificial, or complicated.
3. Occurring or considered alone; mere; bare.

So to recap, if your goal is to deliver something simple, you have to be very direct and clear about what simplicity means, how this principle will be used to make decisions, and most importantly what the agreement is/means. Simplicity is about completely agreeing on what you are doing, as well as what you are not doing, form the beginning without backsliding. In order to deliver on the promise of simplicity you fundamentally have to do less. This means that all of the people involved have to be ok with doing less. This can be quite unintuitive and contradictory to the nature of creative professionals who are in some form always tinkering on a subconscious level. Simplicity means discipline, agreement, and focused execution.

I’ve outlined some steps teams might employ to help deliver on the noble promise of simplicity:

1. Agree on a common definition for what ‘simplicity’ means.
2. Agree upon how decisions of what-to-do, or more importantly, what not-to-do will be made relative to the common definition.
3. Make the decisions up front.
4. Stick to the plan. Do not backslide.

We see ourselves as self-important, our work as self-significant, and we can get wrapped up in sophisticated beliefs, becoming rigid in our thinking mind, our attitude, our approach, and our perspective. What is it that we give up, or forget under the day-to-day pressures, and responsibilities of adult life?

We forget to play. We stop laughing. We stop experimenting. We take things for granted. We make assumptions.

We lose sight of the joy that exists in every moment if we just tune-our-perspective, let-go of our ego, and take the time to see it.

If we consciously recall the perspective of the six year old (yes it’s still inside every grown adult) we can reclaim the powerful simplicity of this outlook. The next time you’re stuck in a really tough area, or have invested tons of cycles trying to circumnavigate a technical constraint, take a step back, see the challenge with joy, appreciate the opportunity it is providing you, and ask yourself or the group this question…

‘What would a six year old do?’

You might very well just be over thinking the problem. Sometimes the clearest, most-obvious solution really is the best solution.

1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Form a powerful guiding coalition
3. Create a vision
4. Communicate the vision
5. Empower others to act on the vision
6. Plan for/create short term wins (communicate them)
7. Consolidate improvements and accelerate change
8. Institutionalize new approaches

Executive support and involvement is required to effect change. Specifically with steps one through three.

So what then, will save lives, change the world, or make a difference? Take action. There are indeed very few people who actually do something about their good ideas. People who do things with good ideas are very rare.

So if so many people have good ideas, why don’t more people do things with their good ideas? The most likely reason is, fear of failure. Add onto this fear, the simple fact that there are likely close to one hundred thousand reasons not to do something with your idea. It could be too risky, too expensive, too scary, too radical, too disruptive, too supportive, too unusual, too obvious, I call these counterarguments. Then if that’s not enough to stop you dead in your tracks, things get even further complicated when ideas are socialized. There are all sorts of people out there that for one reason or another will expend enormous amounts of energy telling you why your ideas are bad and why you should hang it up now. I call these people the naysayers. The combination of fear-of-failure, counterarguments, and naysayers combined stop 99% of people with good ideas. All of this tips the scales for most people in terms of cost benefit. The possible costs of failure, the energy required to unlock each counterargument, and the potential social embarrassment are just too much for most people, and so sadly good ideas fade.

So how do some rare individuals manage to overcome all of these obstacles and see their ideas through to fruition? What do they do differently? While I can’t speak for everyone out there here are three things I’ve identified over the years that have helped be work through these tough issues.

1. Embrace failure as a necessary step towards success
2. Involve naysayers early… while avoiding yeasayers
3. Involve yeasayers later… to help convince the naysayers

Embrace failure as a necessary step towards success

The truth is, there is only one reason to do something; to learn from it. You will never know unless you try… and perhaps even more importantly, no one else will ever know unless you (or someone else) try. All human learning is rooted in trial-and-error. From the Wright Brothers we have Boeing. It won’t ever fly if you don’t try. If you fail make sure you learn. True failure is ‘failure absent of learning.’

Involve naysayers early…

Ironically it has been my consistent observation that the better ‘your idea,’ the greater the resistance to it. There will always be masses of naysayers telling you why your idea is bad. Identify the individuals who have an intrinsic gift for naysaying, you want only the experts naysayers, then involve them, and put them to work for you. By involving naysayers and hearing all of the objections, contradictions, feedback, and concerns, you begin to quickly realize that these folks are indeed helping you by asking really really good, really tough questions. By finding clever answers to them you are systematically improving your idea. By working through the issues, you may even convert a few naysayers to yeasayers, although this isn’t your goal. Improving your idea is your primary goal, building credibility is second.

Of course no self respecting naysayer will even consider participating unless your idea is worthy of their efforts. So make sure you ask a few good questions yourself first. You only want to bring good ideas to court.

Here are several good questions to ask of any idea to qualify it as a good idea:

• Should you even do blah?
• What do you mean by blah?
• What are you assuming by blah?
• How do you know blah?
• What caused blah?
• Are there any other possible solutions to blah?
• What are the short term/medium term/long term consequences of blah?
• What should be done?

…while avoiding yeasayers

If early in the process you only seek out yeasayers with your idea, sure you’ll fell good getting pat on the back, and repeatedly told how brilliant you are, but this will fill you with a false sense of confidence. You must avoid this, tempting as it may be. If you haven’t thought through your ideas, this will eventually be exposed, and all credibility lost.

The simple truth is yeasayers won’t give you critical feedback, even if they think your ideas are faulty. They won’t help you improve your idea, they won’t help you improve your thinking. Save the yes men for later, right now this only serves to accelerate you towards failure.

In this way yeasayers work against you. I know, it’s counterintuitive.

Involve yeasayers later… to help convince the naysayers

Once you’ve worked with enough naysayers to ensure your ideas are bulletproof, and you’ve thought through every possible edge-case, technical constraint, and exception, realize you alone can’t convince everybody. So find your best salesmen, your yeasayers! Get them involved now to help you sell your ideas. This is when yeasayers are at their best. Their unbridled optimism is so infectious that in this way you’re simultaneously building momentum and credibility. Congratulations everyone is on board and you’re one step closer to making your ideas real.

1. Be both a revolution and an evolution. Revolutionary solutions solve problems that don’t have solutions. Evolutionary solutions must be twice as good as exiting solutions. Ensure you’re doing both.




2. 80% at 100%. Delight 80% of your customers 100% of the time. Trying to make everybody happy displeases everybody equally, and it isn’t possible.




3. Handle failure gracefully. The greatest determination of character is failure. Systems fail, anticipate this. Handling system failure well will increase customer satisfaction more than the addition of any feature.




4. Aesthetics improves usability and trust. If it looks good it’s easier to use – even if it’s not. If it looks good it’s better engineered – even if it’s not. Aesthetics improves usability and trust in any system.




5. Simple or flexible. Embrace the tension between simplicity and flexibility but decide at the beginning which is more important as they’re mutually exclusive goals. You can’t have both without displeasing everyone equally. See point two.




6. Cost vs. benefit. Time is money. An activity will only be pursued if the perceived benefits are equal to or greater than the costs. The biggest cost to consumers with any system is time.




7. Understand value. Value in this context is a vehicle of exchange. The customer is exchanging revenue for one or more of the following:
   • Time
   • Security
   • Convenience (different than time)
   • Entertainment
   • Prestige
8. Deliver value by:
   • Significantly reducing customer pain
   • Significantly returning the customers time
   • Consolidating multiple solutions/workarounds into one solution without complexity
   • Requiring little to no previous knowledge to consume
   • Requiring little to no maintenance to consume
   • Not creating new problems
9. Emotions matter. Customers don’t want to feel stupid, confused, or angry… customers want to feel competent, understood, and satisfied. Ensure people feel good about your solution, otherwise you’re creating new problems, see point eight.




10. Be taken for granted. Your goal isn’t to be noticed, it’s to go unnoticed. In delivering a system the highest compliment is to be so intuitive that the system goes unnoticed.

Several months later after finally recovering at home I learned that my best friend had died tragically in a motorcycle accident. He also was thirteen.

These two events were my first real encounters with my own mortality and the fragility of life. Both events fundamentally changed my perspective relative to time and it’s value.

Several years ago I finally got around to reading Steven Covey’s book “The Seven Habits of Highly Effectively People.” In this very insightful book one of Steven’s seven principles is the idea of “Living with the end in mind.” In the book Steven talks fairly clinically about clients of his and how their near death experiences changed their perspective. While such a topic may make folks uncomfortable, seem dark, or morbid within western culture, speaking from firsthand experience this has in fact been the single most powerful and motivating factor in my life. I came to this realization at the age of thirteen.

Many people sleepwalk through life fantasizing about some convenient, neat, and timely end. They might procrastinate and assume that there will be time to live their dreams, “someday”. Sometimes folks snap out of it about half way through, and have a mid-life crisis and finally start living life pro-actively and unapologetically. They start doing all of the things that they always dreamed of doing, that they put off for so long. They start living with intention, in the present.

So I say why wait until the mid-point to start living? Why put your dreams on hold, why procrastinate, when the only guarantee in live in life, is right now, right in front of you, the present. What are you doing right now to live the live of your dreams?

So as scary as it may seem, stop taking life for granted, stop living your life on the assumption (and it is an assumption) that you have unlimited time here, stop putting it-off . Start making time for your dreams, make them happen, live fully in the present right now, go!

While Apple fanboys are still be in denial, it’s nice to see Walt Mossberg give a fair and reasonable review to what might be one of the greatest consumer products available today.

Personally I’m most impressed with the Zune desktop software and have been contemplating an A:B competitive analysis with iTunes. Time will tell.

The cold hard reality is that people will judge your design work. People will do this whether you want them to or not. If you put a design down in front of a person the first thing that person will do (either consciously or subconsciously) is judge it, or by another definition, try to understand what they like and dislike about the concept and there is nothing more painful that sitting through a design review and watching a designer get defensive, visibly uncomfortable, red-in-the-face, and progressively angry as project stakeholders clumsily attempt to communicate their thoughts.

Over time this judgment of your design work, will eventually formulate into a judgment about your ability as a designer, into judgment about you. That’s right, now it’s personal. If your designs are consistently good, you are clearly a good designer. If your designs are consistently questionable, then you are at best questionable designer. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. This remains the largest misconception outside of the design discipline.
Time and time again this all comes down to communication. Typically it’s a failure on the behalf of the designer to appropriately frame their design appropriately. All too often half-baked designs get put up for review and expectations are never set. So the review goes less favorably and good designers get burned.

Two simple rules to get valuable feedback on design solutions:

1. Qualify designs appropriately before review
2. Pro actively seek out unvarnished (yes even subjective) feedback

Qualify designs appropriately before review

Designers, the next time you have to review a design with a project stakeholder or client. Take an hour before the review and think about the state of your proposal. Ask yourself the following questions and write down the answers:

• How far along are you?
• What goals have you met, what goals haven’t you met, or are no longer relevant?
• What are the goals of the intended design? Have they changed?
• What are the known constraints and affordances?
• What are your own assumptions?
• What specific type of feedback are you looking for?

What you are doing by taking this simple pro-active step is qualifying the review and setting everyone’s expectations ahead of time. This will ensure you identify any issues early (usually a conflict of goals, which isn’t about the design at all) and get the appropriate feedback that you’re looking for.

Pro actively seek out unvarnished (yes even subjective) feedback

Accept then, that you are not your design. You are not what you do. To survive a career in design you must learn to thrive on feedback and separate your own self-value from your design work. This is different than not caring about your designs. Indeed you care so much that you are pro-actively involving as many people as possible to gather feedback.

Once you’re able to separate your own ego from your work (you are not what you create) you begin to see feedback and criticism in a very new way. I had this sudden realization while on vacation about six years into my career and the core of the realization was this; ‘the whole world is only trying to help you, to make you better, you just have to get yourself out of the way.’ If you have the courage and conviction to accept that it’s not all about you, this single shift in perspective, has the potential to completely change your outlook on your work, and your life as a creative problem solver.

The very next day back at work, I started walking the hallways with concept sketches, asking everyone, and anyone that would listen. I was surprised how much I learned about people, how similar we all are, how we say the same things, just in different way, and how everyone has enormously valuable perspective, regardless of their discipline or education. By collecting and focusing this perspective on your work, you realize the true role of the designer is to ‘funnel, filter, and focus’ perspective on concepts.

If you’re honest with yourself and think back to even your most inspired work, how many of the ideas, concepts, and sources of inspiration were uniquely your own? There’s a great quote from Pablo Picasso that’s stuck with me from my days in art school that speaks to this, ‘If there is something to steal, I steal it’ or ‘good artists steal ideas, great artists plagiarize.’ In summary, you’re only as capable as the sources you expose yourself to, and your ability to collect ideas, and focus then in new and create ways.

Every honest judgment, every honest criticism, ever honest perspective, and every honest idea is valuable, valid, is truth and it’s all there just waiting to help you, if you ask for it.

I love how well it artculates the value of iteration and that you must discover both the potential challenges/constraints and design solutions of projects by actually moving through the work.

It would be a great conversation to hear folks thoughts on how to better incorporate iteration into the all up design planning process. How do you accomodate the lurking unknown? The secrets in each project that are there waiting to be discovered?

This smells of agile development, but something more closely linked to design. Any thoughts?