What to Remove to Make your Web and Mobile Designs More Simple (and Better)

This chapter is from the book

Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design, 2nd Edition

Learn More Buy

This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design, 2nd Edition

Learn More Buy

According to a 2002 study by Standish Group, 64 percent of software features are “never or rarely used.” Look at your TV remote control and count the number of buttons that you’ve never touched. The same goes for almost any gadget or software you care to name. There are plenty of opportunities to simplify by removing.

Conventional wisdom says that more features mean more capability, which, in turn, means a more useful product. Conventional wisdom also says that products with more features will beat products with fewer features. But simpler products frequently displace their more complex rivals.

In the 1990s, Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, looked at why big companies with plenty of cash and dominant products were unable to sustain their success and discovered something surprising.

He’d assumed that technology moved on and the big companies just couldn’t keep up. But it turned out they often led the way, thanks to their well-funded R&D departments. And it wasn’t bad leadership—the big companies were run by smart people and backed by investors in the stock exchange. A lot of people thought they were making the right decisions.

It turned out the that technologies that overtook them tended to be worse. Sophisticated, integrated steel mills were overtaken by cheaper mini-mills. Beautiful home radios were overtaken by poor-quality transistor sets. Desktop computers were overtaken by smartphones and tablets.

The simpler products were cheaper to make (so they cost less) and easier to use (so they found a wider market).

Removing clutter allowed designers to focus on solving a few important problems really well. It also allowed users to focus on meeting their goals without distraction.

It’s often easy to understand what’s essential: A TV remote needs a way to switch it on and off, change channels, and set the volume. But does that mean you should cut everything? The French author and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said that “Perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away.” Knowing when you have reached that point is what makes removing such a difficult strategy.

The most obvious way to simplify is to remove what’s unnecessary.

What not to cut

When you’re up against a deadline, it can be tempting to drop hard-to-build features. People justify it to themselves by saying they’re launching a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) and that they’ll add the features later.

But an MVP should align with your vision and offer something of value. And adding features later only works if you know how you’ll find the time and money to do that.

A few years ago, I worked on a website that was intended to help people conserve electricity. The big idea was to let people track their electricity usage online and see how small changes in their habits could lead to big savings.

When it came time to begin the design, the project manager decided this feature was too difficult to deliver and dropped it in favor of publishing some articles about saving electricity. When the site launched, there was nothing compelling or original about it and it failed to gain the intended audience.

This is a common pattern. A deadline approaches, a budget tightens, and features are cut. Frequently, the team focuses on delivering as many features as possible. Those that are big or tricky to deliver are cancelled. If someone objects strongly, they’re told their feature will be pushed into “phase 2” or “phase 3.”

What’s left behind often adds up to an uninspiring product that’s similar to a lot of existing, mediocre offerings.

This approach can tear the heart out of a project, and yet it’s the standard approach to removing features and content, and one I’ve encountered far more than any other.

You can’t avoid the process of removing features and content. Every team has limited resources, and every design project I’ve encountered has reached the point where features or content needed to be cut. It might be a product that had grown too big over the years or a new design that had to be reined in.

Don’t wait for the unsympathetic, unsatisfactory process of cutting the most interesting features. Take charge of the design and ensure that you’re focusing only on delivering features and content that add value to the user’s experience.

Cutting features can be a bloody process.