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However one of the designers main goals is to make products and services easier to use for the people who use them, every process will always have some inherent complexity, there is no such thing as perfection.

There’s a limit to how far a process can be simplified. When you reach a point when you can’t reduce complexity any further, you’ll only be able to shift it from one location to another.

Tesler’s law states that if you simplify something, you will consistently transfer that complexity to another area. For example, you can eliminate the requirement to select the type of credit card by allowing the system to identify it automatically based on the card number.

You’re reducing the complexity of the user interface while increasing the complexity of the development process.

Keeping it simple but not boring

This became obvious as a designer when conducting user research and identifying a specific problem requiring complexity. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s worth the development team’s time to move complexity from the user to the system.

Unless you have a long-term monopoly on the market, the user’s time will almost always be more valuable to you.

This can be accomplished by assessing the challenges that occur as a result of such complexity:

• How much money and time will it take to solve the problem?
• Is it going to have a big influence on your production schedule?
• Will it result in a higher turnover rate?
• Will it have an impact on conversions?

Maintain a straightforward approach.

Before simplifying individual procedures, ask yourself whether such a feature or function is even necessary, removing low-yield features and decreasing complexity to yet another different level.

Some examples of Tesler’s law

Auto-suggestions:

Auto-suggestions are a great technique to make the search process go faster. It shows potential search ideas to assist the user get immediate search results by reducing data input.

Biometric Login:

Save your users the stress of having to re-enter all of their information every time they try to log into your app or website on the same device. In most products, the login procedure has been simplified by removing the need for a username and password in favour of biometric login choices.

Pre-populate or suggest:

Is there anything more frustrating than returning to a website where you have logged in only to be asked to log in again? Make sure your user is already logged in or that specific areas are pre-populated for easy login when they return to your website.