Weighing the Pros and Cons of Complexity in Design

What role does complexity play in design? On the one hand, simplicity is considered a high standard of good design, and complexity seems like an inevitability that is managed and eliminated wherever possible. But how we manage complexity and, in some ways, learn to embrace it might be a critical function of design.

My interest in complexity comes from my background as an artist. Before transitioning into design, I studied as a fine artist, earning my Bachelors and Masters degrees in painting; I spent eight years as an instructor at Tyler School of Art in the Philadelphia region, teaching Painting, Drawing, and Foundation 2D Design. 2D Design was my favorite course to teach because we could explore concepts that covered many disciplines and topics, including perceptual psychology.

This interest in perceptual psychology ultimately led me to study User Experience Design.

As I began my UX studies, I could not help but compare and contrast the differences and similarities in thinking between my past and newly adopted fields. One difference, in particular, that stood out to me was the different roles that simplicity and complexity played. While there are plenty of examples of wonderfully complex pieces of design and compelling minimal works of fine art, these qualities seem to play an inverse role in the respective disciplines. Complexity and elaboration being highly valued in fine arts, and simplicity and efficiency being highly valued in design.

This led me to consider the role of complexity in design. In this article, I’ll share how to address complexity in design using Hick’s Law and Tesler’s Law. I’ll share examples of how these principles play out in design scenarios and finish with some ways to apply these differing concepts.

Hick’s Law and Tesler’s Law

The balancing act between diversity/complexity and unity/cohesion speaks to two different needs that we as humans require. First, we are attracted to novelty and variety just as we rely on repetition and consistency to make sense of the world. If either of these qualities goes too much to the extreme, we can end up bored or frustrated1.

Our perceptual system is constantly taking in information from the outside world, our eyes scanning, our ears trailing, and our minds quickly processing billions of bits of information, all while our conscious mind is pursuing its tasks of focusing and sifting through the data for critical information on which to focus.

The work of focusing and choosing takes time and energy. British psychologists William Hick and American psychologist Ray Hyman defined this work in terms of time2,3. Their findings, referred to as the Hick-Hyman Law, posited that the number of elements a person has to choose between increases the time it takes to make said decision. So the difference between 4 choices and 20 will significantly affect the time it takes for a person to decide.

Diagram demonstrating Hick’s Law. https://www.fyresite.com/hicks-law-the-psychology-behind-faster-ux/

Designers often resolve this problem by streamlining choices and chunking, the grouping of complex information into manageable segments. This type of choice management is critical for facilitating ease of use and avoiding user frustration. “Keep it simple” is undoubtedly a mantra worth following.

An example of this is the success of the iPhone. Apple’s lead designer of the Iphone, Jony Ive, in describing simplicity as a strategy for the company, stated, “We sense the intrinsic simplicity of an object that starts with the core architecture of the object and the outworking of that. One of our jobs is to try and bring some order to what is chaotic and complex.” 4 In other words, users don’t need a thousand options; they need a few good ones. The idea that the job of editing should be that of the designer rather than the user was both radical and logical. This decision caused Apple to stand out in a market of complex gadgetry, with an iconic and minimalist aesthetic. For many, the choice was clear, and Apple had made it for them.

Examples of Jony Ive designs for Apple. https://mossandfog.com/jony-ives-design-legacy-at-apple/

This is not to say the original iPhone wasn’t a complex tool. It managed to combine the tasks of a web browser, telephone, and camera into one device. What Apple did well was manage complexity into an easily understandable set of choices. Choices that unfolded as the user explored the product. This is a technique called progressive disclosure, and it’s a direct design response to the cognitive tax described in Hick’s Law. This consolidation and management of features into a cohesive ecosystem is the allure and strength of the iPhone and Apple’s other products.

Tesler’s Law

We have all heard the idiom “Less is more,” famously quoted by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. However, are you familiar with the retort, “More is more and less is a bore,” by designer Iris Apfel? Indeed the argument that complexity and choice are critical to user satisfaction has many adherents in marketing, design, and economics. Even iPhones, with their sleek minimalist design, contain the ability to house millions of images and videos, thousands of apps for myriad uses and millions of bits of code to facilitate the ease of use that we as users have come to expect. Computer scientist Larry Tesler described in a theory now known as Tessler’s Law, that every system has a minimal level of complexity that cannot be reduced5. And that this complexity can either be dealt with by the engineer/designer or the user. In other words, the work of simplifying choices for users creates complexity for the designer or engineer. So again, if we look at Apple, the simplicity enjoyed by its users was made possible by the hundreds of hours of work by designers and engineers taking on the burden of complexity.

Tesler’s law may be neutral on the utility of complexity, perhaps even framing it as a burden in some lights. But what if we read complexity as an essential aspect of the way things work in the world, as something that can be considered a positive? For example, we all can agree that biodiversity is a positive attribute of nature. So what might be the benefit of having variety and complexity in design?

In his book, Living with Complexity, cognitive psychologist Don Norman argues that complexity is necessary because life is complex, the problems we are presented with are complex, and the easiest way to solve problems is to have an array of specialized tools to address them effectively. He goes further to state that using a simple tool requires tremendous skill on the user’s part, think chisel with marble sculpture, while using a specialized, complex range of tools makes tasks easier for the user, as in the editing capabilities of Photoshop. He argues that initially, simplicity is an attractive feature as users are novices to the tools. But as they become experts, they demand more choices and functionality to meet specific goals6. Therefore complexity is not so much a problem but a feature of becoming educated and better at a particular skill.

The ultimate benefits of complexity may also come down to the benefits of variety and choice. In evolution, the variety of species an ecosystem sustains helps to ensure more resiliency in the face of disaster. Medical studies have shown the benefits of having a varied diet, including more varied gut bacteria to access nutrients7. Additionally, Benjamin Scheibehenne (University of Basel, Switzerland), Rainer Greifeneder (University of Mannheim, Germany), and Peter M. Todd (Indiana University, Bloomington) conducted a meta-analysis of 50 published and unpublished experiments that investigated choice overload concerns. They found that consumers generally respond positively to having many choices8. That is not to say that choice overload does not exist, but that it is contextual and needs to be studied, taking this into account.

Balancing the two

So how can designers make sense of these seeming contradictions between the imperative toward simplicity and the potential benefits of complexity? Don Norman makes great effort to distinguish between something being “complex” and “complicated.” Being complex is not necessarily a bad thing. Although initial learning is required, users can often work more efficiently with the additional tools provided by complex systems. What Norman describes as “complicated” is a design that is not optimized and creates unnecessary work and confusion for the user. Another term for this might be accidental complexity versus essential complexity. The term ‘accidental’ implies a lack of insight on the part of the designer to optimize the user’s experience by failing to eliminate unnecessary options and causing the user an undue burden.

For instance, if one is designing choices for highway signage, a reduction in the amount of information may be advantageous to facilitate faster selection time. But suppose you were a designer for a retail shop, where time spent on a site could translate into sales. In that case, you may wish to increase choices while maintaining discrete categories and subcategories for user navigation.

One more very critical area where complexity management exists is in the healthcare setting. When designing for patients who want to access the best care and information about their condition, using a strategy like progressive disclosure may be highly effective. Alternatively, when designing software for healthcare providers who often spend valuable time entering large amounts of data, managing choices effectively can help reduce time on task, prevent errors, and provide the fine-tuning of patient care they require.

Here are some things to consider when addressing this issue:

• In what context will the tool be used?
• What is the experience level of the user?
• What is the difficulty of the task?
• Is there an opportunity to break choices up into smaller segments?
• Which tools can I give the user to resolve their task best?
• Which tools are extraneous?

For Good or Bad, Complexity is not Going Away

Whether we see complexity as an asset or a challenge, it is clear that our stickiest problems persist because they are complicated and often require complex solutions. Learning to manage complexity by eliminating accidental complexity and optimizing essential complexity takes skill, contextual inquiry, and work.

References

1. Beck, L. A. (1992). Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Journal of Leisure Research, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/00222216.1992.11969876
2. Hick, W. E. (1952). On the Rate of Gain of Information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 4(1), 11–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470215208416600
3. Hyman, R. (1953). Stimulus information as a determinant of reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 45(3), 188–196. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0056940
4. Hack, J. (2016, November 15). Discussing design with the man behind your iPhone. Dazed. https://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/33692/1/discussing-design-with-the-man-behind-your-iphone
5. Indraksh, A. (2022, January 7). Tesler’s Law. This is why you cannot make UX any simpler. Medium. https://uxdesign.cc/teslers-law-this-is-why-you-cannot-make-ux-any-simpler-d4c0706686a5
6. Norman, D. A. (2016). Living with Complexity (The MIT Press) (Reprint ed.). The MIT Press.
7. Vadiveloo, M., Parkeh, N., & Mattei, J. (2014). Greater Healthful Food Variety as Measured by the US Healthy Food Diversity Index Is Associated with Lower Odds of Metabolic Syndrome and its Components in US Adults. The Journal of Nutrition, 145(3), 564–571. https://doi.org/10.3945/jn.114.199125
8. Scheibehenne, B., Greifeneder, R., & Todd, P. M. (2010). Can There Ever Be Too Many Options? A Meta-Analytic Review of Choice Overload. Journal of Consumer Research, 37(3), 409–425. https://doi.org/10.1086/651235