Alan Siegal and Irene Etzkorn
Review
One of the better texts on simplicity. The authors provide a strong definition, plenty of practical advice and inspiration.
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Key Takeaways
The 20% that gave me 80% of the value.
The world has become unnecessarily complex. Contracts are getting longer, medical warnings are unintelligible, and the U.S. income tax code has ballooned to 14,000 pages. This complexity costs time, money, and health. Simplicity offers a powerful alternative.
Simplicity emerges when you achieve transparency (revealing underlying truths), clarity (expressing meaning simply), and usability (making things fit their purpose). When these three elements come together, you'll naturally create experiences that are convenient, timely, and beautiful.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci
But complexity stubbornly persists because it compounds over time, by incremental addition. It takes significant effort to reverse that force and achieve simplicity through streamlining. We've also developed learned helplessness from repeated exposure to incomprehensible language. It’s made worse by internal jargon leaking into external communications and legal teams addressing every possible scenario as protective cover.
Compounding things, complexity is sometimes deliberately introduced to mislead or manipulate, to obscure poor decisions and risky practices.Excessive information creates confusion rather than clarity, overwhelming the reader.
Breakthrough Simplicity
Breakthrough simplicity recognises that the most powerful innovations don't manifest as new bells and whistles but as better experiences. Improving any experience requires removing complications, unnecessary layers, and distractions while focusing on what people actually want and need.
Consumers are willing to pay a 4–6 percent "simplicity premium" for clearer, more understandable products and services. This could translate to $20 billion in revenue across U.S. industries. The busier life gets, the more value there is in simplicity as a point of competitive differentiation.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple … that's creativity. Charles Mingus
No industry or category, regardless of inherent complexity, is beyond simplification. The more complex an industry, the more opportunities exist for simplification and the more customers will value it.
The Three Principles of Simplicity
Empathise
Simplification starts with understanding the circumstances and needs of others.
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others. Percy Bysshe Shelley
To build empathy:
- Experience the real context of use; perform the same tasks customers will.
- Build personas that include information appetite and channel preference, not just demographics.
- Listen on social platforms for aspirations, needs, and frustrations.
- Observe people in their natural environments; ethnography beats focus groups.
- Invite domain outsiders to spot complexity insiders miss.
- Map thoughts and emotions during high‑stakes moments (e.g., emergencies, divorces).
- Adapt to cultural differences to avoid tone‑deaf communication.
Distill
Focusing is about saying no. You've got to say no, no, no. The result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts. Steve Jobs
Practical distillation techniques:
- Test features with an “audition” that penalises complexity.
- Default to subtraction; challenge every element’s necessity.
- Define the core problem early and use it as the decision filter.
- Hide unavoidable complexity from users; handle it behind the scenes.
- Design for … at the point of desire you want more, but at the point of daily use you want less.
- Curate ruthlessly; present only the most relevant choices.
- Provide tiered detail (e.g., At‑a‑glance, Preferred, In‑depth).
- Resist feature creep; solving everything weakens the core.
Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much." Joshua Reynolds
Clarify
Too much information is the prime source of complexity.
Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. Edward Tufte Practical clarification methods:
- Start with a clear information hierarchy: what matters first, second, third.
- Chunk content into discrete, well‑labeled sections.
- Use type and emphasis sparingly; limit to three sizes or weights per page.
- Embrace white space to focus attention and signal clarity.
- Visualise complexity with images, charts, and diagrams.
- Write in plain language:
- Use short sentences
- Replace jargon with everyday words
- Include personal pronouns like "I" and "you"
- Choose active over passive verbs
- Add humour or grace to break tedium
- Picture a specific, intelligent non‑expert reader
- Write as if speaking across the table; be informal and direct.
The plain language movement teaches that "Plain language is a civil right" (Al Gore). Maury Maverick, who coined "gobbledygook," instructed: "Stay off the gobbledygook. It only fouls people up. For Lord's sake, be short and say what you're talking about."
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. George Eliot
Simplicity Spreads
Top-Down and Bottom-Up
Colin Powell states, "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand."
Steps for organisational simplification:
- Secure senior‑level sponsorship with unwavering commitment.
- Reduce strategy to essential, actionable objectives for the frontline.
- Form cross‑functional teams around the end‑to‑end customer experience.
- Cap document reviews at two rounds to preserve clarity.
- Write a brief simplicity charter with principles, objectives, and metrics.
- Structure teams around customer needs, not functions.
- Encourage direct, transparent communication and make work visible.
- Track simplicity metrics and display them to spur healthy competition.
- Create memorable frameworks employees can recall and apply.
- Have non‑lawyers draft, then have legal review—never the other way around.
Don't make the process harder than it is. Jack Welch
Where Do We Go from Here?
Actions for becoming a simplicity warrior:
- Use social media to surface pain points, mobilise petitions, and build communities.
- Push for simple, standardised forms for loans, credit cards, insurance, and mortgages.
- Call out brands that market simplicity while staying complex.
- Target high‑impact domains (financial clarity (taxes, credit, insurance), medical simplification (hospital bills, discharge instructions), legal transparency (auto leases, jury instructions))
- Connect consumer groups, foundations, nonprofits, and educators.
- Aggregate tools, apps, and watchdog sites that fight complexity.
- Press business, law, and medical schools to curb jargon at the source.
Recent surveys show 85 percent of voters favour simplifying government rules and 93 percent want elimination of duplicate programs. The uprising against complexity has begun.
Consumer confidence comes from comprehension, and simplicity offers the greatest chance of achieving it. The pursuit of simplicity streamlines production, sharpens focus, empowers employees, reinforces customer relationships, and increases profits.
The groundswell is building. As consumers grow more confident through understanding, they will spend more, benefiting both economy and society.
Deep Summary
Longer form notes, typically condensed, reworded and de-duplicated.
Introduction
When simplifying question the content before rewriting. We can make things shorter, more readable and inviting.
Simplicity is of critical importance today. Get into the business of simplification. Everywhere you look there’s complexity, that can have dramatic, negative impact on people's lives.There’s a ‘Plain English Movement’ that’s for simplicity and against unnecessary complexity.
There are enormous benefits to be unlocked through simplicity. Certainly possible to make folks better informed.
Refuse to accept the complexity that inhibits informed decision making, puts your health at risk, endangers your family's safety, and places you in a financial hole
PART I · The Antidote to Complexity
Contracts are getting longer, and as a result people aren’t reading them. There are real consequences to people not understanding financial and medical concepts.
The US income tax code is 14,000 pages long. We have allowed complexity to get the better of us
Anything simple always interests me. David Hockney
We mostly tolerate complexity because we figure we don't have a choice. Simplicity has no synonym-it's the sum of convenience, clarity, usability, timeliness, and beauty. That’s why it’s so rare. If you achieve the following, you’ll likely have achieved simplicity:
- transparency (laying bare the underlying truth whatever it reveals)
- clarity (expressing meaning clearly and simply)
- usability (making something fit for its purpose)
Making things simple requires dedication to clarity, honesty, discipline, and intelligence.
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." Leonardo da Vinci
Steve Jobs was a minimalist who was "constantly reducing things to the simplest level."
There’s a world of difference between simplistic and simplified. It’s about understanding what’s essential and meaningful. Putting emphasis on it and eliminating everything else. Simplicity is not "dumbing down" → it is an effective shorthand for clarity, accessibility, and usability, which benefits everyone, not just those with limited literacy or education.
Simplicity is a philosophy, a guiding principle, and a way of life.
A crisis of complexity has escalated to a critical point where a decision must be made.We either relinquish the power to understand and control what affects us. Or we fight for a better, simpler way to conduct our daily affairs and our commercial transactions. Complexity isn’t a necessary evil - it robs us of time, patience, understanding and money.
Going back to a blank slate is critical. The key to breakthrough simplicity is to question the content and make sure it reflects reality. Challenge inertia.
The principles of simplicity apply to every interaction, whether printed, electronic, verbal, or visual.
Everything should be made as simple as possible but not simpler. ALBERT EINSTEIN
The golden rule: Everyone wants to understand what is being offered or expected of them, and simplicity helps make that clear.
Simplicity shortens the distance between people.
The busier life gets, the more value there is in simplicity as a point of competitive differentiation. Arkadi Kuhlmann
But complexity stubbornly persists because it compounds over time, by incremental addition. It takes significant effort to reverse that force and achieve simplicity through streamlining. We've also developed learned helplessness from repeated exposure to incomprehensible language. It’s made worse by internal jargon leaking into external communications and legal teams addressing every possible scenario as protective cover.
Compounding things, complexity is sometimes deliberately introduced to mislead or manipulate, to obscure poor decisions and risky practices.Excessive information creates confusion rather than clarity, overwhelming the reader.
Complexity can be moved upstream, out of sight of the end user Even the most complex situations can be made simple when there's a genuine desire and commitment to do it. When there's a will to simplify, there is always a way.
Show companies the power of simplicity as an untapped source of innovation.
Breakthrough Simplicity A New Way of Thinking
You can innovate by offering less. People crave simplicity. They respond to products with simpler features, and food with fewer ingredients. People not only want but need simplicity in their medical services and deserve it from their government too.
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple …. that's creativity. Charles Mingus
Within the complexity crisis lies massive opportunity. You’ll need creativity, an opportunistic mindset, a sensitivity to what people actually need and a willingness to cast off business-as-usual practices and approaches.
‘Breakthrough simplicity’ describes the approach to innovation that is rooted in finding new ways to make everything simpler.
One of the best ways to improve any experience is to simplify it-to remove complications, unnecessary layers, hassles, or distractions, while focusing on the essence of what people want and need in that particular situation.
The more complex an industry/product typically is, the more opportunities there are for simplification-and the more it will tend to be valued and appreciated by customers. Simplicity in a complex domain is often perceived as a luxury.
Customising content is a form of simplicity because it involves winnowing information and increasing relevancy. By doing so, a company can save customers time and build their trust.
People positively to brands that communicate with them in a "straightforward and stripped-down way, use plain packaging, and avoid excess.
Breakthrough simplicity is about having customer interactions that cut through the clutter. This is a standard that should be applied to everything a company puts out into the world.
Your product should do its job quickly, clearly, simply. Create internal clarity by helping people better understand what they're trying to achieve.
Case Study: By adapting airplane checklists first devised by Boeing, a number of hospitals are now using a checklist approach to make sure that during surgery there is a specific, brief set of questions and procedures to follow at all times. The Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires that US government documents be in language that's "clear, concise, and well-organized."
Our democracy is now run by dead people Phillip K Howard (on most laws being written decades ago)
There’s no magical five- or six-step formula for simplification. It requires us to have the discipline to boil down to its essence what we're offering or communicating. It demands that we strive for clarity, through the use of both plain language and design. It starts with empathy, you must care enough to consider people's circumstances, needs, and expectations and then respond to them.
Part 2: The Three Principles of Simplicity
Chapter 3: Empathise
Simplicity is about shortening the distance between company and customer. It all starts with understanding the circumstances and needs of others.
A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. Percy Bysshe Shelley
When you think about simplifying the interaction between a human being and a company remember experience is made up of many small details. What makes a good hospital? Clinicians would likely reference medical performance, easily quantifiable. Patients will likely refer to their ‘patient experience’, which is hard to measure but no less powerful. What they remember (and talk about to others) are all those casual human exchanges that occur during the stay. The only way to improve those it to make the patient experience an executive priority. SIMPLE One of the keys to the success of this transformation is the use of extensive feedback. Empathise with people's particular situations, concerns, needs, and expectations.
Simplify every point of contact with patients. A great experience for the staff can also lead to a great experience for patients.
Many customer experiences come up short: It's because customers are not getting what they expect or what they need from the product, service, or interaction with a company. Many things can get in the way of satisfaction miscommunication, underperformance, complications, confusion and as they do, the distance between company and customer grows. Simplicity is about removing those barriers and shortening that distance. The "design-in-a-vacuum phenomenon” explains why is it so rare for a product or service to be launched with simplicity baked into it. The missing ingredient is empathy.
By empathizing, we mean imagining the context in which someone will buy, read, or use the product or service you're offering, then designing that offering to reflect those needs first and foremost. Since simplicity is the takeaway experience of an interaction, it follows that the creator of the experience must "get inside the head" of the recipient to anticipate how the interaction will be perceived. Talking about empathy in a business context can sound soft, but empathy is not the same as sympathy. It’s about having an emphasis on the understanding of another's thought processes, decision-making strategies, and attention spans. For simplification to be effective, one must take into account everything that may affect the user's rational processing. In circumstances where emotion is likely to overwhelm rational decision making, it’s critical to empathise with a person's emotional state too.
Customising content is a powerful way to establish an enduring bond. Empathetic design can boost sales and increase customer loyalty by making products and services designed specifically for each individual customer. The result is a closing of the gap between customer expectations and what a company actually delivers. Current evidence suggests that the gap between what customers expect and what companies deliver has become a chasm. Customers are fed up with bureaucracies that inundate us with generic and impersonal information. As consumers, we experience these frustrations on a daily basis, so much so that it's pleasantly surprising-and memorable-when we happen upon a different kind of interaction. When ING sent a letter confirming a PIN number change, it sounded like it was written by a person, not a computer, closing with the line, "If it is correct, then all you have to do is have a great day." This attention to detail simplifies the customer experience by anticipating customers' concerns and answering their questions before they ask them. Removing the often small yet significant barriers that create a sense of separation between you and your customers changes the whole customer experience. But how do you figure out what those barriers are? How do you know what, exactly, is causing problems and complexity for your customers? All the cold, hard data in the world isn't going to improve the customer experience unless you act on it with imagination and empathy. What matters most is the level of commitment to empathy. Companies that place it at the highest level of importance tend to produce better, simpler, more pleasing customer experiences.
When it comes to empathy, context is everything. And sometimes the only way to fully understand context is to physically place yourself in it. You can also do some groundwork for empathy through simpler techniques such as persona development. Personas are essentially mock representations of different types of customers.
Everything a company puts out there (its products, website, email correspondence or invoices) should reflect its commitment to considering the customer's point of view. Correspondence you sent to customers speaks louder than your ads, because it's a more direct and personal form of contact.
Companies that do a better job of simplifying their communications spend far less time speaking to confused (and possibly angry) customers. Often the simplest interaction is for a customer to speak to a person within a company.
Chapter 4: Distill
Once you have a better understanding of needs, you can make informed decisions on behalf of others. To simplify is to curate, edit and lessen the options and choices that overwhelm.
Google is rated the highest of any brand out there in terms of delivering a clean, simple, rewarding experience. Being willing to "just say no" to additional features, design flour-ishes, and other potential complications-often fell to Marissa Mayer. Potential new features hoping went through an "audition." First see how it performs on the ‘advanced search’ page. If viable it goes through a the following scoring system:
- They assign a point for each change in type style, type size, or colour.
- They add the points; the maximum allowed for a promotion is three points.
The goal for the home page is the fewest possible number of points. More points equals less simplicity. For Google though it was still important to have a small, playful touch — that would convey the brand personality.
Focusing is about saying no. You've got to say no, no, no. The result of that focus is going to be some really great products where the total is much greater than the sum of the parts. Steve Jobs
You can’t just follow what your users say. Google users say they want more search results for page, but when you include more, the page loads slower and they use Google less. Simplification is often about narrowing the scope of what you offer as you try to serve those needs. Successful simplifiers distill whatever they're offering down to its essence. It's one of the most challenging aspects of simplification, because distillation requires focus and discipline in the face of the constant temptation to add on, expand, and complicate.
Simplicity is an exact medium between too little and too much. Joshua Reynolds
When simplifying products, services, communications, or even entire business models, there's no substitute for being a ruthless killer. The challenge is knowing what to kill and what to keep, what's essential and what isn't. Companies should rely on discovery research to help them work out what to do Simple and usable experiences increase customer satisfaction and a brand's long-term success. But when looking for short-term wins or immediate sales, simplicity doesn't necessarily help because it's often not a purchase consideration. It’s commercially more attractive to cram products full of features and functionality. Every once in a while, someone figures out that none of this makes sense.
Ask yourself: What can we take out?' not 'What can we put in?'"
Define the core purpose of whatever you're designing early, get everyone to agree on it. It's the only way to avoid "feature creep. Even if you start out to solve one main problem, along the way you realise you could solve others, possibly expanding your base of customers. So you always have to ask, 'At what cost?'" It isn't easy to create a simple product. It involves constant trade-offs (what do we keep/what do we kill?), as well as the need to find the right balance between quality, functionality (how much should the product be able to do?), and ease of use.
Good design captures customers' trust by disappearing. Jack Dorsey, Cofounder of Twitter
This notion that sometimes it's better to have fewer options, as opposed to an endless array of possibilities to choose from, shouldn't be a radical idea-yet somehow in the current culture it is.
Safeway supermarket has 40,000 SKUs but it could serve 95% of customer needs with 4000.
If you're offering fewer brands, you sell more items per brand, which in turn means you get better pricing discounts from suppliers. Cutting range to what’s essential makes the business-from stocking shelves to checking out customers much simpler. Companies that have adopted this approach have stolen market share and made strong profits.
We don't have time to see everything, so curators edit out the less important works; they make choices about which pieces should go to-gether-and explain why we should care. Why would Facebook mess with a perfectly good, simple design? Because it just can't resist. Every choice should be based on trying to produce the most rewarding customer experience.
Mobile apps when they came out were focused, uncluttered, and useful, while the websites remain jumbled, muddied, and distracting.
Some companies have seised upon the idea of letting customers choose the amount of detail they wanted: Letting them choose from at-a-glance, standard or in-depth versions.
Many people mistakenly believe there is a conflict between innovation and simplicity, that in order to move forward you must somehow add to what already exists. But sometimes what you take away can be just as important.
Chapter 5: Clarify
Too much information is a prime source of complexity.
Adler's created simpler, clearer drug packaging. Target bought the idea and rushed a new line of prescription drug bottles to market in 2005. Adler's "ClearRx" prescription system has been used by Target pharmacies ever since.
Simplicity is rooted in empathy and insight…. It can be about putting yourself in someone else's shoes, then going through the steps they go through-such as when they open a medicine cabinet and reach for their pills. What's getting in their way? How can we improve that situation?"
The fundamental problem often has to do with providing too much information that doesn't actually inform. We need information, but what we're getting instead is data, untamed and unfiltered, without order, structure, or shape, and ultimately without meaning. We need to organize, emphasize, and visualize. When dealing with complex and excessive information, one of the first orders of business is to sort through and prioritize that data-to establish, in design terms, "a hierarchy of information." A big part of figuring out the structure is anticipating need.
Choice is touted as fundamentally good because it allows people to exercise free will. But too many choices and a lack of clear distinction between options is useless.
If the structure of a document is intuitive for a reader, it's more likely to be read and understood. But you can also help guide people through structured information by arranging it into distinct, thematic, clearly marked sections or buckets. Separate information into discrete ideas or steps; think sequentially; summarize longer material; hold back and deemphasize less important information; get rid of what's unimportant. The last step may be the hardest for many, because the tendency is to want to overexplain and overinstruct.
Sequence information logically (starting with basic use, ending up with potential problems/complications), and use descriptive headings in bold type to provide cues for scanning and quick comprehension. Virtually anything, no matter how complex, can be formatted this way-turned into a one or two-page chunked document that immediately tells people what they need to know.
The simplicity paradox — the less you tell people, the more they understand. When a policy is 30 pages, all the important information is buried. When everything is boiled down to 2 pages, people actually read it, get the key points, and are therefore more informed about their insurance. In boiling a policy down to two pages you’ll have to decide: What should be emphasized? Keep in mind that every change in size, style, position, or alignment of type on a page indicates a shift in emphasis and implies meaning, whether intended or not. White space" can be one of the most critical design elements because it helps people focus.
Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. Edward Tufte
Visualization is dependent on the same human qualities as other forms of communication-a thoughtful approach to the subject, strong organization of ideas, concise and clear expression of those ideas.
Plain language is a civil right. Al Gore
Increasingly, people in business and government are using language for a purpose other than clear communication. They're using it to conceal, muddle, confuse, and obfuscate.
"Stay off the gobbledygook. It only fouls people up. For Lord's sake, be short and say what you're talking about... Anyone using the words 'activation' or 'implementation' will be shot. Maury Maverick
When companies communicate simply and honestly with customers, the result is:
- Distinctive added value to products and services;
- Customers who are more satisfied and better informed, resulting in
- A higher level of trust.
- Greater brand loyalty stemming from that increased trust.
Simple language yields "cognitive fluency" — a term used by psychologists as a measure of how easy it is to think about something.
The secret to more effective writing is simple: talk to your reader. Pretend the person who'll read your letter or report is sitting across from you. Be informal. Relax. Rudolf Flesch
Respond in:
- Short sentences.
- Simple, everyday words in place of jargon or technical terms. (When it is necessary to use technical terms, provide explanation and examples.)
- The use of personal pronouns such as "I" and "you."
- Active rather than passive verbs.
- And—as an added touch—humor, grace, or anything to break the tedium.
Part of learning to speak clearly as a company is finding a company's own distinctive and authentic voice.
The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. George Eliot
More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity. Francois Gautier
Part 3: Simplicity Spreads
Chapter 6: Top-Down and Bottom-Up
Colin Powell states, "Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand."
Steps for organisational simplification:
- Secure senior‑level sponsorship with unwavering commitment.
- Reduce strategy to essential, actionable objectives for the frontline.
- Form cross‑functional teams around the end‑to‑end customer experience.
- Cap document reviews at two rounds to preserve clarity.
- Write a brief simplicity charter with principles, objectives, and metrics.
- Structure teams around customer needs, not functions.
- Encourage direct, transparent communication and make work visible.
- Track simplicity metrics and display them to spur healthy competition.
- Create memorable frameworks employees can recall and apply.
- Have non‑lawyers draft, then have legal review—never the other way around.
Don't make the process harder than it is. Jack Welch
Chapter 7: Where Do We Go from Here?
Actions for becoming a simplicity warrior:
- Use social media to surface pain points, mobilise petitions, and build communities.
- Push for simple, standardised forms for loans, credit cards, insurance, and mortgages.
- Call out brands that market simplicity while staying complex.
- Target high‑impact domains (financial clarity (taxes, credit, insurance), medical simplification (hospital bills, discharge instructions), legal transparency (auto leases, jury instructions))
- Connect consumer groups, foundations, nonprofits, and educators.
- Aggregate tools, apps, and watchdog sites that fight complexity.
- Press business, law, and medical schools to curb jargon at the source.
Recent surveys show 85 percent of voters favour simplifying government rules and 93 percent want elimination of duplicate programs. The uprising against complexity has begun.
Consumer confidence comes from comprehension, and simplicity offers the greatest chance of achieving it. The pursuit of simplicity streamlines production, sharpens focus, empowers employees, reinforces customer relationships, and increases profits.
The groundswell is building. As consumers grow more confident through understanding, they will spend more, benefiting both economy and society.