Complexity needn’t be complicated
Simplifying complexity is solving the wrong problem.
Ever witnessed someone highly engaged by the code of conduct during their lunch break, or a room full of people thrilled out of their brains by a 500-slide PowerPoint presentation on compliance?
It’s tough enough piquing people’s interest with complex content, let alone actually getting them involved enough for it to make a difference.
For leaders, the ability to take complex ideas, messages, processes, policies and strategies, and develop them into more engaging experiences and communication is an indispensable skill.
Yet too often complexity is treated as an exercise in elimination.
The world is complex. Humans are complex. Life is complex. Work is complex. We deal with complexity daily. It’s naive to think we should — or can — resolve complexity by removing detail. That’s just dumbing it down; robbing the richness that makes it interesting and stripping the features that make it useful.
Heck, simplifying complexity isn’t even the real problem we should be trying to solve.
Our objective should be attention, engagement and influence — making a difference. And the barrier to making things interesting, engaging, enjoyable, influential, inspiring, informative and clear isn’t actually complexity...
The problem is confusion.
Simple, not simpler
Fortunately, complexity needn’t be confusing.
A Google search shows a single input box while concealing algorithms that tear through 4.74 billion pages to find and filter results in less time than it takes to blink. Hidden within the unassuming exterior of an iPhone lies the ability to connect with the world. The theory of relativity — as elegant and memorable as E=mc2.
From iPhones to navigating the Metro, from Google searches to our brains, we constantly underestimate the sheer complexity of things when they’re well designed. It’s easy to assume that everything that seems simple is simple, because the successful resolution of complexity renders it invisible.
Communicating complexity isn’t a matter of hacking out the bits that are tough to deal with. It’s resolving them so you don’t even notice they’re there. Make things understandable and they’ll seem simple. Make things seem simple, and we remove one of the biggest barriers to engagement.
Begin with comprehension
Begin by thoroughly understanding the content. It’s so appallingly obvious-sounding, yet far too frequently skipped. We have a general idea of the information, right? We’ve been using this content for the past decade so it must be okay, right? It just needs a little... zhuzhing, right?
Wrong!
Cutting through complexity means taking the time to immerse in the source material and understanding it implicitly. No assumptions. No shortcuts. No hiding old cracks behind new wallpaper.
Follow with context
Once we understand what we’re working with, then we can begin asking questions. Why does it exist? Who’s it for? What purpose does it serve? What problem does it solve? What are the expectations? All these questions (and more) are necessary.
Remember, comprehension is highly contextual. Someone’s simplicity is someone else’s complexity. We need to consider what simplicity means to our intended audience.
Sift for relevance
Once we understand the context, then we sift for relevance. What’s necessary? What’s the simplest way we can say or show the content? What details really matter? What will our intended audience relate to? What helps us solve the problem?
Let’s strip it right back to basics. Remove the unnecessary: the buzzwords, the abstract language, the corporate jargon and the redundancies. But, caution! Oversimplification can just as easily lead to confusion as too much extraneous detail.
Quite counterintuitively, simplicity is sometimes better achieved through addition. So as well as asking what can be removed, let’s also ask what can be added to improve comprehension.
Make it human
Let’s never forget our purpose is to connect with people.
This means using empathy to establish context and relevance, curiosity to inspire learning, emotions to drive decision-making, storytelling to establish a deeper connection, and opening conversations to improve future iterations.
If we were to include this garnish earlier, without a clear purpose, we’d only risk adding unnecessary confusion.
Reduce cognitive burden
We make around 35,000 conscious choices every day, each one expending precious mental energy. Make too many decisions in too short a timeframe and our decision making abilities dramatically decrease.
Wherever possible, we should ease people’s decision fatigue by limiting choices. This doesn’t necessarily mean removing all the options, but we can at least break them down and deliver them in more manageable blocks.
We should also use clear and unambiguous language when comprehension matters most. This means culling jargon when communication extends beyond a niche audience, avoiding words with multiple interpretations and being wary of implicature.
Switching from verbal to visual, we can simplify lengthy and complex content using imagery. Our brain processes images around 60,000 times faster than text, and that’s one heck of a way to reduce cognitive load.
Establish a ruthless order
Without dropping too deep into theory (because: unnecessary complexity), there are certain principles that influence how we make sense of things visually.
Gestalt theory is our tendency to group elements that are similar, connected, close, enclosed, continuing or moving in the same direction, or parallel to each other. Our brain also tends to complete unfinished objects or patterns.
We can also make it easier to process information through hierarchy. Scale, colour and weight help convey an order of importance. Formatting content as weighted headlines, subheadings and body copy increases comprehension.
Sequence is important too, either prioritising the most important or attention-seizing features, or beginning with the basics and establishing the fundamentals before going deeper.
Remember: recognition over recall
Finally, we find it easier to recognise things we’ve previously experienced, rather than recalling specific information from memory. This is why the simplest systems don’t require us to remember specific procedures or processes, they use familiar signals and cues to guide us to the desired outcome.