Simplification Takes Courage
How to Achieve UX Clarity By Making Tough Decisions
No interface operates in isolation.
Everything we make, however contained we may think it is, actually has porous, paper-thin walls between it and the vast digital ecosystem around it. Those walls may be enough to keep our information contained, but they do nothing to prevent the constant bleeding and blending of attention from anyone we hope will look at it. Our interfaces, no matter how well-designed, receive just a tiny portion of the attention that anyone has to give anything.
This is a massive challenge. What it really means is that the thing most likely to impact the effectiveness of our designs is completely out of our control.
So what do we do?
One thing, above all: simplify.
Remember, our things don’t exist in isolation — they live within browsers, within operating systems, within an endless sea of competing applications and notifications. They are a tiny piece of an incomprehensibly vast digital ecosystem that comprises more information, more density, and more choice than anyone can effectively navigate. So when they end up looking at or using the things we make, they are not starting from scratch, they are starting from saturation.
Clarity Through Decision
The first response to this challenge is to be extremely clear about what we’re asking of our audience. Instead of presenting options and hoping users will figure out what matters, we must make hard decisions before creating an interface.
Two simple questions will help you do this:
- What do you want the thing you are making to achieve?
- What does your audience need to do to make that happen?
The simpler the answers to those questions are, the better. But, the simpler the answers, the smaller and more focused your thing is likely to be. I think that’s a good thing, but sometimes it takes some getting used to.
The bigger the answer to Question 1 is, the bigger the ask of Question 2 is going to be. So you may find yourself going back and forth a bit before settling upon something achievable.
The answer(s) to Question 2 are the red pen of UX. They will be your tool to remove anything unnecessary from your pages and screens. This is something you must do.
I always recommend identifying and prioritizing ONE thing you want a person to do on every single page or screen your interface contains. Now here’s where the “editing” metaphor breaks down slightly, because this doesn’t mean removing every link, button, or call to action, but using the visual language to clearly communicate the priority of one over everything else. I call this the Primary Action.
If a person looking at your interface scans it, they will ask and answer three questions within seconds of it loading:
- What is this?
- Is it for me?
- What do I do next?
Complexity interferes with answering each of these questions. The answer to Question 3 will depend entirely upon your ability to identify your Primary Action and use visual language to make it obvious to your audience.
When every screen has a clear Primary Action, users don’t have to guess. They don’t have to add cognitive load by weighing options. The path forward becomes obvious, not through limitation but through intentional hierarchy.
It’s also worth pointing out that when every screen has a Primary Action, you don’t have to guess either. It doesn’t matter what a “user might want to do” if you’ve already identified what you need them to do in order to deliver on the promise of your interface. When you’ve done that, every other possible option on the page becomes a hostile distraction to its purpose.
And by the way, every time I have ever seen a design team put several “maybe-level” doors on a page in the hopes of measuring which one is used most later, they come to find out that they were all used nearly equally. If you get one thing out of this article, I hope it’s a strong warning to not waste your time doing that: Never kick the can of design on the promise of future data.
The Reality of Limited Attention
Even the most motivated person engaging with an interface is more distracted than they realize and has less cognitive bandwidth available than they’re aware of. We’re designing for humans who are juggling multiple tabs, notifications, and interruptions — even while actively trying to focus on our application.
They know they’re distracted. They know they’re context-switching. They have no idea how little brain power that leaves them with.
This means we have to consider information density as an obstruction to user experience. Each additional element doesn’t just take up space — it demands attention, evaluation, and decision. Simplifying content and interfaces isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about creating breathing room for focused engagement.
The Most Difficult Truth: Simplification Requires Courage
Underlying everything I have written here so far is a simple truth: The most challenging aspect of designing for today’s overwhelming digital ecosystem is not technology, it’s psychology. And contrary to the millions of user studies out there – no shade — it’s not the psychology of the “user,” it’s the psychology of the maker. Simplification requires courage.
It means asking hard questions about what something is, not what it could be. It means asking hard questions about who something is for. It means asking hard questions about what can be removed rather than what can be added. It means designing with white space and silence as active elements rather than voids to be filled. It means making decisions that might be questioned or criticized by stakeholders who want to ensure their priority isn’t left out.
This courage manifests in several ways:
- The courage to let go of options and focus on singular, achievable goals
- The courage to focus on a small audience that will engage rather than a large one that won’t
- The courage to say no to feature requests that don’t serve the core purpose
- The courage to eliminate options even when each seems valuable on its own
- The courage to trust that users will discover secondary actions when needed
- The courage to leave breathing room when every pixel feels precious
In a digital environment that constantly expands, the act of contraction — of thoughtful, intentional simplification — becomes not just a design skill but an act of conviction. It requires the confidence to believe that what you remove is as important as what you keep.
And perhaps most challenging of all: it requires the courage to recognize that simplicity isn’t the absence of complexity, but rather complexity resolved.
Written by Christopher Butler on
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