The art of Simplicity

Looking back on some of the software and hardware developments, one of the things that stands out is how intuitive designs marked a turning point and a wake-up call to the industry. After decades of software bloat and over-engineering, simplicity of use has proven to have more customer pulling power than the longest list of features.

The idea of having a single intuitive control was revolutionary and a very marked move away from ever-increasing complexity and endless menus. It now seems obvious that intuitive use is so much more powerful than having to read a manual (and no one reads manuals, so the product shouldn’t need one).

However, don’t be fooled by how much work it takes to create a simple, elegant design. The irony is that the end design can seem so simple and obvious that the vast hours required to whittle the design down to its elegant form are often completely missed by the user.

Of course, in simplifying a product you have to make up for loss of features with other customer gains: the beautiful quality of the user experience from the very first moment the user opens the app. Some of the best and most popular apps are those that purely focus on providing core functionality in the most intuitive and customer-pleasing fashion.

We’ve been very conscious of these issues in our software design as we strive to keep to our mantra of Easy, Powerful, and Obvious. We work in an industry where many competitors look to provide products that cover exhaustive frameworks, resulting in software that ends up hugely complicated and costs a fortune in customisation, configuration, and user training.

We aim for intuitive design where users can get straight to work without getting lost in complicated user guides or documentation.