Love this short clip from Simon Sinek around concepts and what it means to simplify them.
Basically, this turns the spotlight back to Glare.
What is Glare, and what is it trying to do?
Complex things (like design) are tricky to simplify. A great quote from Alan Kay, I feel, puts this into a better perspective. Maybe complex things should be complex. In other words:
Simple things should be simple, complex things should be possible
Ultimately, the space Glare is trying to solve for is complex.
Pulling insights from data, capturing signals in the noise, tying them to desired outcomes, simplifying the ideas, communicating them to the right people to get buy-in, and then creating action is undeniably difficult.
And that’s not even the end of it.
That is why we have to keep expanding. Keep discovering. Keep moving forward even in the dark.
You do not make something “possible” overnight. The possibility comes as small fruits from the path of discovery.
The Feynman Technique centers on the ability to explain complicated subjects to others in simple terms. The four steps are:
Study. Pick a subject ‌you’d like to learn more about. Then, learn the basics. Document ‌everything you know about it in your own words, and then record new concepts on a piece of paper throughout the learning process.
Teach. Once you have mastered step one, you should be able to explain the basics to a 12-year-old. Next, try to simplify all the information on your sheet by removing jargon or complexities. Break it down further using simple words that a child can understand.
Fill in the gaps. Now it’s time to dig deep into learning. Read your notebook of things about your topic aloud to yourself, as you would read it to a first-grader. What are you missing? What don’t you know? If anything isn’t clear or is too complex to understand, keep studying until you can simplify.
Simplify, organize, and review. Examine how well you understand the topic by gathering the most important pieces of your knowledge and explaining them to someone else. By doing so, you’ll have a solid understanding of the subject at hand. Did you explain it well? Were there ‌questions? What was confusing? This helps you determine what to review, then repeat steps 2-4 as much as you need until you have a grasp on the source material.
By focusing intently on a single, solvable step at a time, the Feynman Technique works to simplify complex ideas. When you use this method of learning to break down a task into its simplest forms, your creativity becomes uninhibited and you gain both understanding of the topic and retention of the new concept.
you know what… HECK YES, Ben! If you can’t explain your design choices like you’re talking to a 12-year-old, you probably don’t understand them well enough.
I believe it was Steve Jobs who used to say “stay a beginner”, which basically means to always think of the product your designing as if it’s being picked up by someone with no experience at all.
One interesting thing that I’ve found lately is that simplification is much harder than it looks.
Doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to dumb it down, but that you lose a lot of the essence by simplification. Which also means that there’s a low success rate in being able to do this.
@mario_yks does simplification become a large part of your role in your org? I would think that stakeholders need a high dose of simplification, especially in the research and UX experience world
Curious about everyone’s thoughts on this
