On Simplicity

In 2014 already, Bastian Allgeier has written about Simplicity. A week ago, he has written about Simplicity again. And again it was one of those articles I kept nodding along.

We love to talk about simplicity. “Simple” is probably one of the most overused words in our industry. Not only in documentation.

This is absolutely right. And I like that he not only points his finger in the direction of others, but has a look at his own stuff as well, when he asks …

We face the same problems with Kirby. We try to keep it “simple” but is it really simple? What are the true obstacles for beginners. What are the pain points for our users when something breaks? How can we take care of such situations and make sure nobody gets stuck for hours? And what happens when you need to maintain a Kirby site in 5 or 10 years from now? Can we somehow help to make this easy? Is it even made to last that long? How can we avoid that our users are locked in? Etc.

Well, I wish more developers – and also designers – of website, tools and apps would think a bit more in this direction, a bit more in the long term. As in a way this way of short term thinking just reflects how we tend to think about anything else today as well … clothing, hardware, … right?

Read Bastian’s note on Simplicity …