Minimalism in product design

In 2006, John Maeda asks us to imagine a world where companies could strip out features and charge more for the product or service. Instead of adding more bloat to the existing version, the consumer pays a premium for a barebones version that only contains what is most essential, with no added fluff.

We are now living in that future. The most successful apps today are ones that successfully nail down the UX of one core feature before diving into others. Snapchat is a classic example where it started with the user flow of simply sending a snap. It stayed like this for a long time until eventually a messaging feature and a payment processor was integrated into it.

Imagine a stripped-down version of Spotify, where you just have one screen (essentially the “Radio”) that plays music you like. No playlists, no artist pages, no discographies. After all, this is what the user wants — to listen to music they like. In order for this to work, the recommendation algorithm and the taste curation must be top-notch.

In cases like these, most of the “design” happens behind the scenes. It’s not visual design, but instead is an exercise in identifying complexities and reducing it down into the absolute necessities. It may seem like you’re overdoing it or simplifying it too much, but in a world filled with services that promise to do everything, apps that do one thing very well will fare better than those that are mediocre at a bunch of things.

Swiss army knives are the physical equivalent of this philosophy. They contain every little thing you could possibly need to get yourself out of a dangerous situation (or medium-dice some onions). But each individual component is obviously no match for a real chef’s knife or a high-end corkscrew. Moreover, if one of the screws inside comes loose, the entire contraption breaks down.

Consumers are getting pretty savvy these days. Organizations need not focus on making a photo-editing app that also crops it to the right dimensions and file size to share on every single social media app. Leave it to the users to link it with IFTTT and post it anywhere they want.

SoundHound doesn’t need to display extraneous information about the artist or tour dates when a song is properly identified. Instead, spend that energy on perfecting the identification algorithm. An even more extreme version would strip out the ability to add the song to Spotify/Rdio/iTunes and remove live lyrics.

In a world crammed with services screaming for the user’s attention, the easiest and simplest ones end up becoming the most successful. They absolutely nail down one thing and offer the best possible user experience to do it. This is what makes them stand out from the crowd and results in higher retention, higher repeat engagement, and overall makes for a more intuitive and pleasant experience.