Context: If you haven’t read my first post in this series, check out Day #1: The First Pancake Principle. This will give you the backstory needed for what is sure to be a weirder, wild ride today.
Day #2
When I was a teenager, I worked summers as a “beer cart girl” selling drinks and snacks to golfers at a local course. There was this old man who worked in the maintenance shed named Cecil — tiny shrimp of a man with a voice like Winnie the Pooh, and of course he loved to flirt with the beer cart girls.
Cecil had a prosthetic leg — same one his whole life. A “gift from the war.” The leg was precisely fitted to him, and any weight gain could make it snug or wobbly when he walked. And it was too expensive for him to replace so anytime his leg started to get tight, he’d just skip some lunches until it fit again.
Cecil told a simple story, and Cecil found a simple solution. And I believe those two things are intrinsically linked.
Designers already understand the value of a simple solution. But we can also see the grand vision early, and tech sells us on the narrative that whatever we are creating will be huge and change the world. Sometimes that grandness gets in the way. It clutters our vision with unnecessary complexity, emotion, process, projects, and concerns.
Cecil didn’t tell a sob story about the cost of his prosthetic, or delve into the injustice of the war. He didn’t imply skipping lunches was starving himself to death, or worry too much about the impact on his blood sugar or come up with a complicated diet and weight loss plan. He just skipped lunch. It was just a quick tweak, and an easy means to an end.
In tech you always hear “We’re gonna build a platform.” “Make a dashboard.” “Add a score.” “Educate the user on” blah, blah, blah. But designers know that simplicity is key. And simple solutions are much easier to find when you tell a simpler story.
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