Everyone wants simple digital experiences: clean interfaces, fluid paths, intuitive tools, but how many projects actually achieve this?
The complexity of projects is reassuring
In a digital project, doing something complicated is often more reassuring for employees, management and the bottom line. Functional overload has become the norm. We pile on features, slides, sprints and meetings.
Complexity has become a signal of seriousness However, the more you add, the more you disperse and the more the user gets lost. The result: tools that talk too much, sites that struggle to get to the heart of the matter, and journeys that stretch out until they lose their meaning.
Digital technology amplifies what the organisation allows it to do, for better or for worse. The immateriality of data and digital tools offers a false sense of freedom and ease: it masks mistakes, allows individual tinkering and, above all, makes it possible to work together. delays awareness of malfunctions that have nothing to do with digital technology.
Let's take the example of an IT eco-system, where there are multiple files, information that crosses, gets lost or overlaps, often without anyone really caring. However, if we transpose these same behaviours to a tangible environment, such as a shop or a workshop, the result would be immediately visible and hardly acceptable. A manager would not tolerate a product being placed in the wrong place three times, a shelf being left empty or conflicting labels being passed between employees. The volume that digital technology allows masks disorganisation rather than creating it.
Simplification, an underestimated strategic act
In digital projects, simplicity is often experienced as a loss Less functionality, fewer pages, less “we could do that too”. But it's a demanding approach that requires you to prioritise, cut, reformulate, test and listen.
Digital simplification is not a loss, it's an act of strategic design. Accepting that not everything will be done, but that what remains will be coherent, clear and sustainable. Keeping digital simple means having the courage to be clearly useful. It means saying “this is what counts, the rest is superfluous”. It means assuming that a good course is not one that does a lot, but one that guides well.
Today, simplicity in digital is also resistance. Resist the temptation to integrate everything, the cult of novelty at all costs (such as AI), to the complexity that tires users. Because at the end of the day, what is real digital progress? It's not about doing more, it's about doing better. At a time when digital is becoming tentacular, simplicity becomes an act of resistance.