Why sometimes less is more

The pull towards more

Every product, brand and service I have worked on has faced the same pressure. Someone asks for one more feature. A new audience needs one more page. A new idea gets one more button. Each request is reasonable on its own. Together they create something that is harder to use, harder to explain and harder to change.

Doing less is not about being lazy or cheap. It is about deciding what really matters to the people you serve, and having the discipline to protect it.

What good public services say about doing less

The UK government's design principles are some of the clearest writing on this. The second principle is simply "Do less". It says: "Government should only do what only government can do." And it ends: "We should concentrate on the irreducible core." [S33]

The fourth principle explains why this is hard: "Making something look simple is easy. Making something simple to use is much harder." [S33] Simplicity takes more work, not less, and it is worth it.

Less in products

When we designed Coming Home: Family Care, our own iPhone app for families looking after someone at home, one of its central features is a daily "I'm OK": one big button, also on Apple Watch. It does one job. If it has not been tapped by the time the family chooses, the people in the care circle get follow ups in the order they set.

That feature could easily have grown into something much more complicated. Keeping it to one button makes it easier for the person using it, and easier for the family to trust.

In product design, less usually means:

• One clear job per screen, rather than everything everywhere.
• Fewer choices at each step, with sensible defaults.
• Leaving things out of the first version, and adding them only when people show they need them.

Less in brands and marketing

When we started work with Dignity Access, its brochures used five typefaces and disagreed with each other on details such as phone numbers, sizes and lead times. More material had not made the company clearer. It had made it harder to trust.

Part of the answer was doing less: one company brand, a consistent set of templates, and one approved fact sheet that every brochure and web page uses. Fewer sources, fewer contradictions.

The same applies to messaging. A buyer remembers one clear reason to choose you far better than ten reasons they have to work out for themselves.

Less in processes

In operations, less often means removing steps rather than adding software. When we map a workflow with the people who do the work, we regularly find duplicate entries, handovers that add nothing and approvals nobody remembers asking for. Taking those out can do more than any new system.

How to decide what to cut

A few questions I find useful:

1. Who is this for, and what do they need to do? If a feature, page or step does not help that, question it.
2. What would happen if we removed it? If the honest answer is "probably nothing", remove it.
3. Are we adding this for the user, or to avoid a difficult conversation? Many additions are compromises.
4. Can we do one thing really well first? You can always add later. Taking things away once people rely on them is much harder.

Less, but better

Doing less is a choice to focus. It makes products easier to use, brands easier to trust and services easier to deliver. It also tends to make projects cheaper and quicker, which is no bad thing.

If you have a product, website or process that has grown more complicated than it needs to be, our New product design service is a good place to start, or book a discovery call.

Sources

1. Government Digital Service and Central Digital and Data Office, Government design principles, last updated 2 April 2025. [S33]
2. Caresque, Coming Home: Family Care and Dignity Access brand and digital programme case studies.