Laws of UX, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9. Tesler’s Law

Tesler’s law, also known as the law of conservation of complexity, states that for any system there is a certain amount of complexity that cannot be reduced.

Key Takeaways

• All processes have a core of complexity that cannot be designed away and therefore must be assumed by either the system or the user.

• Ensure as much as possible of the burden is lifted from users by dealing with inherent complexity during design and development.

• Take care not to simplify interfaces to the point of abstraction.

Overview

Who should bear the burden of complexity within an application or a process—the user, or the designers and developers? This is a fundamental question when considering the design of user interfaces and, more broadly, how humans interact with technology. A key objective for designers is to reduce complexity for the people who use the products and services we help to build, yet there is some inherent complexity in every process. Inevitably, we reach a point at which complexity cannot be reduced any further but can only be transferred from one place to another. At this point, it finds its way either into the user interface or into the processes and workflows of designers and developers.

Origins

The origins of Tesler’s law can be traced back to the mid-1980s, when Larry Tesler, a computer scientist at Xerox PARC, was helping to develop the language ...