The Simplicity Shift

High tech products have historically had notoriously poor design. Fortunately, companies have recently started to embrace user centered design practices. This transition hasn't been smooth, however, as many companies have trouble transferring good design into final, shipping products. There is a political/cultural disconnect between the corporate desire for good design and the corporate culture that implements it. The Simplicity Shift is about shifting a company's culture to value, discover and implement Simplicity, creating well designed products. For most companies, Product Design is not a first class citizen, it is something locked into a 'design department' and done as a subtask of a larger sequential process. For companies to truly create breakthrough, easy to use products, they must elevate design so that its terms and tools are shared by everyone in the team. Design is a strategic tool that must become a part of how everyone in the company thinks, acts, and, most importantly, makes decisions.