Simple and Usable

A practical guide to simplicity »

Have you ever set out to simplify a user experience and found that everyone around you was trying to add more complexity and detail? Have you ever found yourself caught between customers who demand simplicity and competitors who out gun you with exciting features? Designing simplicity can be complex.

Simple and usable offers examples and stories that break the subject down into tips, strategies and guidelines you can follow to create websites, software or mobile apps which have a compelling simplicity.

What people are saying »

A great read. Full of tips and techniques. Like “Don’t make me think!” it’s the kind of book you’ll want to pass on to the people you work with. I highly recommend it.
Gerry Gaffney, Author Forms that work: designing Web forms for usability

Next time someone says to just “make it simple,” show them a copy of this book. Simple and Usable is a delightful afternoon read full of short, memorable examples that remind us why simple isn’t always easy.
Stephen P. Anderson, Author Mental Notes

Think things have to be complicated to be powerful? Think again. In this clear, compelling (and beautiful) book, Giles Colborne makes the argument for simplicity. He shows us design as a process of thoughtfully crafting a product that is just simple enough, but no more. Whitney Quesenbery, Author Storytelling for user experience

Packed with practical strategies for achieving simplicity—and an enjoyable read. Giles manages to infuse frequent examples into the book’s impressively concise 1-page sections. As an advocate of simplicity, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a hand in building websites, software, or products.
Tyler Tate, Twigkit

An amazing book. Just buy it, consider it a $20 2-hour brain upgrade.
Brandon Hays, The Daily Flux

This book is a delight. Everything about it is Simple and Usable – the layout, the beautiful illustrations, and the text. This is a book I will return to again to deal with specific questions. I’d recommend Simple and Usable to anyone involved in physical or digital product design.
Annie Dryden, Senior Interaction Designer, BBC

About the author »

Giles Colborne has been designing interactive user experiences since the early 1990s and it’s about time he did something useful like writing a book.

When he’s not doing that he he’s busy with cxpartners, a design consultancy based in Bristol and London that specialises in web and mobile user interface design for companies such as Marriott, Nokia and eBay. Giles and Richard Caddick founded cxpartners in 2004.