Accepting complexity: Critiquing Tim Grahl’s ‘No Doubt’ (Part 7)
Summary: Some complexities are unavoidable, inherent in the story you’re trying to tell. And that’s not a bad thing.
Some things can never be made simple.
— John Maeda (Maeda, Page 83)
I remember a particularly gnarly project I worked on at Microsoft. We were launching a new product to help software teams find and fix security vulnerabilities in their code. This product was an extension — an upsell — that fit onto our existing suite of collaboration tools for software teams.
At the time, I was frustrated with the design of the administrator settings. The problem was that we used a complicated billing model, which made customers’ costs difficult for them to understand.
This became a challenge for the user experience. I wanted to equip our customers to make good decisions quickly, without needing to take a half hour to reason through the inner-workings of our billing model.
Success eluded me. I remember going through dozens of iterations, drawing and then abandoning one failed attempt after another. It was frustrating work. I watched day after day go by, feeling the only progress I was making was the ever-growing pile of discarded ideas.
At one point, my manager looked at me and and shook her head. “Nate,” she said, “It’s not your design that’s the problem. The underlying model is too complex.”
If you’ll excuse the kludgy metaphor, I was trying to create a calm, refreshing fishing experience for our customers. But upstream, the billing model factory was pumping complexity into the river. I was downstream, inheriting all the challenges, and there was only so much I could do to fix it. A
Recap
This is the seventh note in a series analyzing Tim Grahl’s short story, “No Doubt”.
In the first note, we established our agenda for this project. We’re evaluating Tim’s story in terms of five fundamentals of storytelling: clarity, believability, engagingness, affect, and meaningfulness.
Now, we’re exploring clarity. What does Tim’s story do well and poorly when it comes to making it easy to understand what’s happening and why?
- Intro
- Clear: Orient your audience
- Clear: Don’t pull your punches
- Clear: It’s gotta be on the page
- Clear: Understanding complexity
- Clear: Managing complexity
- Clear: Accepting complexity ← Where we are currently
- Believable
- Engaging
- Affecting
- Meaningful
As a reminder, clarity is about intent. Does your audience receive your story in the way you intended?
In this note, we’ll round off our discussion of complexity by talking about unavoidable complexity and cases in which complexity can be a good thing.
Inherent complexity
In our series so far, we’ve been talking mostly about how to reduce or eliminate complexities in your storytelling. More complexity requires more effort, so it’s worthwhile to streamline wherever you can.
But there are some cases, like my experience designing at Microsoft, where the complexities you’re dealing with are unavoidable.
In Tim Grahl’s “No Doubt,” for example, we’ve looked several times from different angles at the complexity in naming. Tim uses two different identifiers, “Gwen Stefani” and her band “No Doubt.” In his plot, they both represent the same underlying element.
In a previous note, I pointed out that one way to simplify this would be to choose a different artist, like Celine Dion or Britney Spears. This eliminates the complexity of using two different identifiers, since these artists are known by a single name.
But what would that do for the story? Perhaps Tim has selected Gwen Stefani and No Doubt specifically. Maybe there’s a particular element of nostalgia, which Gwen Stefani evokes and which is intrinsic to the experience that he wants to deliver. Maybe no other artist on earth could deliver that particular element of nostalgia. What then?
In that case, the complexity of the name may be “upstream” of the plot, unavoidable. The decision determines the constraints in which Tim must operate to tell his story.
And this may be true for your stories as well. There may be certain complexities that are unavoidable because they are inherent in the story you want to tell. Changing them would make it a fundamentally different story.
And that’s okay. Remember, clarity is about delivering the story you intended. And if complexity is an unavoidable result of that intention, so be it.
The point is not to avoid complexity at all costs. It’s to eliminate nonessential complexity so that the story you’re telling can shine through.
Not all complexities are bad
“Concentrate on the deep beauty of a flower. Notice the many thin, delicate strands that emanate from the center and the sublime gradations of hue that occur even in the simplest white blossom. Complexity can be beautiful.”
— John Maeda (Maeda, Page 83)
Complexity is not universally bad. It can, in fact, be an ingredient, a part of the “flavor” of your story. Complex stories can be enjoyable, both for storytellers and their audiences.
Some of the most rewarding stories are so not in spite of their complexities but in fact — in part, at least — because of them. A story like To Kill a Mockingbird or, more recently “Manchester by the Sea,” that defies easy unpacking can stick with audience members for a long time, challenging them to grapple with nuance and implication.
Part of that comes from complexity of theme, of course, which is different from just the plain complexities of plot construction.
But a complex plot can contribute to the essential feeling of a story if done well. Pride and Prejudice would not be the classic that it is without its assembled cast of sisters, potential lovers, and Georgian society high jinks.
It just takes a lot of skill and effort to manage that complexity well.
It’s all about the experience
In the end, the question is always the same. What is the story you’re trying to tell? What is its heart, its essence? That must be your guide.
After discovering what’s essential (which is, of course, no small feat), what you must do is discover out how to most clearly deliver that intention.
To do a minor disservice to the words of the estimable Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: when you have eliminated every other possibility, whatever remains — however simple or complex — must be the answer.
I leave you with this final observation from designer John Maeda, one which has become more profound to me the more I’ve thought about it over the years:
“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”
— John Maeda (Maeda, Page 89)
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