Simple questions to help you minimise

Most things that we design use more resources and energy than they need to.

This makes them over complicated, inefficient and harmful to the environment.

By minimising, we can design simpler, more efficient and sustainable things from fewer resources benefitting people, the planet, prosperity, performance and our sense of purpose in our work.

Why minimise?

Minimising when designing isn't new, it's embedded in principles we already know like :

"Less is more"

"The best design is as little design as possible" (Dieter Rams)

"Doing more with less" (Buckminster Fuller)

Yet, in reality, we often add more to the things we design instead of refining them to the essentials.

So how can we shift our approach regardless of what we are designing?

Minimising by asking simple questions

Minimising isn't about removing things for the sake of it, it's about deliberately trying to do more with less.

The easiest way to do this is by questioning our work regularly.

By questioning our work we can challenge what we are doing, help us to see things from a different perspective and encourage ourselves to find better ways of doing things.

Questions to help you minimise

Use the following questions to help reduce waste, improve usability and to help you focus your designs on what really matters.

You can use them to help you to design new things and to improve the design of existing things.

Defining the core purpose:

• What is the purpose of this?
• Which key elements must exist and perform brilliantly to serve its purpose?
• What are the business and user needs that we must serve?
• Is this thing actually necessary at all?

Reducing resource usage:

• Which aspects consume the most energy (to provide and to use)?
• Are we providing a proportionate amount of value given the energy that we are using?
• Where are we using resources disproportionately?
• How can we use less energy while achieving the same result?
• Where does the require the most mental effort to use?

Reducing complexity and waste:

• What's adding unnecessary complexity?
• How can we make this simpler and easier to use?
• What would be the most streamlined version that would still work?
• If we had to remove one thing, what would it be and why?
• How might we do more with less?
• Where are we being wasteful?

Re-use and making the most of what already exists:

• What can we re-use from elsewhere?
• Where are we reinventing the wheel unnecessarily?
• What established patterns should we follow to make this more intuitive?
• Can any individual elements perform multiple jobs?

Improving performance and value:

• How confident are we in our knowledge of how well this is working?
• What does this need to do well?
• What is providing the most value?
• What isn't working as well as it should?
• What isn't proving to be useful or used?
• What is helping? What is hindering?
• Are the most resource-intensive parts providing proportionate value to justify them?
• How could we get the same result (or better) with less?
• Where might we be doing more harm than good?
• What is adding unnecessary friction and getting in the way?
• How can we provide more value with what we have already?
• How are other people doing the same thing more simply?
• What must we not change?
• How can we make this more efficient?
• How can we make this more lightweight?
• How can we maximise the amount of people who are able to access and use this?
• Is this solving the right problem in the right way?

Introducing constraints:

• What would this look like if we adopted a 'mobile first' approach?
• What would be the most resilient version that would still work despite a worst-case scenario?

Removing constraints:

• In an ideal world, how would we minimise this?

Minimise to maximise

So regardless of what you are designing, use these questions to help you minimise and do more with less.

In doing so you'll deliver the maximum possible value from the minimum amount of resources and discover a truly sustainable approach to design!

Let me know your thoughts, which questions I've missed and how you get on with them in the comments below!