All good designs have one thing in common, they are conceptually simple. At the heart of everything is a simple digestible idea. Call this what you will; essence, thesis, spirit, substance. Aesthetic or concept wise stop blah blahing your audience and get to the point. Most importantly figure out what your point is.

Let’s talk about game design. The most successful game in all of history is The Sims. It’s a game where you take control of tiny people who inhabit a domicile of your creation. Wait, it gets better. So what do they do with their day? Well, you decide. Whatever it takes to get by. Your sim can have a healthy career in a number of industries or stay at home painting all day. Heck, why get a job at all? Anything is possible in the Sims. Play legitimately or create a micro hell where your sims are tortured to death. Although there are near infinite permutations to your character’s lifestyle the concept is simple - You are playing doll-house.

This idea of trial and error with zero recourse is very addictive. After all, we play video games to escape reality. Grand Theft Auto 3 (GTA) got it right with its no frills heres your gun now go steal some cars concept. At its heart people like seeing things blow up and GTA 3 delivered that and more. Flash forward to the newest incarnation, Grand Theft Auto 4, it’s loaded with too much subterfuge and reality. It lost that original simplicity that was wildly addictive. Ask yourself why the sequels and copycats hardly ever live up to the original.

Windows will never be as good as OSX because OSX is built on a simple concept - we design for humans. Windows is not built on a concept at all. Unless of course you count ripping off the competition as a high level notion. This is the fallacy in stealing other people’s ideas. You don’t have a grasp on the stark concept that stipulated every decision decision along the way. All you know is the net result. As an aside, Microsoft if you want to fix your problem stop looking at Apple they are innovative because they aren’t looking at you or anyone else for that matter. Stop chasing cars.

So back to the point. When designing figure out what your simple concept is. You should be able to describe it in a single sentence. If it takes you five minutes to tell me what you are doing then you’ve already lost. Humans like simple pleasures; kittens are cute, guns are fun to shoot, smoking makes you look cool, explosions rock. If your concept is that popping bubble wrap is enjoyable then you better do an amazing job of replicating bubble wrap.

This paragraph will expound upon the above thoughts. Simplicity is king. As mentioned earlier it may seem counterintuitive. You’re hired to do a job and you nail it on the head on your first attempt. So you think to yourself, it can’t be that easy I need to keep hammering at it. What happens is you keep piling more crap onto your concept until it no longer resembles that first stroke of genius. It’s the swiss army knife of designs. Sure it’s got a lot of work put into it but is it any good? I argue that it isn’t. Stop thinking that people want to be wowed by complexity for complexities sake. Look at the difference between the sleek lines and brushed finish of the Macbook Pro vs the loaded aesthetic of well, all of their competition. Give users value by providing a polished design and not by slapping on more rubbish.

Your concept can be anything that you want it to be. Remember however to keep it simple. In games it comes down to the challenge, what’s more simple than that? Think about all of your favorite things and figure out the basic reasons why you love them. Lastly I’ll say it agian, stop blah blahing your audience and get to the point.