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Tesler’s law – five laws of UX

“Every application has an inherent amount of complexity that cannot be removed or hidden. Instead, it must be dealt with, either in product development or in user interaction.”

Also known as the law of conservation of complexity, this statement asks who should be exposed to complexity. Should a developer add complexity to the code to make the interaction simpler for the user, or should the user deal with an unfriendly interface so that the software code can stay comprehensible? Of course, as a UX team, I want to choose the former; however, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, adding code might affect the reliability and scalability of the system, not to mention the project timeline, and the user might not even notice the complexity passed to them. Tesler’s law shows why designing in silos and throwing mockups “over the fence” never works. Building software requires considering tradeoffs for both a user and a system, and you have to work closely with your developers to find the balance.