About fifteen years ago, I picked up a bargain bin copy of Edward De Bono’s 1990 book Simplicity from a local bookstore. I was drawn to the stark-white, minimalist cover, because it reminded me of the Beatles’ White Album, which I was obsessed with at the time. Yes it’s true — I did judge the book by its cover.

I’m glad I did. I immediately smiled when I opened up the book to discover that the main body copy was printed on the right side of the book, while the left side of the book was a full-page, tweet-length quote from its neighbor on the right. In other words, you didn’t have to read the whole book. Instead, you could just scan the pages and read the most important idea from each page on the left. In an era prior to Twitter, it felt like a revolutionary idea.

The core concept of De Bono’s book was that making something simple is easy. Creating simplicity, however, is very challenging. It takes a lot of planning and brain power to design something with intentional simplicity. (De Bono also argues that complexity can actually be a good thing as well.)

Nintendo’s WiiU and the Simplicity Crisis

I’ve been thinking about simplicity a lot since I picked up a Nintendo WiiU for Christmas in 2012. Unfortunately, I hadn’t done my consumer homework yet. I naively purchased the hardware, thinking it would be great to pick up the first HD/1080p Nintendo console. I assumed that I’d be able to move all my previous Wii Virtual Console purchases from the old console to the new one. Piece of cake! I’d have all my favorite old games AND some new ones on this great new Nintendo device in beautiful HD. Awesome, right?

Like many, my initial WiiU experience was awkward. I had to update the console firmware as soon as I connected to the internet, and I was unable to use the thing until the all the new software was both downloaded and installed. Next up, I had to connect my old Wii to the new WiiU and use some weird piece of software to move all the data to the new device. Of course, I couldn’t do anything while this process happened. It’s important to note that the WiiU is not only the first HD Nintendo console, but it’s also the first second screen console. The device has two screens. Not only does this mean that the console should be more versatile, but it also means that there’s this extra layer of complexity that’s been added to the experience.

I use two screens when I’m watching television to “extend” my experience. I’ll be watching an episode of Arrested Development on Netflix, when a cameo appearance from a guest star jogs my memory. Suddenly I’m picking up my phone and I’m searching IMDB to figure out who that actor is. And I’m not the only one… the use of a second screen is an increasingly common use case in the 21st century.

Nintendo created a beautifully integrated solution. Instead of having two platforms, why not have a single platform with a seamlessly synchronized experience? Unfortunately, it seems that most of the Nintendo OS team didn’t get the WiiU team’s memo about the built-in second screen innovation. Loading screens and hardware updates are presented on both screens. When Nintendo launched the platform in 2012, they even encouraged users to update the WiiU before wrapping it up for Christmas.

The original Wii is brilliantly simple. You have a small white box, and you wave a little magic wand at the TV to pick your channel. When you find the channel you want, you just push the button and start playing the game. If you wanted to play a game on a disc, you just load the disc into the device. Simple.

Fast forward to the WiiU. The new, HD console from Nintendo! Awesome, right? Time to dust off those old Wii discs you’ve been using as coasters to experience them in high-definition. After all, you can pick up a $30 DVD player that upconverts those old digital video discs to 1080p, so it would be safe to assume that a $250 Nintendo console could do the same for video games, right? If emulators can do this already, then surely Nintendo factored this into their plan, right?

The answer is… sort of. Yes, the WiiU will allow you to play your old Wii discs. However, they’re not quite upconverted to HD. To access the old Wii disc, you first have to boot into an emulated “Wii Menu” mode. Huh? Instead of migrating the old content into the new ecosystem, Nintendo took a shortcut and simply added a Wii emulator within the WiiU operating system.

After migrating all my old Wii data onto the new WiiU, I had to boot up the emulated “Wii Menu” from the Wii U Menu to use the various Virtual Console games I bought in the past. Plus I was unable to use the snazzy new WiiU Game Pad for any of the old stuff. Instead, I’d need to use the old Wii Remote controllers plus Wii Pro Controllers for any Virtual Console games from newer-generation consoles like the Super Nintendo or Nintendo 64. This also meant that I couldn’t use the WiiU Pro Controller (which is different than the Wii Pro Controller, which requires the Wii Remote to work.) See what I mean? The complexity is kind of ridiculous.

Cloud-Based Thinking

Nintendo isn’t the only company that faces issues with user experience and the desire for intentional simplicity. Modern tech startups die or thrive based on how seamless and easy their user experiences are for their users. Take a startup like Snapchat. It’s arguably an unnecessary additional personal photo-sharing app, yet it’s wildly successful. Why? First up, from the teens I’ve talked to, Snapchat just “seems easier” than other systems like iMessage or WhatsApp. There’s also something appealing about the illusion of privacy as Snapchat suggests. It just seems simple. Push a button to send a quick pic to a friend, then the pic disappears automatically after they’ve seen it. It’s much tidier than managing files back and forth. It’s cloud-computing at its finest — simple, elegant and doesn’t require much from the user’s computer in terms of storage space.

I recently unsubscribed from Apple’s iTunes Cloud service. When I first registered, I was excited to have a cloud-based backup of my admittedly massive music collection (amassed over the many years of receiving promo copies of albums and buying music online via services like eMusic.) I cancelled my subscription after I discovered the more expensive, yet simpler, solution in Rdio. I imported my iTunes playlists to Rdio, and everything just felt simpler and easier. I didn’t have conflicts between devices, and I didn’t have to worry about songs taking up precious space on my fairly limited solid state hard drives.

Even a URL can increase friction and decrease simplicity

Check out the URL on Google+ or Medium… It’s unusual to type a special character in a URL. It’s outside of the norm, so it’s not easy to communicate to the less innovative folks in the world. How would someone find Nike on Facebook? The first instinct would be to search for them in the Facebook search bar. The second would be to type out the URL in the search bar… Would you instinctively type out “facebook.com/+nike”? What about if you were searching for Nike on Medium? How would you find them? Would you type out “medium.com/@nike”? That probably wouldn’t be my first guess if I were a new user. I guess you would add the extra symbol if you already knew about the Medium ecosystem, and knew that these usernames were based on Twitter handles. But what if you didn’t? That microscopic, nitpick-y element could increase friction for many users… And nowadays, friction is getting less and less tolerable to users.

Apps with an usually low barrier to entry have been performing very, very well lately. At this point, most people have probably already been exposed to the massive success of Flappy Bird, which was making about $50,000 per day at its height. There’s other, newer apps that are also massively successful, thanks to an unbelievably simple game mechanic with very low barrier-to-entry… like Make It Rain, for example.

People crave simplicity these days. Life has become complicated. They don’t have time to fuss around with all the weird little features of the WiiU operating system. Why wait for something, when you can just pull out your Android phone, tap a button and fire up a brand new game in the same time it takes to boot up the WiiU eShop? Millennials would rather ditch their car than their smart phone — because the smart phone is simpler, cheaper and arguably more useful than a vehicle these days.