On Simplicity in Design

The best interfaces disappear entirely.1 When you’re reading a well-designed document, you’re not thinking about the typography, the margins, or the spacing—you’re thinking about the ideas.

Edward Tufte understood this deeply. His books aren’t just about data visualization; they’re about removing everything that gets between the reader and the information.2

In computational biology, we face the same challenge. How do we present complex genomic data without overwhelming the researcher? How do we make the patterns visible while keeping the noise hidden?

The answer, I think, lies in thoughtful reduction—not making things simple, but making them appropriately complex.3

  1. This is why command-line tools often feel more powerful than GUIs. Less visual noise, more focus on the task.↩︎

  2. “Above all else show the data” - Edward Tufte, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information↩︎

  3. As Einstein apocryphally said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”↩︎