DesignShift Practice Session: from Glorifying Simplicity to Holding Complexity
In June 2025, we hosted our fourth DesignShifts Practice Session. This was an opportunity to move from theory to practice and explore some of the DesignShifts in community. In this session, we explored how we can move away from simplicity and explores the tensions of complexity.
Session overview
We often say that good design is simple; that designers are skilled at simplifying the complex; that design is about solving problems. But what if the problems we face today—climate collapse, structural injustice, disconnection—can’t be simplified? What if trying to reduce them to something more digestible is part of the problem?
In this session, we practiced holding the complexity that lives within us and around us. We’ll explored what it means to be with tensions that don’t resolve, questions that don’t have clear answers, and truths that contradict each other. We named the tensions we feel today and consider the shifts we want to make for a better tomorrow..
For this session, DesignShifts partnered with Lorna Westwood
She is designing marketing strategies with integrity and teams that thrive, for progressive organisations.
Emerging themes
Crafting the session was a labor of love between me and Lorna. Hosting it was an experience of collective presence and perspectives from everyone who chose to spend their precious time together with us. A few days later, I’m holding 3 themes that surfaced through discussions, creation, and listening.
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Simplicity has a place.
Simplicity isn’t inherently bad. Moving away from glorifying simplicity is less about rejecting the concept of simplicity and more about recognizing WHEN simplicity limits our ability to see things clearly, meet others in their full humanity, or solve problems that expand domains, cultures, and world views. Someone spoke about how “we’re been sold a concept of simplicity as the best solution so we try to hack our work and lives all the time.” This lie or glorification creates tensions when we’re met with contradictions, paradoxes, or unsolvable scenarios.
“There's a push and pull (as needed) required with simplicity. We shouldn't completely abandon it, nor should we cling to it too rigidly.” - Practice Session Participant
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Reaching simplicity requires complexity.
What looks simple on the surface often requires a lot of complexity to reach. Athletes who make their sport look effortless have put in countless hours of practicing and perfecting their craft, developing muscle memory that transforms struggle into grace. Public speakers who make presentations look easy have likely rehearsed their material dozens of times, learning to manage their nerves and read their audience with precision.
This pattern extends everywhere we look. The chef who tosses ingredients together for what seems like an impromptu meal has spent years understanding how flavors interact. The musician who plays a complex piece with apparent ease has devoted countless hours to scales and technique. Even the friend who always knows exactly what to say has probably learned through years of listening and observation. True mastery often hides its own complexity, creating an illusion of simplicity that can be both inspiring and deceptive.
“In simplicity, there is a lot of complexity” -Practice Session Participant
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Acknowledging tensions can provide release — but not for everyone.
In the session, we used Vent Diagrams to practice holding opposing truths together. Vent Diagrams are contradicting truths towards collective liberation, assembled by artist @onespacefor & teacher @eem.pdf. Through Vent Diagrams, individuals are encouraged to draw two circles with different statements that are both true, and contrasting, at the same time. The exercise helps us become more comfortable holding contradicting ideas in our head, without fighting to declare one right and the other one wrong.
On their site, the creators write:
“Making vent diagrams as a practice helps us recognize and reckon with contradictions and keep imagining and acting from the intersections and overlaps. Venting is an emotional release, an outlet for our anger, frustration, despair -- and as a vent enables stale, suffocating air to flow out, it allows new fresh air to cycle in and through.”
In the session, we created different Vent Diagrams together as a way to sit with discomfort and share the experience with each other.
Here are a few examples:
This was a way to be with the tensions. Some people felt that “Acknowledgment [of contradictions] feels like a release.” This is how I feel when doing Vent Diagrams. However, others shared a craving for additional solutions or steps beyond acknowledging the tensions.
Opposing thoughts created a space where we could recognize that we are all complex beings and solutions or tools are not universally beneficial. Holding complexity is about holding paradoxes. It’s about realizing and accepting that contradicting things can be true at the same time, and we got to experience this first hand in the session.
I’m reminded of this poem by Rumi:
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” - Rumi
Additional quotes submitted by workshop participants when signing up for the session
Parting questions
After the session, I’m left with more questions than answers. This is a place I want to be and extend the question to you:
When is simplicity helping you find clarity? When does it create a blurred vision of reality?
When does leaning into complexity help you see yourself, others, systems more clearly? When does it stall you or take you down the wrong paths?
With love,
Ida and Lorna
