That's the annoying thing about simplicity.
When it works, people don't always notice it. They just move through the experience without having to think too hard.
A good form. A clear website. A well-designed product flow. A simple dashboard. They all feel easy, but they rarely started that way.
They started messy.
Too many options. Too many words. Too many edge cases. Too many people wanting their thing included because their thing was important too.
Simplicity is usually the result of saying no repeatedly without making the final thing feel smaller than it should.
Simple is not basic
I think people sometimes confuse simplicity with lack of depth.
They are not the same.
A simple experience can still be powerful. It can still handle complexity. It just doesn't force the user to carry all of that complexity at once.
That is the job of design.
Not making things pretty.
Reducing the effort required to understand what to do next.
Where my thinking is today
If someone has to think too hard to use something, the problem is probably not the person.
It is probably the thing.
That might be a product, a report, a website, a presentation or a process.
Good design doesn't remove thought entirely. It just makes sure people spend their thinking on the right thing.