The design-relevant application of the philosophical principle that, given competing solutions, the simplest one is usually preferable. In UX, Occam's Razor guides designers toward removing unnecessary features, interactions, and complexity — particularly when a simpler approach meets user needs just as effectively as a more elaborate one.
Common contexts
- Deciding between a multi-step filtering panel versus a single smart search input on a product catalog
- Cutting three onboarding screens to one after finding users skip the extra steps entirely
- Simplifying a settings architecture from eight nested categories to four flat sections
Use when
Apply it when two design solutions address the same user need and you need a principled reason to choose one — particularly when stakeholders are advocating for more features, more steps, or more options without evidence that users need them.
Avoid when
Don't apply it when the problem itself is genuinely complex — oversimplifying a form that handles legal or medical data can shift cognitive burden onto the user at a moment they can least afford it.
Occam's Razor cuts features, not user needs — the mistake is treating them as the same thing and removing functionality that feels complex in the interface but is actually essential to the task.
Real-world examples
- Google's search homepage is the canonical Occam's Razor design: a single text input and two buttons solve the core job to be done without the feature creep that overtook competitors like AltaVista.
- Slack's initial product stripped away threaded conversations, channels-within-channels, and rich analytics in v1, shipping only the simplest viable team chat — a deliberate Occam's Razor scoping decision.
- When designing Apple's first iPhone, Steve Jobs rejected a hardware keyboard entirely, applying Occam's Razor to the question 'what is the minimum physical input required?' — arriving at a single multi-touch surface.