Simplify your product design — borrow familiar patterns

Last week’s post was about how simplicity is a competitive advantage when the world feels so complicated. But what does it mean for a product to be “simple”?

Simple products are immediately familiar and usable. When I pick up a knife or a cup, I never have to think to myself, “How do I use this?”, even if I’m at a friend’s and have never seen their tableware before.

That sense of familiarity is what we wanted for WhatsApp too. We wanted to make sure our users wouldn’t feel like they needed to learn how to use the app, but could just start calling and messaging.

We had to ask ourselves — what will make this product familiar to billions of very different people around the world?

Well, the only thing we really knew about all those potential WhatsApp users is that they had a phone. So we matched the patterns of the phone’s operating system, because that’s the one thing we knew that the user would already be familiar with.

If Android normally had an floating action button in the bottom right, that’s where WhatsApp would put its button. This meant WhatsApp would feel familiar even if you've never actually used the app before.

We also used consistent patterns throughout the app. I’m not talking about anything fancy — just things like “whenever you see a triangle button you’re going to send a message; when you see an arrow you’re not going to send yet.” That consistency quickly built a sense of predictability and control for users.

Of course, this was really limiting in lots of ways! There were lots of interesting gestures and interaction patterns that we wanted to use but couldn’t, because they weren’t already intuitive to all our users.

The question I always asked was “where would the user naturally put their thumb? Put the button there.” If you’re watching a Hotjar recording, you can see where someone pulls their mouse, or where someone’s eyes track in qualitative research. Users are telling us where they expect to find something — put the button there!

For another industry example of how familiar patterns make hard things feel easy, think about all the new genAI chat bots. This is wildly complicated frontier technology. How is it possible that hundreds of millions of consumers could pick it up overnight?

Because even though these AI systems are built on complex foundations, they borrow a messaging interface that we’ve all been using for decades. That familiar interface means that everyone can use this amazing tech without needing to learn anything new.

One shortcut I always think of when designing a new product is: what other apps or physical products are my users likely to be using? Are there any patterns I can borrow from those to make a new product automatically intuitive? If a user normally swipes right to dismiss notifications, can swiping right dismiss new alerts inside my product instead of making the user find an “x” to tap on? Making these small gestures familiar can add up to making a whole product feel more simple and intuitive, instead of like yet another new thing to learn.