Information Architecture design is about making the about making the complex appear simple.
This from Steve Jobs in 1984:
When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem. Then you get into the problem, and you see that it’s really complicated, and you come up with all these convoluted solutions. That’s sort of the middle, and that’s where most people stop….
But the really great person will keep on going and find the key, the underlying principle of the problem—and come up with an elegant, really beautiful solution that works.
More about Experience Design here
Its analagous to the steps of competence in NLP:
Stage 1 – Unconscious Incompetence because this is where we don’t know what we don’t know.
Stage 2 – Conscious Incompetence where we do know what we don’t know.
Stage 3 – Conscious Competence because this is where we know what we know.
Stage 4 – Unconscious Competence which is where we don’t know what we know – “second nature” from being a conscious to an unconscious functioning
http://www.microdot.net/nlp/learning-strategy/stages-of-competence.htm
You find the elegant solution, because at a conscious level you keeping PUSHING to get it, but also because your competencies in the complex are so ingrained, that you are attuned to recognizing the the beauty in the simple solution, at a an unconscious level.
Think Blink!
Oh and another thought on the Simple > Complex > Simple train. Joe Sugerman on copywriting:
A rule of thumb … is to explain a complicated product in a simple way and explain a simple product in a complex way