There is a fixed amount of complexity in any system that cannot be designed away. Larry Tesler, who worked at Xerox PARC and Apple and is credited with inventing cut, copy, and paste, articulated what he called the Law of Conservation of Complexity: for any system, there is a certain amount of complexity that cannot be reduced. It can be moved (from user to system, from one part of the interface to another) but it cannot be eliminated. The designer's job is not to remove complexity but to decide who bears it: the user, the system, or the team building the system.
Tesler's Law
Why complexity can be moved but never eliminated from any system
A
Designers Academy
24 December 2025 · 5 min read
UXPrinciples
In brief
Tesler's Law states that for any system, there is a fixed amount of inherent complexity that cannot be eliminated, only moved, requiring designers to decide who bears this burden.
