There’s a moment in product development that I live for — when you remove a feature and the product gets better. Not just simpler. Better.
Most teams measure progress by what they add. Features shipped. Endpoints created. Screens designed. But the products that people genuinely love — the ones that feel inevitable — got there by ruthless subtraction.
The Subtraction Test
Here’s how I evaluate any feature at Resal: if I removed this tomorrow, would anyone notice? And I don’t mean “would the analytics dip.” I mean would a real human being feel the loss?
If the answer is no, it shouldn’t exist.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci
This isn’t about minimalism as an aesthetic. It’s about respect for the person using your product. Every unnecessary element is a small tax on their attention. Add enough taxes and people leave.
What This Looks Like in Practice
At Resal, we killed an entire settings page last quarter. Twelve options reduced to two. The support tickets for that area dropped to zero. Not because people stopped needing help — because there was nothing left to be confused about.
The customer never thinks about what you removed. They just feel that the product works. That’s the goal.
The Paradox
Making something simple is extraordinarily hard. It requires you to understand the problem so deeply that you can see which parts are essential and which are decoration. Most teams can’t tell the difference, so they keep everything.
The discipline isn’t in adding features. It’s in having the courage to take them away.