Simplification
Cutting complexity so the desired action is easy to take.
What it means
Simplification is the deliberate reduction of the cognitive and procedural burden of a task — through shorter forms, plain language, fewer steps, and pre-filled fields — so that more people are able to complete it. Its power rests on the fact that small frictions and high cognitive load disproportionately deter action, so removing them often does more to lift completion than persuasion or incentives. The mechanism is twofold: it lowers the effort cost at the decisive moment, and it reduces the chances that confusion, fatigue, or present bias will cause people to abandon the task partway. Simplification is the 'Easy' in the EAST framework and is repeatedly found to be among the most cost-effective behavioral interventions, sometimes producing large gains for trivial expense. A boundary condition is that over-simplification can omit information people need to choose well, so the aim is to remove extraneous burden, not meaningful content. It matters because access to benefits, education, healthcare, and financial products is frequently gated less by motivation than by needless complexity, which simplification can dissolve.
Examples
Pre-populating a financial-aid form with families' existing tax data sharply increased college applications and enrollment.
A council moves its housing-benefit claim from a twelve-page form you must print and post to six questions online, and far more eligible tenants reach the end of it.
Adding one 'use saved details' button removes the twenty fields of typing that quietly lose shoppers with a full basket at eleven o'clock at night.
First described in EAST framework; Bettinger et al. (2012).