This is entry four of a ten-part series based on Dieter Rams’ Ten Principles of Good Design. The Journal asked writers and illustrators to contribute to the project. Each writer wrote on one of Rams’ principles; each illustrator reacted to a writer’s essay.

At the core of Dieter Rams’ process was always the question: “Is this necessary?” His diligence in eliminating the secondary, the distracting, the ornament, brought Braun to the pinnacle of product design at its time and raised the bar for generations of designers to come.

In all creative fields, there are great designs that have remained untouched for decades; to me those are the good designs. If a product can surpass the boundaries of time, language, education, religion and cultural background, we can say that it is an “understandable product.”

But what can we do to make more understandable products?

What are the most basic functions the product has to perform? What do we want the user to do first? What about after that? How do we want the user to relate to the product? Is this a product for one-time use or a product for everyday use? How do these things affect the design approach?

Answering these and many other questions about what the product needs to do helps to bring the design goals into focus. It clarifies the problems that we need to solve. If we can answer these questions, we can make a simple product for the user.

The more essential, the more stripped-down the elements of a product are, the easier it is for the user to establish a relationship with it. The more distractions we build into our designs, the longer it will take the user to understand how to interact with the product in the manner that was intended.

Many designers have trouble differentiating between ‘good’ and ‘beautiful’ design. Without realizing it, they are drawn to beautiful designs, forgetting the final goal of their task – which is to make the product speak for itself.

Ornamentation does not improve a design; this is a principle that the Modernists embraced. Every element must fulfill a function, otherwise it should not be there. If, as we assemble those elements into a design, we can make them harmonic and beautiful, all the better.

Matias Corea wrote on Rams’ fourth principle, Good design makes a product understandable. Mr Corea is the Chief Designer at Behance. Denis Carrier created the above illustration based on Mr Corea’s essay. Mr Carrier is an editorial illustrator and co-founder of French design and art direction studio PNTS.