This paper reexamines the minimalist approach on instruction and documentation and on computer systems and applications. A sketch of today’s novice is given along with a brief historic overview. Thereafter, the main design principles of minimalism are presented. This discussion concentrates on the research that has appeared after the publication of “Minimalism beyond the Nurnberg Funnel” in 1998. Illustrations, some of which have not been published before, appear throughout the paper. These pictures convey a diverse image of the application of minimalist principles. This is to be expected for a design approach which capitalizes on people’s prior knowledge, on their active construction of new knowledge and on their ‘learning by doing’.