The Difficulty with Simplicity

There’s a rule often taught to journalists and others trying to clearly convey information: keep it simple, stupid (KISS). Perhaps it’s a distant cousin of Occam’s razor, a principle attributed to a 14th century logician and Franciscan friar. To paraphrase his philosophical method of reasoning: When faced with two equally valid, competing theories, the simpler one is better. The famous one-liner, sometimes attributed to Albert Einstein, takes it a step further: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

There are many other witticisms on the importance of simplicity. It’s easy to say things should be simple. Though making them simple, especially in engineering, is much more difficult.

Feeling Bloated

Product complexity is increased by many factors, from regulations to new materials to adding new features that will set a product apart or keep up with user demands. Increasingly, those demands are for “smart,” connected products and systems that require embedded electronics and software. The move toward adding such technology to products exponentially increases product complexity. Let’s ignore the added complexity in designing and simulating connected electronics with their electromagnetic, thermal and signal integrity challenges and just look at how software adds complexity.

With software, a volume button doesn’t just turn your phone down, it might also snap a picture; the power button might also ignore an incoming call. New functionality can even be added after the product is in users’ hands. Without proper planning and oversight, it’s easy to allow new software features to creep into a product and overcomplicate it. Those layers of complexity have far-reaching effects for an organization that has to track each new feature and function, then support and maintain them throughout a product’s lifecycle.

Now consider that industry watchers peg the number of connected devices to reach anywhere from 25 to 75 billion by 2020 as the Internet of Things explodes into the mass market. If you don’t have a system in place—both in terms of a business process and a software platform—it will become impossible to effectively manage product complexity in the very near future. Excel spreadsheets can only take you so far.

Prepare the Platforms

Many companies see the need and are hoping to fill it. “The clash of the old and the new—established enterprises with deep pockets hoping to park their R&D dollars in high-yield IoT projects, and start-ups and new tech talents challenging the status quo with their Kickstarter- and Indiegogo-funded campaigns—is one of the most fascinating dichotomies in the Internet of Things,” writes Kenneth Wong in his coverage of the 2015 IoT World conference.

Platforms and ecosystems are cropping up to help develop, deploy and manage connected products and the big data that goes with them. Some promise a seemless cradle-to-grave product development workflow, while others are building on existing business management systems. This creates its own layer of complexity as organizations try to find the right solution for their current and future needs. Unfortunately, many businesses haven’t settled on or finished implementing a product lifecycle management solution, and some don’t even have engineering document management. The complexity of products seems poised to outpace our ability to manage that complexity. But it doesn’t have to.

The Simplicity Cycle

When implemented correctly, software allows complex tasks to be carried out behind the scenes and the user is neither baffled with too many options nor left wanting more advanced functionality. Making the complicated simple is absolutely critical to business because product complexity limits market potential. If a product is designed to be so easy to use that anyone can operate it, then you’ve automatically increased the pool of potential buyers. Take a look at Windows vs. DOS or PalmPilot vs. the iPhone. In each example, ease of use opened the flood gates to a much larger market of potential users.

Who will create the Windows or iPhone of product development platforms? The design engineering industry is ripe for the same type of transformation that technology-made-simple has brought to consumers. We talk a lot about what the “democratization” of simulation or ubiquitous access to high-performance computing would mean for product design. Just imagine what a “simple as possible, but not simpler” product development platform would do for enterprises and small businesses alike.