But in designing a process or a tool, the simpler the better often applies. I am sure you have bought a tool or a household appliance which looked very good and had lots of innovations built in. But these so-called smart appliances can often let you down by being too complicated and harder to operate or more prone to failing if any one part malfunctions.

Our approach to design, whether it is a technical process or anything else, is

• Make a wish list of what you want
• Design to include the wish list
• Re-design to eliminate as much as possible in the process, while still meeting the wish list.
• Then start again, to re-evaluate the wish list and the final design – can it be simplified even more.
• Then get your customer and others to kick holes in what you have done
• Then re-design and simplify again to get something close to final design.
• And then start all over again, because simple design is never finished.

The most important word in all of this is “WHY”; like a child or a so-called simple person, ask why, again and again.

And the other important part is for you, the reader, to kick holes in what I have written.

Jimmie Parkes