Finding the Core of the Idea

How do engineers find the essential core of their ideas and designs? To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. Engineering is fundamentally the art of relentlessly prioritizing. It is not good enough to be just simple. Being just profound is also not the answer. Engineering is about creating ideas that are both simple and profound.

Using the word simple in the context of design is not to minimize the technological complexity we all face. Simple in this context is more a function of the core ideas and their compactness. Think Apple and the iPod - - well defined core ideas, technologically profound, feature compactness versus feature creep. Now think VCR remote and a group of engineers around a conference room table - - "Hey, there's some extra real estate here on the chip. Rather than let it go to waste, what if we give people the ability to toggle between the Julian and Gregorian calendars?"

There has to be engineering triage. The French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery once offered a definition of engineering elegance: "A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." The longer you work on a design the more you can find yourself losing direction. No detail is too small. You just don't know what the core idea or ideas are anymore. The problem becomes one of losing direction. A designer of simple ideas should aspire to the same goal: knowing how much can be wrung out of an idea before it begins to lose its essence.

Forced prioritization is really painful. Smart people recognize the value of all the material. They see nuance, multiple perspectives - - and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they're often tempted to linger there. This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at odds with the need to prioritize. We should understand that this may be engineering's most difficult quest - - the need to wrestle priorities out of complexity.

Why is prioritizing so difficult? Coming up with a list of design requirements doesn't sound so difficult. Try looking at a list of design requirements and organize them into two categories - - headings such as "Critical" and "Beneficial". Sometimes it's not obvious to tell where a particular requirements belongs. Too much complexity and uncertainty leads to decision paralysis and design angst. Strategic direction and a common language are helpful in combating decision paralysis. People response better to a strategy than a fixed set of rules.

Read Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die (2008) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.