During this years ESEC, Mr.

Avanindra Utukuri talked in his speech Role of ECE in a

World of Exponential Change about simplicity as a trend of technological innovation.
According to my personal experience along with researches, simplicity could be interpreted in
two different ways: the ease of use of the invention and the simplicity of innovation process.
1. Usability: simplicity of using the products
Usability is the measurement of how easily people can learn and use the design
(GOULD, & LEWIS, 1985). Engineers design products to make life easier.
Therefore, the key of innovation is to keep things simple, as emphasised by Tesco
(the UKs supremely innovative supermarketer), innovation must make things
simpler for the users (Schrage, 2010). The company regards training people on
how to use the innovation as an excuse not to further simplify, which highlights the
importance of usability of a design. Usability is also one of my key design principles,
which is reflected in my design experience session. In addition, I believe sometimes
simple designs would bring significant improvement in terms of usability, for
example, tape dispenser cutters, zigzag edges on the food packaging etc. These
products are commonly used in daily lives and make lives more convenient.
However, over-simple products might appear crude and cheap to the users. Therefore,
the appearance of a product is also an important factor of the design. The appearance
of the product conveys a lot of information to the users, such as communication of
aesthetic, symbolic, functional and ergonomic information, attention drawing and
categorization (Creusen, & Schoormans, n.d.). As a student engineer, I would like to
balance the degree of simplicity and aesthetics. Therefore, designing simple but
elegant solutions while enabling ease of use is the goal I would like to accomplish for
the future.

2. Clarity of the design process

The purpose of engineering design is to make life easier. Nevertheless,
engineering design is a complex process. It usually involves multiple iterations of
coming up with new ideas or modifications on existing concepts. As student
engineers, we should also keep our process of engineering design simple and make
our lives as engineers easier. Therefore, a systematic way to organize information
during the process is crucial in order to avoid chaos and bring clarity. The following
diagram from the book Keep Innovation Simple depicts a model of organizing
different parts of design process (Barbera, 2015).
 Many ideas in the diagram showed up in some different terminologies during
lectures and our practice of engineering design, as shown in my design experience
session. The ideas of voice of customers (stakeholder involvement), Metrics
(Metric) and Mind of the Innovator (personal and design values) are also
incorporated in my design process. This process ensures that we understand what the
requirements of stakeholders are, what changes we want to bring in, how we are
evaluating our designs or prototypes etc. This way, we could organize information
and ideas during design process in an easy and clear manner which makes the process
simpler and more efficient.