A 14th century Franciscan friar, William of Ockham, is credited with having formalised the principle that simpler solutions are likely to be more correct than complex ones. This "keep it simple" concept is often referred to today as "Ockham's razor" – a tool to be used in cutting away extraneous material when getting from point A to point B.
A typical response to a design problem is to fight complexity with complexity. Simple is often confused with easy and complex is confused with sophisticated.
On one level, Ockham's razor is trivial. Of course the solution with the fewest moving parts will have the highest utility value. But on another level, it is deceptively profound. That's because the characteristics of simplicity and complexity are integrally related to resilience and fragility.
As Nicolas Taleb explored in his book, Anti-Fragile, complex structures and complex systems, whether natural or man-made, are inherently fragile. When subjected to shocks or stress, they tend to break more easily, the breaks tend to be more damaging, and the damage tends to be more permanent. By contrast simple structures and simple systems have a much greater capacity to withstand turbulence multiple standard deviations away from the norm.
In our present age we see car designers scrambling to remove systems controls from touch screens and replace hidden electronic door controls with good old fashioned hardware. The high tech dashboard might look clean, modern, devoid of clutter. The complexity is still there. It’s just hidden in the electronics behind the facia. The designer’s challenge is to incorporate the functionality in a way that is tactile and intuitive and also fitting with the prevailing ambience of the overall design
Bringing back the buttons, the knobs, the levers and switches makes control functionality safer and more dependable. It applies to all aspects of transport design including yachts.
