Pens ‘n’ Pencils

For some reason, engineers tend to value more complex solutions than simple ones.

You might have probably read the rumor of the space pen. In short, NASA developed a pen that could write in zero gravity, spending $12M and thousands of hours of work, while Russians used pencils instead. Although the story is simply a hoax, it well illustrates a principle seen in many engineering decisions: simple solutions are undervalued. High-tech, high-complexity solutions are seen as the correct ones by whole communities of experts, even if simple solutions might be just better.

I have heard in professional contexts: “Solution A is the one that works the best, but… it is too simple. We’d have a hard time justifying our job.”. Seriously. Sad but true. Simple ideas can save millions of dollars, not only because they are cheaper, more robust and perform better, but also because you can get rid of personnel that complicates things…

So here’s an history of my own. In a robot contest, which goal was to get out of a maze, we presented a radically simple design. It turns out that the kind of maze proposed can be solved by always going to the right. This was our proposal: a single wheel robot, that would turn in circles if left alone, but that sticked to the wall in its presence, and would just follow it straight ahead. Whenever there was a right turn, it would do the right turn as it turned in circles in absence of wall. A small curved arm was set to the front so that when it found a wall in the front, it would do a left turn. The results? Five times faster than any of the other competitors. And we were disqualified, of course. That was not a robot. It didn’t have chips, nor LEDs, nor IR sensors. And yet it solved the problem better than anyone else…

So, which are the stories of your own? Which are the pencils that can be used instead of pens?