Achieving Simplicity: Development and Design of Simple Products

Increasing requirements on today’s products, as well as possibilities resulting from globalization and digitization, lead to a growth of increasingly complex products. However, design principles from the field of design engineering call for a product to be designed as simple as possible. It is not yet clear what characteristics and properties a simple product has. The aim of this paper is to clarify the different definitions of simplicity in different disciplines within the product lifecycle and to provide a general description of a simple product from the viewpoint of the different groups.