On the recommendation of Rory Sutherland in one of his TikTok reels I have recently read Obvious Adams by Robert Updegraff. Obvious Adams is a book mostly about advertising and for advertisers, but actually I think much of the advice found there can apply to any profession whose job it is to understand a product domain and then act upon it. This is similar between programmers and advertisers - we have to understand a domain to build a functioning software solution, advertisers have to understand a domain to make a successful marketing campaign for it.

The book is very short (25 pages) and can no doubt be found now on the internet since it is in the public domain in the US. In my edition there are some additional advice about figuring out “obvious” solutions, which might be useful to relate to programming.

The Tests of Obviousness

• This problem when solved will be simple. A good solution to a complicated problem will make the problem simple.

What I think is important about this is that sometimes to discover the obvious, we sometimes have to meander through the complicated. It is not always visible that things which appear to be different can be expressed as the same thing. I remember that one time on a client project we were working on a system for planning clinical trials for new drugs. We had to plan the studies so that different drugs could be administered at different volumes, and monitored for different organs. It was not obvious at all that the “different organs,” “different dosages,” and “different drugs” were indeed the same thing and could be expressed with the same entity in the system, though it was obvious in hindsight and simplified things enormously.

• It should check with human nature. You should be pretty certain that your solution will be accepted by anyone, whom you tell about it. Human nature verifies the solution to any problem.

“If you do not feel pretty certain that your idea will be understood and accepted by your mother, wife, brothers, sisters, cousins, next-door neighbour, the man who works at the next desk or machine, the mechanic who services your automible, your minister, your barber, the manager of your grocery store, the man who shines your shoes, your Aunt Mary, your secretary, your seat-mate on the 5:29 suburban train, your most outspoken friends - if you don’t feel comfortable about explaining your obvious idea to these people - it is probably not obvious.”

• You should be able to write it down, in two or three paragraphs and short, two- or three-syllable words. No plan is obvious unless it can be understood by people of average intelligence. Often the attempt to express a plan on paper will outline its flaws or complexities.

• It should explode in people’s minds. When you say it, the reaction ought to be “why didn’t we think of this before.” Obvious ideas are apt to produce this explosive mental reaction.

• It should be implemented in good time. There are some solutions that are only obvious once the ground has been prepared for them to be obvious. Sometimes, some solutions are only going to be obvious once you’ve already implemented some prerequisites. Other times, you might be late and a more complex solution has become ingrained in people’s heads so much that your obvious one is not going to seem like an improvement. “To be ready is to be timely.”

Five Approaches to the Obvious

• What is the simplest possible way of doing it?

A classic in the Agile approach—you want to get things working as fast as possible as simply as possible so that there is a way to verify whether the software is actually useful. To manage it, you really want to have it as simple as possible.

• Suppose the whole thing were to be completely reversed?

This is something that I often think about in context of decisions made around the software that we make and the processes that we decide to follow. A similar lesson is in Sutherland’s book Alchemy—as “the opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea.”

• Can a vote be taken on it, or the public’s help actively enlisted?

I don’t think we should vote on technical decisions, because technical decisions should be made on the basis of things other than public consensus. In the context of advertising this makes sense, because the purpose of an advertisment is broad appeal, but in the case of software, I would interpret this as saying that you want to enlist the help of the people who will actually use the software to make their work easier so that you can deliver the best solution you can.

• What opportunity is being overlooked because no one has bothered to develop it?

• What are the special needs of the situation?