A design checklist for design initiatives

Most designers have been in one of those design meetings where there is a need to evaluate the design for a new component, and soon the discussion is stirred toward a dead end. No arguments make sense and everyone talks about everything and nothing.

To avoid this situation, it is often a great practice to have a design checklist which assesses every design initiative.

When we worked for OrgOS with my studio, Bonanza Design, we initiated an organizational transformation platform. It was highly vital for the project team of OrgOS to make sure that the design components we created addressed the needs of the users through intuitive and simple design.

As a result, we set out to create a design checklist to better evaluate our design initiatives. Here’s the initial design checklist that we prepared to measure the strengths and weaknesses of the design components.

1. User persona — Does the design meet the characteristics of the user personas?

2. Use cases — Does the design cover the use cases? Is the design cognizant of the needs, frustrations, and wishes of the users?

3. Responsive design — Is the design responsive? Is the design scalable to be utilized for every devices and screen sizes?

4. Simplicity — Does the design save time? Does the design follow a minimum amount of steps to get the job done? Can we simplify the workflow even more?

5. Interactivity — Does the design inform every action with feedback and in doing so, does it encourage calmness?

6. Consistency — Does the design make efficient use of the elements already available in the UI kit? Alternatively, does it necessitate introducing new ones? If so, to what degree is it dependent on adding new elements?

7. Beauty — Does the design delight users through mindful and elegant craftsmanship?

8. Functionality — Has the design been evaluated by the dev team? Does the dev team confirm the functionality on which the design is based?

9. Accessibility — Is the content of the design helpful? Can we strip down the content and yet, keep the overall UX intact? Are users able to navigate themselves through the content?

10. Approachability — Is the overall design humble and approachable? Is it designed with having humans and their limitations in mind?

Do you also have your own design checklist to help you during your creative processes? Feel free to discuss the topic in the comments, I’d be happy to read your inputs and exchange with you.

Link to the original article: https://www.bonanza.design/blogs/a-design-checklist-for-design-initiatives/