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How do I know if my design is finished?
The hardest part of design is knowing when to stop
If you haven’t worked on too many projects, it can be easy to treat your work like a new born baby. You want to protect it, and make it look amazing. The problem with over managing your work is that it could lead to over refinement or the fear of making changes when needed. It clouds your judgement in that the design is part of the problem solving process and will change depending on the situation. The difference is that some changes are needed to address the problem, while others are not necessarily critical in addressing the problem.
A design is finished when you set actionable constraints or scope. Once you validate your design is needed and works well, then it might make sense to go back to it and iterate, but otherwise setting constraints and scoping your design to effectively address a problem and users is good enough. That is usually the hardest part.
Here are some specific ways to help dictate when your design is finished:
If it addresses the core problem and user needs
For more context, read What Makes a Good Design Project?
How can you know whether or not you are solving for the right problem in your design process? You can base it on user testing or evaluate each part of your outcome, and ask if it addresses a core need(s) for the user. If everything connects, from initial explorations to the final outcome, you are “finished”. If the outcome or visuals don’t really communicate the problem or the user, then you should go back and refine. How you could go about doing that is through story mapping.
Story mapping allows you to visually map out how your solution would work in your user’s journey and help you make visual decisions that connect to your research and your goals. It can help you prioritize what you need to work on or if you are leaving anything out that is crucial in the user’s journey.
Here is an example on how to structure a map:
1. Title, goal, user…
