97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 24. Define What Your Design Does Not Do

Georgiy Chernyavsky

Design and functional specifications are awesome. Together with high-fidelity prototypes, they deliver the knowledge of how a product should be built. But ambiguity within and misinterpretation of these specifications can stand in the way of delivering great products by creating misalignment among designers, engineers, and other involved parties. There is one small trick that will help you avoid this: define what your designs don’t do. We rightfully focus on explaining how our designs work; however, we rarely explicitly mention how they should not work. Including these points in your specifications will help bring clarity to important design decisions.

There are several ways to communicate these points: you can add them to your specifications document, create annotated screen designs, or simply mention them while presenting your work. Whichever approach you choose, defining functional points that your design doesn’t cover, or even how the product should explicitly not behave, will help prevent situations in which the product is taken in an undesirable direction.

For example, imagine you’re working on a new page for a radio show’s website. People use this page to send birthday wishes for loved ones that DJs will read live during the show. Your team tests, polishes, and prepares the design for implementation.