97 Things Every UX Practitioner Should Know

Chapter 25. Use Design Goals to Make Design Decisions Explainable and Defendable

Helmut Degen

Early in my career, I used the following design process: after finishing the research, I explored interaction concepts loosely connected to the research results. But I found it difficult to explain how the research results and project goals motivated the interaction concepts. Due to this, some stakeholders perceived the explanations as being made-up. In more than one case, a poor explanation or total lack of explanation led to a project stop.

To overcome this problem, I started using design goals. Design goals are derived from project goals and from research results. Here is an example: in one of my projects, I was asked to design an industrial engineering tool. Based on the research phase and the project goals, my team and I identified five design goals:

• DG.1: Single data entry (avoid redundant data entry)

• DG.2: Support reuse of project artifacts

• DG.3: Provide large canvas space

• DG.4: Enable comparison of project artifacts

• DG.5: Support adding new project templates

When we presented the design goals, they were backed up by research insights and project goals. It is critical that the design goals are easy for the project stakeholders to grasp: the design goal language should be understandable (avoid jargon), and the total number of design goals should be 10 or fewer. Once project stakeholders ...