Design Criteria Advice

Hey jon,

I tried calling your phone but I think it's off. I was just goinng to ask about how specific our design criteria should be for this presentation. Reviewing what I've written, my criteria seem fairly general. For example, I wrote:

The inside of the mini-fridge should support organization

+ quick and easy access
+ flexible organization
+ efficient use of space

Which sort of seems like "duh". In my blog, I allude to some more specific criteria, such as:

Should support different uses e.g. food fridge, drink fridge, bulk storage fridge

The food fridge should support:

+ easy access spots (usually the front of shelves and top door bins)
+ places/containers for loose and unstackable items e.g. vegetables, opened packages of food (should be usable outside the fridge as well)
+ places for short lifetime items (should be visible and near cold areas of fridge)
+ dynamic reconfiguration for large or other akward items ,e.g. tall bottles

Personally, I should be going through and thinking about formalizing more specific design criteria, yes? What do you do? Do you think of very specific design criteria and design from there? Or do you think of general criteria and allow more specific criteria to emerge as you design?

For the presentation, should I try and include these specific criteria more formally , or is it fine to allude to them through stories, examples, etc?

Also, if you have any suggestions, I'm always curious how I might improve my story.

Thanks.

Hey James,

Jon is swamped in a client workshop today, so I’ll answer this best I can.

I think the first set of design criteria you have are at a good level. The second set is more starting to point at specific design concepts.

When laying out design criteria, it is good to have one or two manifestations (concepts) of those criteria to illustrate what you are getting at. It’s a starting point to begin to solve the problem.

“Quick and easy access” is a good way to define what the product should do, but you should perhaps add some user behavior in there.

For example:

“The inside of the mini fridge should support quick and easy access so users can see the full contents of their fridge.”

In this example, I’m talking about what the product should be, but also why, and what problem that is solving.

It’s good to keep criteria about what the product should be general, while the user problem should be specific. That way, when you are designing, you can think of several different ways that you could solve the problem.

As for your last question, YES, stories and examples make this come to life. Design criteria work best when you have a user and their story in mind. They become an iconic representation of the problem and you design to them. That is the ideal. GREAT QUESTION.

James, you should really consider Design as a career option. This all comes very natural to you.

Lucas