Study guide · 4.6
Plan and manage a cyclical design process for digital projects
Digital projects rarely succeed in one pass; they improve through a repeating cycle of understanding needs, generating ideas, building, testing and refining. Prototypes let a team learn cheaply and early before investing in a finished product.
A study feature written by ExamDragon, not part of the real exam. Each heading is one of Certiport's skills for this objective.
4.6.1Identify requirements, consider design restraints, generate ideas, test theories
- Identify requirements by asking users and stakeholders what problem must be solved and how success will be measured.
- List constraints: budget, deadline, available skills and technology, legal and privacy rules, brand guidelines and accessibility needs.
- Generate many ideas before judging them, using techniques such as brainstorming, sketching and mind maps.
- Turn the most promising ideas into testable assumptions, for example 'users will find the sign-up button within ten seconds'.
- Test the assumptions with real users or data, and let the results decide what to keep.
Example: A club planning a booking website learns that most members use phones, that there is no budget for paid software and that the site must be ready in six weeks.
4.6.2Develop, test, and refine prototypes
- A low-fidelity prototype, such as a paper sketch or a simple wireframe, is fast and cheap and tests layout and flow.
- A high-fidelity prototype looks and behaves close to the final product and tests details, wording and visual design.
- Ask test users to complete real tasks while you watch, and note where they hesitate or fail rather than only asking for opinions.
- Prioritise the problems found, change the design, then test again; each round is an iteration.
- Keep a record of versions and the reasons for changes, and stop iterating when the requirements are met.
Example: A team shows users clickable wireframes of a sign-up form, sees that half of them miss the 'Next' button, moves it and retests until everyone finds it.
Key terms
- Requirements
- What a product must do and the conditions it must meet.
- Constraint
- A limit on a project, such as time, money, technology or rules.
- Prototype
- An early model of a product built to test ideas.
- Wireframe
- A simple layout sketch of a screen showing structure, not final design.
- Iteration
- One round of the cycle of building, testing and improving.
Easy to confuse
- Building the final product before testing a prototype makes mistakes expensive to fix.
- Asking users whether they like a design is weaker evidence than watching them use it.
- A design process is cyclical; testing is not a single step at the end.
After this guide: You can plan a cyclical design process from requirements and constraints to tested and refined prototypes.