Bottom Line Up First. Here is how I have seen it work: The purpose of any design is to enable its users be able to perform the tasks effortlessly. In any development cycle, it is a known fact that the cost of fixing a defect is costlier as the project progresses near its completion. To prevent this, they typically have internal departments who do constant reviews, testing etc earlier in the cycle or try and adopt new methods like Agile or iterative development to address this issue. So, the intent of any process should be to reduce cost for the overall cycle of the product. Early checking systems like that of an Agile or a Prototype approach ensures quick and early correction to the product based on the customer's needs. But there is also a cost involved - basically the cost of running a process that comprises of effort, skill, salary, infrastructure etc needed to execute a particular process and this typically is factored as part of the overall budget. But what is typically not factored in a design unaware organization is the design effort, process etc. To sell this aspect, I have in the past used these points: 1) A design process is like an early validation and improvement system that aides in the early detection of defects from the design perspective and would help in the cost reduction. The existing validation methods are typically code or hardware component focused and is not sufficient to cover the design element. 2) The design process would also have specific output of the interface early so that the developers can have a better %u201Cstyle guide%u201D to adhere to apart from their coding standards. This will ensure efficient coding that would require lesser modifications to cosmetic issues and also the establishment of these guides will prevent cosmetic defects in the system. 3) The design process with the interaction with the testers would give them better insight to create the appropriate test cases that would test the design aspect as well apart from the code etc. This would save time and effort in terms of testing covering not just the code, but also the design %u2013 at an early stage. The same is applicable for reviews. 4) This efficient integration would ensure that the product is more usable and more usability would reduce the learning curve of the end users %u2013 who typically have to be trained each time a new product is released. This training effort and the effort to prepare the help files, training manuals can come down a lot and save cost if the design is intuitive and cognitively usable. The down side is when the design team works independently of the rest of the teams or if there is a perception in the organization that the designers are just make-up artists who would be called later to put a face to the code which cannot be understood by the user. I hope this helps. Please do ensure that your design process involves all the relevant stakeholders and that each of them understand their role and contribution to the success of the common goal %u2013 which is to develop a successful product.
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