Design Criteria
To evaluate any design or the process that lead to the completion of that design, a series of evaluation criteria are required. These evaluation criteria allow the designer to understand how well the requirements of the design brief were met or surpassed. They also allow the designer to fine tune their professional practice and design skills.
Simply put, evaluation criteria are the questions the designer asks to ensure they are meeting the requirements of quality management (AS/NZ ISO 9000), health and safety systems (AS/NZS ISO 4801) and continual improvement practices. Evaluation criteria are questions based on the brief's product design specifications or design factors.
Design criteria should be written as open ended questions that call for detailed qualitative or quantitative answers during both the design process and evaluating the design process. This allows the designer, client or user to use the criteria to judge the effectiveness of each concept.