Build 33

Design Assurance

The process of bringing a product or service to market is long and iterative, and it’s not uncommon for the design team to disengage before it’s complete. Often the design team will move on to other projects after delivering documentation to a team of manufacturers or developers. When new constraints and opportunities arise, the team responsible for implementation makes decisions that were left to the design team before, often losing sight of the original intention.

Design assurance seeks to mitigate the risks of compromise by continuing to involve design throughout production. By providing a process with regular reviews and open channels of conversation, design assurance provides consistency when new opportunities are considered, when new constraints arise, and when existing designs need to be extended for new circumstances. It also ensures that what gets built matches the intention of the design team, not just the documentation.