What Is Design Validation? Definition & Importance

Design validation is crucial both in terms of understanding end users and achieving the business objectives. How to validate your project? Why do you need to do this at all and why is this so important? What is the difference between design verification and validation? To learn the answers to all these questions, read on.

Why is design validation important and how are designs verified?

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What is design validation?

Any method of checking whether an assumption is right can be referred to as validation. What if it turns out your assumptions are wrong? You find out that the path you’ve followed isn’t right and you’re free to choose another solution. With this knowledge, you can simply try again.

A path that turns out to be a dead end is very useful because you don’t devote resources to focusing on that; you go elsewhere. - Michael Bloomberg

Design verification vs. validation - what’s the difference?

Design validation is a process of continuous testing – that is, validating. Verification, on the other hand, confirms whether design outputs match design inputs (more on that later). The main difference is that validation is used for checking whether the product or service you’ve created meets end users’ expectations, while in verification, you’re making sure you’re building the product or service in the right way. In other words, you’re finding out if you’ve fulfilled your design requirements.

When talking about design validation vs. verification, a question arises – what exactly is design input and output? In short, input data includes all the requirements outlined in the design specification. Design specifications are normally drawn up at the start of the process. They define the expected design results in a concrete way:

Clear, complete, unambiguous, testable requirements are a key component in a successful development project. Inadequate requirements lead to wasted time, design errors, extensive rework, and fragile or error-prone products. - Megan Martin, V&V Consultant

Design output, on the other hand, is the actual product or service – its final outcomes and characteristics.

How and when should you validate the design?

The question of when to carry out design validation depends on the stage of your project. The first confrontation of the requirements with reality in the design thinking process is creating hypotheses and then validating them: “We only know what we’ve managed to validate; anything else is a hypothesis.” Let’s validate then!

In design thinking, this stage – the discovery phase – consists of hypotheses, which are sets of theories and assumptions made by the design team. The hypotheses are validated through talks with the client or through user interviews. Hypotheses can arise throughout the design process but the ways of validating them will vary.

For example, at a later stage, you will test suggestions of functionalities or visual solutions. Tests are carried out with end users – or at least they should be. There are many methods of testing – the most common division is between quantitative and qualitative methods. The choice of the right method will depend on a number of factors, such as the available time and budget or the type of data you intend to collect.

How does usability testing help with design validation?

Thanks to usability testing, you can find out if end users understand your ideas and whether anything was problematic for them in performing a task. Unlike quantitative research, which uses questions like, “How often?”, here you can learn what caused a difficulty, by asking, “Why?”.

Testing should be done on a prototype rather than a final product: that is, on a solution which contains a set of features you intend to test with users. This process is aimed at comparing ideas to select the best one, and at confronting the strengths and weaknesses of presented solutions.

Design sprint and check as methods of design validation

The design sprint framework is also an interesting approach to design validation. Sprints are short work cycles (usually five days) ideal for quick validation of hypotheses when decision-making time is reduced to a minimum. In a five-day sprint, each of the stages takes one working day. During the first day, the focus is on understanding the problem. On the second day, the team generates ideas, and on the third, they decide which idea to develop. The fourth day is for digital prototyping, and the last day is for testing the selected concept.

Another method of validating whether a given solution is right, commonly applied by designers, is the design check. By consulting and exchanging ideas with other designers, you get a wider perspective. As a result, it gets easier to detect design errors or identify less workable suggestions.

To verify your design, you can use metrics. If your design specification is clear-cut – for instance, it uses numerical metrics – you can compare your project outcome with the initial expectations. Metrics can be of use both from a business perspective and that of potential product design and development.

Why should you verify and validate your design?

You need to include all the activities connected with design validation and verification in your design process. Planning and performing these steps will surely take up valuable time, but it will also bring numerous benefits, such as:

You will create a product or service that meets your business goals as well as user needs.
You will be sure that the product or service you create is just what users expect.
You will monitor the prototype continuously to introduce the necessary changes during the design cycle.
You will save time and money by testing the prototype.
You will be able to introduce minor changes rather than redesign an entire implemented product or service from scratch.
You will learn from your mistakes in an Agile way.

Design work that is not based on constant validation may turn out to be good for nothing - missing both user needs and business objectives. Such projects tend to eat up a lot of time and expense. If you are looking for a development partner that includes design validation as a part of their process, make sure to contact us.