Process Design Review

Overview


The Design Review Process is a mechanism for ensuring design standards, alignment, and diligence throughout the course of the product design process:
Standards
 Ensure that designs meet appropriate standards for consistency, accessibility, usability, internationalizability, rebrandability, download time, etc.
Alignment
 Ensure that designs meet business goals.
 Ensure that designs can be well integrated into the brands (if any) on which they will be deployed.
 Minimize late-stage changes to product requirements and concepts.

Diligence


 Realize maximum value from early-stage design methodologies.
 Increase accountability and clarity of action plans by keeping minutes of each design review.
 Involve people outside the design team at appropriate junctures.


Steps in the Design Review Process


1. Conceptual Design Preview
Use this step to ensure that the initial design direction maps to the business goals and user needs, and to review the design for alignment with broader initiatives and possible integration with other product designs.
2. Design Standards Checkpoint
Use this step to confirm that the design meets required design standards.
3. UI Design Review
Use this step to review specific interaction behaviors and to provide guidance to designers on problematic issues.
4. Creative Direction Review
Use this step to ensure that the visual design maps to the creative direction of the project.
Scheduling Product Design Reviews
Use this section to list the regularly scheduled meeting times for Product Design Reviews. Include the review meeting days and times (for example, “Wednesdays from 9 am to 10 pm”), and any other information about review meeting schedules (for example, indicate here if no formal review meeting is scheduled for a particular step in the Design Review Process).
Sending Review Materials Out in Advance
Use this section to indicate how the materials to be reviewed at the meetings should be made available to the reviewers. Include the following types of information:
• How far in advance the review materials need to be made available before the scheduled review meeting (for example, one business day, two business days, one week, etc.)
• How materials should be distributed to the reviewers (for example, placed on a web server, sent as e-mail attachments, etc.)
• The format materials should use (for example, .doc, .pdf, .html, .jpg, .gif, all of the above, etc.)
• A list of related materials that should also be made available (for example, meeting minutes from earlier, related reviews, a Creative Brief, etc.)
Product Design Review Minutes
Use this section to describe when and how meeting minutes should be generated:
• Indicate if any meetings do not require minutes.
• Indicate who is responsible for recording and distributing minutes at each meeting. You can indicate a specific person or a role (for example, “Design Lead”).
• Indicate how or where the minutes will be made available to team members.

 

 


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Category: Chemical Engineering, General Engineering, Process Engineering, Project Engineering
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Research and Feasibility

Purpose

To examine the project area, gather relevant information to enable the project feasibility to be assessed. The information gathered during this stage will also be required to properly define the project in the following process stages.

 

Where identified in the project investigation authorisation (usually where the anticipated budget exceeds £100,000, “Basic Financial Feasibility” may also be required and should be undertaken with relevant personnel identified bellow. The Cap-Ex form can also be seen as the first step of this part of the project.

 

 

Overview

Research:

General research may be sought by any number of methods, to enable a better understanding of the project area. Often this should include liasing with appropriate team members and contacts. As such this stage should also help to determine any special expertise or HR requirements for the project.

Any significant findings, sources, or information should be stored in the relevant project folder.

The preliminary boundaries should be explored during the general research and feasibility analysis.

 

Feasibility Analysis

Technical Feasibility: This refers to the ability of the process to take advantage of the current state of the technology in pursuing further improvement.  The technical capability of the personnel as well as the capability of the available technology should be considered.  This should be described as follows:

 

Need Analysis.  This indicates recognition of a need for the project and how the need may be satisfied. Ansk the following questions:

§  Is the need significant enough to justify the proposed project?

§  Will the need still exist by the time the project is completed?

§  What are the alternate means of satisfying the need?

§  What are the economic, social, environmental, and political impacts of the need?

 

Process Work. Consider how the need may be satisfied. This will usually involve a record of an ideas, and some basic analysis of these which may include:

§  Basic Calculations

§  Basic Simulation

§  Opinion/ Open forum assessment

§  Assessment vs. Research and existing means

 

Engineering & Design. Technical study of the proposed project. May include:

§  Written quotations

§  Technology capabilities

§  Product design (if needed)

Cost Estimate.  Estimating project cost. Both the initial and operating costs should be included in the cost estimation.  Estimates of capital investment and of recurring and nonrecurring costs should also be recorded.

Financial Discussion with the relevant members of the finance department, the departmental manager and appropriate Directors to ensure that the cash flow necessary to support the process can be made available.

Project Impacts.  What is the value added by the project. Who does it affect. How will it be perceived. When will it take place, & is the timing convenient. etc….

Resource Impact The human resource requirements should be considered. This should be considered as number of people and man hours. This should extend further to the type of resource i.e. project manager, design engineer, H&S engineer, production, project engineer, maintenance staff, technicians etc…

Conclusions and Recommendations.  The feasibility study should end with the overall outcome of the analysis. Recommendations on what should be done should be included in this section of the feasibility report.

 


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Category: General Engineering, Project Engineering
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About Me

I have a first degree in Chemical Engineering, and a Masters degree in Process and Environment Systems Engineering. I have vast experience across industries as a process Engineer and hence a broad view with respect to Chemical/Process Engineering challenges & insight.