What is a Design Review?
A design review is a formal process used to evaluate the design aspects of a project / product to make sure they meet the defined requirements and standards before moving to the next phase of development.
The design review phase helps to identify potential issues, validate design decisions, and establish alignment with project objectives, thereby minimizing risks and preventing costly changes later in the project lifecycle.
The Design Review Process
During the design review process, stakeholders assess the design in question. In a design review meeting, designers present the design, and participants provide feedback in the form of questions, challenges, and suggested improvements.
Following the design review meeting, the designer and immediate team consolidate and prioritize feedback. Designers use the feedback to evaluate opportunities and report back to the larger group on findings and action items.
Why QA Testers Should Be a Part of Design Reviews
- Quality assurance: The goal of quality assurance testing is to verify that the product functions as expected and to find and remove bugs before it is shipped out. Reviewing the design for test conditions is essential to releasing a quality application. Developers know the function they are coding, but may not understand how the whole system functions as a customer workflow. Design reviews help maintain high standards by ensuring the design meets all required specifications and quality benchmarks.
Early detection of issues: In agile software development methodology, QA testers work tightly with the product team creating the customer requirements. They get an opportunity to add business value by reviewing design elements upfront. QA tester should know how the application works from end-to-end, and how it works with related applications. So, they can analyze the design upfront and detect any shortcomings. By finding defects or missing requirements before the application is coded, the business saves both time and expense.
In one of our projects, during testing phase, QA testers found many missing requirements / scenarios in designs. So, designers had to re-work, involve BAs and business to generate new designs. Devs and QA testers were involved too to develop and test and it overall increased time and budget of the project.
User perspective: As QA testers have a deep understanding of user needs, they can provide insights into usability and user experience. Usability is a quality measure for design. To ensure usability, a good UX thus requires QA thinking.
- Testability: By participating in design discussions, QA testers can help ensure that the product is designed with testability in mind, making it easier to verify and validate later. QA testers can think of generating / collecting test data.
- Cross-discipline collaboration: Involving QA testers encourages collaboration between design, development, and testing teams. It promotes a shared understanding of the project goals and challenges.
- Comprehensive coverage: QA testers can help ensure that all functional and non-functional requirements are addressed in the design, leading to more thorough test plans.
- Risk mitigation: QA testers can assess potential risks associated with design decisions, helping the team to make informed choices.
Stronger Designs, Better Outcomes
By including QA testers in design reviews, teams can create a more stable and user-friendly product while streamlining the overall development process.
