Design Consideration Checklist

I have become a bit of a checklist aficionado: I use checklists for my day-to-day tasks, for my monthly plans, for ideas, for projects, for travel… There’s something zen-like about taking the important, do-not-forget items and storing them outside my head.

This is the list I use as I’m iterating on an idea, to ensure most bases are covered. It is not exhaustive and is in no particular order. Some items might be a bit project-specific, but hopefully the list as a whole will be a helpful companion to others as it has been to me.

General

• Who are the persona(s) targeted? What are their contexts: before, during and after?
• What pre-existing mental models will users bring?
• How the design will handle exceptionally big numbers? Long names?
• Accessibility? Colour contrast ratio? Colour blindness consideration?
• Company-created design patterns? Cultural design patterns?
• Is this behaviour and look consistent with the rest of the system?
• How might a user might land on each screen? Are there multiple paths?
• Will localization affect the design? What languages might the copy be translated into? Will components need to be flipped to accommodate different languages?
• Are the icons, colours and imagery culturally-appropriate?
• Considerations for importing or exporting data? User inputted data?
• Have you considered the full UI stack?
• Privacy or security concerns?
• Should “opt-in” be considered for this change?
• If it’s a redesign, is there feature-parody? If not, what’s missing, why, who will this affect and how?

Mobile

• Are key functions located in thumb-accessible spots?
• Are tap-targets large enough?
• Are the assets an appropriate size to load over a mobile network?
• How will the design respond to various device sizes?
• What happens in landscape mode?

What else should be on this list?