What is the Incremental Design Approach?

“Designers want to solve the whole puzzle and find a system; engineers want to build quickly and incrementally. Incremental improvements to a product are important, but they need to be led by a clear vision. Vision needs to be tied to a solid understanding of customers and the market.” — Aarron Walter

What is incremental design?

The incremental design approach requires breaking down the large design problem into smaller parts. Then, you work on these parts one after another while delivering each increment to the customer separately.

It allows you to get feedback on each increment, identify improvements, and make them part of the next increment.

This approach helps build and deliver multiple MVPs to customers while ensuring each MVP includes improvements based on the customer feedback received for the previous MVP.

The conditions regarding priority, urgency, and business needs are validated before committing anything to customers.

Ways to succeed in incremental design approach

Plan the incremental improvements based on the product vision.