When are we convinced of a design proposal? When it looks like it will work, that it will work as well as it can, and that alternative designs are not expected to perform better.
When are we convinced that alternative designs would not perform better? When we compare these alternatives in a fair way and the proposed design comes out on top. For the comparison to be fair, it is necessary that the level of risk or uncertainty in developing the design proposal further is comparable for each concept, and thus that each concept is developed to a comparable level of materialisation and detail.
A comparison with alternatives is only persuasive when we judge the alternatives to be strong alternatives, the best available. How can we be convinced of this? When a thorough exploration of the possibilities shows that out of all possible alternatives, these are the most promising ones.
Reversing this, we get the standard approach for design projects:
- a broad exploration of possibilities
- selection of a small number of conceptually different alternatives for parallel further development
- comparison of the developed concepts and selection of the strongest option
- further development of this concept into an optimized final design
This is why a ‘good’ process is important in justifying a design.