CHOOSE THE BEST SOLUTION
- First, look at whether each possible solution met your design requirements. Consider solutions that did a much better job than others, and reject those that did not meet the requirements.
- Some criteria apply to virtually every design. Good designers consider these universal design criteria when choosing which possible solution to implement:
- Elegance
- Robustness
- Aesthetics
- Cost
- Resources
- Time
- Skill required
- Safety
- It helps to compare solutions in a decision matrix—a chart with the requirements and criteria on one axis and the different solutions on the other. Here is a Decision Matrix Worksheet to help you choose a design.
- If your requirements and solutions are relatively simple, you can sometimes just list the pros and cons for each solution. Pros are good things about a solution and cons are bad things.
Excerpted from ScienceBuddies.org