The Difference Between Design Specification and Constraint

Specification represents an important part of the design process or can be assumed prior to design for the establishment of the product, artifact, or system framework. Design Specification Software enables better collaboration between design and development teams. It is used to be a bunch of documents that provide an overall description of software, its functions and interface.

Design specification is also called a combination of constraints, requirements and considerations, which are created for a solution to be successful. It will contain technical information about the product architecture to meet the requirements.

Elements of Design Specification

A design specification example must include all necessary drawings, dimensions, environmental factors, aesthetic factors, quality, safety, documentation and description. Design specifications are the documents, which provide user interface design details, character styles, information behaviors and functionality.

The product design specification lays a groundwork for all design activities. A developer takes design into production and builds the product, according to the specifications. What is sustainable logistics? Find an answer in our new article.

Design Specification is reviewed then and approved by the System Developer and Quality Assurance team. Quality Assurance assures that the document complies with appropriate regulations and that all requirements are successfully addressed.

Design specifications give the opportunity for developers to visualize and collect information. Design variants bridge the gap between prototype and development phases of the UX process.

Role of Design Specification in Web Development

The specification possesses multiple roles in web development. The role of design specification is considerable, because it helps the designers to fulfill the purpose of the product.

Communication between design engineers with stakeholders helps to develop a good specification. The factors which affect the development process are company type, budget allocation, company-client relationship, the complexity of the product.

Using a special specification, it helps developers to keep all needed documentation in one place and update in a timely manner. Any engineer can easily find the latest version in the repository, overview a product, ask questions and produce awesome products. It is like a Guidance for designers.

Design Specification document example will observe:

• Audience – Who you are designing for;
• Objective – It could indicate how well the solution is expected to work or under what conditions it will work;
• What it should look like (Size/colors/etc);
• What level of reliability can be expected for a product;
• Tools and time of completion.

It includes:

• Description of the software;
• Functionality;
• Performance of the software in a production situation;
• External interfaces or connection with other hardware or software;
• Design constraints that the software will run in.

Concept of Design Constraint

The design specification obviously states constraints that will be imposed on particular design solutions. Design Constraints definition determines them as the strict limitations that are important to meet in order to have an acceptable design. The designer’s role is to understand and work within the constraints of any product (size, material, weight, cost, interactions, speed, screen resolution, storage, functionality), etc.

A designer must work within multiple constraints and must constantly focus on them to make a product successful. Constraints such as restrictions on resources or techniques, may include what predefined hardware or software, particular algorithm or a specific interface protocol must be used there. Design constraints restrict the range of acceptable material properties, defining the associated solution space and providing a screening mechanism that is workable for design specification.

Learn more about design constraint examples and types in more details from this publication.

Types of Constraints

Constraints, as the name suggests, constrain the behavior, but they don’t designate it. Constraints can be used to model functional and non-functional requirements. An approach to categorizing the type of constraints (e.g., hardware, software, procedure, algorithm), identify the specific ones for each category, and take them as system requirements is an approach to address design constraints.

Design constraints examples are:

• Technology constraints (hardware vendors, software solutions and protocols);
• Operational constraints (performance and accessibility);
• Financial constraints (budgets).

Final Thought

That is determined that the list of design specifications shows all the functional and aesthetic requirements of a product. Understanding and implementing constraints will aid in usability and help the users engage a design with minimal error.

Appropriate Design Specification implementation from a technical and infrastructure perspective, a set of requirements and constraints guarantees that a development team creates software that meets the clients’ needs.

Also you can read about mobile app design trends 2021 on our website.