Home » The Ultimate Design Review Checklist

The Ultimate Design Review Checklist

Design Review, Design Validation, Product Quality, Quality Assurance, Quality Management, Risk Management, Sustainability Practices, Verification and Validation

Do not close any Design Phase without this. This extensive design review checklist is to be used at the end of the design phase of any product, to avoid potentially basic or stupid mistakes that may later be very costly or defeat the complete project, be dangerous or be devastating to the company’s image.

Note: 6 tips on how to perform a good design review are included at the end of this post.

It is strongly recommended (and mandatory in some industries) to have a formal Design Review at the end of the Design Phase. Refer to our Phase-Gate article for details on this project model.

This review is ideally performed with experts of all concerned fields, but we also strongly suggest including engineers and designers who were NOT included in the design, to bring their fresh views.

Do challenge what seems obvious or “we always did like that before”

… condition, manufacturing, legal, or usage may have changed since your last review!

Many of the following items in the Design Review Checklist may be in your Specifications, to be later checked by your Verification and Validation (V&V) process … but maybe not. This list is trying to be as exhaustive as possible, but obviously not applicable and not complete for all domains and products.

UPDATE: for a more systematic and complete process, we now propose our original tool: the free Design Review Tree™ (“DRT”).

We are including versioning of the list so that you can update your files or process whenever this list is updated.

Design Review Checklist

version 1.08

Regulation

Yes it’s a must, but complex and continuously evolving

Does the product meet all applicable regulations?

Do you have the latest version of the standard?

Of all forecasted countries? not only the head-office

Also the standards in draft mode currently?

Do you have a process in place to alert on evolving standards?

Does the product have all the required labels?

(in this design review checklist so as in the legal definition, “label” includes all markings, on the product, packaging, in any accompanying document)

Legal labeling of the product, including

materials marking in the molds/part,
on the packaging
instruction for the IFU … is it needed & has it started? (we recommend starting a draft of the IFU at the same time the design is made)

… with all local marking or translation or approvals for all the intended marketS (and images and pictograms may save you a lot of translations here)

Check our Plastics Design Tricks Collection article for plastic parts markings

Environmental, Robustness, and Ageing

Frequently a tradeoff between quality, weight, and price …

Advice: be very careful if averaging the use condition to some mean or average, aka “product is on average at 25°C”, or “product is used on average 2h a day” … some users may be continuously at one side of the scale while some others will be continuously at the other extremity, thus making you a correct average calculation, but all these products WILL fail prematurely.

What is its IP code (Ingress Protection Code or Index)?

check IP code link for the IPXX table

can the product be rotated upside voluntarily and then required a higher IP rate? and accidentally?

Will it stand weather corrosion conditions?

96h or 100h (frequent values) salt mist test is frequently not enough for a product that can be close to the seaside (not even mentioning boat conditions)

Is there any dissimilar pair of metals or alloys having different electrode potentials? Including frequently basic overlooked parts (screws, washers, springs …)

Were cleaning chemical agents taken into account? Do you recommend some particular ones?

Ex.: polycarbonates (PC), even at big thicknesses, in fact even faster at big thicknesses, if there is a local constraint, can crack within minutes if some solvent (MEK) is applied on its surface.

Does it withstand the cold?

Indicating minimal temp in the IFU may not be enough. Mind involuntary misuses.

Batteries (based on chemistry, the cold always slows down its reactions) Have you done specific aging and cycle tests?

Lubricants and sealings becoming harder and losing their performance and even blocking the moving mechanism (piston type) or lowering the flow/pressure (regulator)

Many materials become brittle. Tested?

Does it withstand the heat?

A phone under the windshield of a car in the summertime will be exposed to much more heat than in Death Valley …

Also, mind some concentrating/magnifier effect. Ex.: the mirrored windows of some elegant modern New York building with a concave shape was concentrating the sun on the nearby street ;)

Does it withstand UV and sun?

Related but not necessarily the same as temperature. Tested?

Does it withstand aging?

Related but not necessarily the same as temperature and UV

Extremely tricky with some plastic and rubber material (Nitrile, EPDM …): it may come back literally to dust in 10-15 years even if well stored, with no constrain, and not exposed to sun or temperature. Or fail in 2-3 years if constraints or tight properties are needed.

Does your product include some gluing?

Have done some accelerated Ageing? Accelerating aging simulations, if not backup with normal aging, with too high temperature, or not appropriate Aging Factor (Q10) is valid only with history or reference.

Plastic additives (color, UV resistance, filler …) can change properties a lot compared to a know reference.

Mind dust or even more sand. Fine not perfectly sealed mechanisms will not survive 5 minutes on the beach.

Does it withstand a drop?

Even if no regulation, a quality product or costly product should withstand typical user misuse.

Ex: for a displaceable good, dropping from the height of a table could be expected to be “normal”. While a breakage could be understood by the user for a cristal Champaign glass, maybe less and less for a slippery glass-coated thin phone.

Has MTBF (or another lifetime unit) been defined and evaluated?

See Mean Time Between Failures theory.

Or is this product in a