Following Through on the Initial Design Phase

After the initial phases of the design process have been completed, the designer needs to follow through by asking two fundamental questions.

• Does the design meet the original goals of the system? All this takes is a review of the Requirements Specification to ensure that all goals relating to call flow and prompts have been met. (Any goals relating to brand and identity will be addressed later, during production.)

• Are there situations in the design where the caller or the client could get into trouble? For this, you can perform a simple hazard analysis by reviewing all the situations that could get a caller into trouble, and then modifying the design to eliminate or reduce the risk of such errors occurring. To do this analysis correctly, you need to determine what kinds of errors can occur in the call at any given point. For example, if a particular system in the U.S. needs to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) but does not have a touchtone fallback for every command, then the company may face legal action.