Among the fundamental elements of the design process are the establishment of objectives and criteria, synthesis, analysis, construction, testing and evaluation.
Different terminology employed may have varying degrees of overlap, which affects what steps get stated explicitly or deemed "high level" versus subordinate in any given model.
[4] (NOTE: In these examples, other key aspects – such as concept evaluation and prototyping – are subsets and/or extensions of one or more of the listed steps.)
Various stages of the design process (and even earlier) can involve a significant amount of time spent on locating information and research.
[5] Establishing design requirements and conducting requirement analysis, sometimes termed problem definition (or deemed a related activity), is one of the most important elements in the design process[6] in certain industries, and this task is often performed at the same time as a feasibility analysis.
[2] In some cases, a feasibility study is carried out after which schedules, resource plans and estimates for the next phase are developed.
The feasibility study is an evaluation and analysis of the potential of a proposed project to support the process of decision making.
The purpose of a feasibility assessment is to determine whether the engineer's project can proceed into the design phase.
The following are widely used techniques:[2] Various generated ideas must then undergo a concept evaluation step, which utilizes various tools to compare and contrast the relative strengths and weakness of possible alternatives.
For example, a CAD program can provide optimization to reduce volume without hindering a part's quality.