Triangular Time-Cost-Quality

When you are planning out your next design project, keep the graphic above in mind. The design triangle has three sides: Quality, Time, and Cost. Design takes time. Design takes money. And design is expected to be high quality. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to turnaround a great design fast and cheap.

Time
• Time is defined as a dimension that represents an opportunity to perform some useful activity such as adding to the wealth of an individual, a corporation or society as a whole. If time is of the essence, say the project is event driven, then the price may increase, or parts of the process must be skipped to meet the deadline. Skipping parts of the design process means that quality will suffer.

Cost
• Cost is defined as being the monetary amount paid for labour, plant, materials and
components, overheads and profit.If your piece must be mistake-free, then expect to spend more money for quality assurance. If the piece is going to be seen by the general public, this is an aspect you definitely should not cut corners on.

Quality
• Quality is viewed by the value specialist relates to the performance of functions, both use and aesthetic. If your budget is next to nothing and you don’t have a designer in your family to run to, then quality assurance will be lacking, and your project will become a lower priority compared to more profitable projects, therefore taking longer to complete.

While the goal of every job is to maximize all three of these factors, typically one suffers at the expense of the other two. You get what you pay for. Good design does not come cheap nor does it come quickly.

More:
Value Criteria
Fundamentals