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Plate FLOW·006 · WorkflowGrid G1 · Rev. 2026-08-14

Prioritising Design Work

Deciding what to fix first, using evidence rather than the volume of the most recent complaint.

WorkflowCraft conventionIntermediate

Definition

Prioritisation ranks candidate work by expected value against cost. For usability issues, the standard inputs are frequency, impact and persistence, which combine into a severity rating.

Craft convention. True because the industry converged on it. Breaking it costs familiarity, not correctness.

On this plate
  1. 1Definition
  2. 2Severity from three inputs
  3. 3Rules that keep prioritisation honest
  4. 4Running the exercise
  5. 5In practice
  6. 6Local chart
  7. 7Continue from here

Reach for this when

  • Turning audit or research findings into work.
  • Planning a quarter.
  • Deciding between competing requests.
  • More work is agreed than can be done, which is the normal state.

Common mistakes

  • Prioritising by who asked.
  • Treating accessibility as a low-frequency issue.
  • No record of rejected work.
  • Scoring without the effort estimate, which turns prioritisation into a wish list.

Severity from three inputs

InputQuestion
FrequencyHow many users hit this, and how often?
ImpactWhen they hit it, how much does it cost them? Can they recover?
PersistenceDo they learn to work around it, or does it cost them every time?
ReachIs it on a critical path, or in a rarely visited corner?

Rules that keep prioritisation honest

  • Attach frequency data to every anecdote before it enters the list.
  • Accessibility failures that exclude people outright are not a low priority regardless of how many users are affected.
  • Separate 'quick to fix' from 'important', and be explicit when you are doing something because it is cheap.
  • Revisit the list when new evidence arrives, rather than defending the previous ranking.
  • Record what you decided not to do and why, so the same debate is not repeated monthly.

Running the exercise

Do

  • Score against a written definition of each level, agreed before anyone looks at the list.
  • Estimate effort with the people who will do the work.
  • Keep a visible cut line, so what is not being done is as explicit as what is.
  • Revisit when something ships or something breaks, not on a fixed ceremony.

Do not

  • Average five people's scores and call the result objective.
  • Give every item high priority, which is the same as giving none.
  • Let the score replace the conversation. The disagreement about a score is usually the useful part.
  • Prioritise a list that nobody has deduplicated.

In practice

  1. i.

    Frequency beats drama

    Weighting

    A rare catastrophic bug and a daily two-minute irritation produce similar noise in a backlog. Multiplying impact by how many people hit it, and how often, usually reorders the top of the list.

Local chart

FLOW·006 · Region IV · Grid G1

This entry and the entries it is stated to connect with. Each line is labelled with what the connection means.

Availability HeuristicBIAS·011 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISSunk Cost FallacyBIAS·014 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISProduct ThinkingMOD·002 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISPareto PrinciplePRIN·002 · PRINCIPLES BEHIND THISHeuristic EvaluationTPL·008 · OFTEN USED WITHStory MapTPL·006 · OFTEN USED WITHUX Audit ReportTPL·009 · OFTEN USED WITHJiraTOOL·047 · OFTEN USED WITHUX Audit ChecklistCHK·008 · CHECK YOUR WORKBenchmarkTERM·031 · SHORT DEFINITIONNorth Star MetricTERM·032 · SHORT DEFINITIONSeverityTERM·115 · SHORT DEFINITION

Continue from here

Each link says what the connection is, so you can tell a principle from an alternative from a thing people mix this up with.

Principles behind this

The reasoning this solution is an application of.

Often used with

These usually appear in the same screen or the same decision.

Check your work

Review passes that test whether this was done properly.

Short definition

The one-paragraph version, for when that is all you need.

Related concept

Connected closely enough to change how you apply this.