Design Gate

The Design Gate is the second major quality gate in the iOS Factory Pipeline — the validation checkpoint between the DESIGN phase and the BUILD phase. Before any code is written, the design must score 95 out of 110 on a structured design quality rubric. The gate ensures that only designs that meet a defined quality bar advance to the expensive build phase — catching design problems before they become code problems.

The distinction between the Discovery Gate and the Design Gate is important: Discovery Gate evaluates market opportunity (is this worth building?), Design Gate evaluates execution quality (is the design good enough to build?). Discovery Gate is strategic; Design Gate is tactical. Both are non-negotiable barriers — an opportunity can't jump from DISCOVER directly to BUILD regardless of how good it looks.

The design quality rubric covers five dimensions totaling 110 points:

  1. Visual coherence (up to 25 points) — Does the design have a consistent visual language? Color palette, typography, spacing, and component style are unified across all screens.

  2. Component completeness (up to 25 points) — Are all necessary UI components present and accounted for? Buttons, forms, navigation, modals, empty states, loading states — nothing missing.

  3. Usability hierarchy (up to 20 points) — Is the information architecture clear? Can a user understand the app's purpose and navigate it without instruction?

  4. Accessibility compliance (up to 20 points) — Does the design support VoiceOver, Dynamic Type, and sufficient color contrast? Designs that fail accessibility fail Apple's review.

  5. Technical feasibility (up to 20 points) — Can this design be implemented with SwiftUI given the factory's component library? Overly complex custom animations or non-standard patterns may not be feasible within the pipeline's constraints.

Design Station (see design-station) produces the design and the initial self-assessment against the rubric. But the gate is enforced by the Router — not the design agent. This structural separation is critical: the builder cannot pass its own gate. The Router checks each rubric dimension against the design artifact and produces a score. If it clears 95, BUILD begins. If not, the design returns to Design Station for revision.

The Design Gate also applies twice — once before BUILD (pre-build gate) and again after the initial implementation (post-build gate). The post-build gate validates that what was actually built matches the design spec. This catches the common failure mode where the build diverges from the design during implementation — screens that look different than intended, features that got simplified or dropped.

If the Design Gate fails post-build, the product goes back for corrective work before the Polish phase. This is far cheaper than sending a broken product to market — catching the divergence before Polish means no time is wasted polishing something that needs to be rebuilt.

  • ios-factory-pipeline — where Design Gate is the Step 3 quality checkpoint
  • design-station — the module that produces designs and self-assesses against the rubric
  • polish-gate — the next gate after Design Gate; 70% threshold before SUBMIT
  • discovery-gate — the prior gate; opportunity must clear Discovery before Design Gate applies