a lot of what we do is is "non-iterative". typically, we don't exactly design a building model then test it out, analyze the outcome and refine. we draw out some signs (site, client, culture), we construe certain suggestions out of these signs...pursuant to which, the game turns into creating -interjecting with- paradigms in response to a need for the introduction of an element o r a sensibility or etc and identifying syntagms and continually rewritting the evolving emerging design.

as such, i dont think a designer is either God (who, by definition, does not need to experiment with kazillion universes to come up with an integral universe such as ours) nor is he a dawinianesque Nature, that is in a continual battle with itself, churning out prototypes and terminating others until it exhausts itself by any means (this would be a pure strain of iterative design). we are not as omniscient as either God, Nature or -in a limited sense-a computer...so, in a funny sense, we're also reworking our understanding of ourselves in parallel with the ongoing design..or if you wish, we continually redesign our design proclivities in tandem with the process of designing the intended object of design. and as such, the object of design cannot be felt as merely a product of a linear process since the very subject- the designer- that compels it, is in a process of change. trying to study the motion of the design 3 steps backward, 10 forward (if not the other way around) is a bit like studying a particle's motion subject to heisenberg's uncertainty principle i.e.  it'll get there eventually but don't promise yourself to understand the design process as being comfortably  iterative

"non-iterative design process"  =  THIS IS DUE TOMORROW.