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Good question – the functional unit is one of the first steps in doing an assessment. It can be very simple, but be aware that that simplicity can be deceiving. By choosing the functional unit carefully, you leave options open for a variety of approaches and solutions – much like good framing for a design problem.
A functional unit should contain three characteristics, or precepts:
Here are a few examples:

If you were assessing showers, for example, there would be many options for selecting your functional unit. Each would delimit the study in some way: