Wasting time and being inefficient in the design process is frustrating, so finally landing on a design that was proposed weeks or months ago can sometimes feel like a backwards step. The feeling of iterating on a design only to realise "Wait, this is what we had 3 weeks ago", can suck. It feels like you have gone in circles and suggests that better discussions and decision making in the past could have prevented it.
Perhaps that's true, but there's another way to look at it. There is whole lot of factors influencing the design that likely caused the team to move past it initially and keep exploring. What you have landed on today might visually be identical and work the same, but the pixels on the screen aren't the only part of a team's decision making or the design. Maybe a technical aspect has become clearer, maybe a slight requirement was changed or maybe it was purely the team has a better understanding of the problem space now.
The design existed in a different time 3 weeks ago, obviously, and at that time it wasn't meant to be. Now, it exists again, and today it's a great solution. Revisiting a past design isn't necessarily a sign of failure but can be a sign of evolving understanding and the right timing.
29th April 2025