Design principles. They are the essential ingredients behind the execution of every good design. Each designer and design team establishes their personal set of design principles. Whether you are a designer from a design-centric consultancy, or from an in-house team in a non-design company, you would have come across a set of design principles, especially when design is at a certain stage of maturity.

The list below shows the adoption of design principles from well-known design teams:

Some design principles do not necessarily stay locked within the boundaries of a design team. Take Dieter Ram’s 10 principles of Good Design. Originally meant for Braun, the 10 principles have transcended beyond Braun, into the history books of design due to the industry admiration of how the various household products and audio systems were designed. Rams ensured that each of his designs goes through the same treatment, and the results created a legacy for other design teams to follow. Other design principles, include 10 usability heuristics for user interface design, and Gestalt principles, have arrived at a level where the design industry acknowledges their effective usage.

However, it does beg the question: if there are principles for design, are there principles for the designers? Surely, design outcomes, be it product design or UX/UI design, are the bread and butter of any designer or design firm. At the same time, have we forgotten about the designer, whose behaviour and qualities can be considered? In the spirit of wearing the human-centered design hat, if design principles are for products, then design values are for designers.

Principles or values?

The trouble with design values is that they aren’t really on the same level of prestige as design principles. Referring back to our earlier design list, they are hard to find. Instead, what we tend to see more of are organizational values. Whilst there isn’t anything inherently wrong with organizational values, they lack the contextualizing and empathy that designers need. They lack the core values treasured by design individuals with unique identities and offerings. Other situations are the loose interchangeable use of “principles” and “values”. And to make matters worse, they tend to be bland, repetitive and hard to remember. An observer may conclude that having design values is pointless. Or, is it?

Alternate worlds

Let’s look across in an alternate world. If designers enter an agile setting, they may have come across the Agile Manifesto. In it lies the 4 agile values and 12 agile principles. From the initial gathering of 17 software practitioners, a declaration was created with the primary focus on the ways of working of software development teams: The emphasis of individuals and interactions; the eradication of over-documentation; the need for customer collaboration and a resilient team. Twenty years later, the agile manifesto remains relevant with many other agile practitioners, developers, product owners. Despite contextualising the values for their own purposes in their organisations, agile has become an outward movement to increasingly include other practitioners, including designers and business owners.

In another world, there is Brené Brown — the author that writes about shame, courage and emotions. She has also expanded on the concept of values. Here’s an excerpt from one of her books, Dare to Lead:

More often than not, our values are what lead us to the arena door — we’re willing to do something uncomfortable and daring because of our beliefs. And when we get in there and stumble or fall, we need our values to remind us why we went in, especially when we are facedown, covered in dust and sweat and blood. — Brené Brown, Dare to Lead

In her words, she has defined values as a way of being or believing that we hold most important. She advocates turning our words into action by calling out specific behaviours based on these values: to walk the talk. And when a courageous culture connects its values to specific behaviors, people will know what is expected, encouraged, and rewarded within their team and organization. Subsequently, shared language and a well-defined culture eventually leads to long term meaningful outcomes, including design principles. Perhaps, we as designers have been focusing on results, when we should be equally spending the same amount of time defining the values — our being and our behaviours.

With all things considered, let’s start again.

Design values. They are the essential ingredients behind the culture of every good design team. Each designer and design team has the ability to define their unique set of design values. Whether you are from a design-centric consultancy, or from an in-house team in a non-design company, design values can create a shared language based on specific behaviours of the design team, which helps to meet expectations and decision making.

The list below shows an attempt to put together a memorable set of design values for design teams:

1) Creativity 🥐

As designers, we go beyond function to bring delight to our end users. Beauty is mastered through our skills to reimagine what others see as commodity

2) Empathy 👟

As designers, we listen to the stories of our end users, regardless of race and language. We radicalize transparency and give our end users the ability to speak. By walking in their shoes

3) Care 🌳

As designers, not only should we seek self-care, we have a social responsibility to protect the world we live in. We are mindful of the environment and the impact of our designs by remembering ourselves and our future generations

4) Excellence 🚪

As designers, we thrive towards design excellence, where there are no instruction manuals, only self-discovery. We uphold standards and by designing for clear outcomes that work well for the users

5) Unity 🐝

-As designers, we work collectively with others with their unique perspectives. We go beyond the data point of one, constantly testing our ideas with the world

Values meet principles

Some of you may notice the blending of the design values with the use of mnemonic pegs. As a memory aid, the pegs work by creating mental associations between two objects, helping the users to remember.

Take for example the first design value: creativity, which is paired with bun. The number one rhythms with buns. In the case of creativity, bun can be associated with artisan bakers, known for creating beautiful and innovative pastrys. So can the designer who goes into a “flow” state to create asethetically pleasing designs. Two Shoes bring to mind the common phrase “walking in the shoes of others”. Three trees is about sustainability and caring for the environments. Four doors refers to the affordance in Norman doors, which calls for excellence in applying our design. Lastly, five hives is about working in unity and seeking new experiences outside your comfort zone.

To help us remember by matching objects from the real world, and to use recognition as a technique sounds oddly familiar to designers. In fact, these ideas are from the earlier principles: the 10 usability heuristics (#2, #6). Rather than to treat values and principles in isolation, perhaps it is advantageous for both to leverage on each other.

A new language?

Ultimately, design teams should consider defining a unique set of design values for their designers. They can make these design values more obvious on their design systems and websites. And there are techniques, such as mnemonic devices, to help make them stick. As designers, we have the ability to make a difference for our end users, as well as for ourselves.

Curious to learn from fellow designers what are some of design values practiced in teams, and how it is done. Below are some links to design teams that have design values. Looking forward to grow this list based on your responses!

Design values of notable design teams, design-centric companies and other resources: DBS, IDEO, Zappos, Open source collection of Design Principles