Base image created by Dall-E

I imagine we all rely on an internal compass of sorts to shape ourselves, our lives, and our decisions.

For some, this may be religion; for others, it may be life experiences; or, for many of us, it may be standards we set for ourselves. Religion and other belief systems frequently have their tenets set by a higher authority. Life lessons are acquired through our experiences.

However, tailoring our own principles involves conscious self-work . It requires us to reflect on who we are now and drives us to define what we want to become. And design principles do just that for teams.

To understand this process better, I analysed the design principles of 8 products — Asana, Atlassian, Hubspot, IBM, Slack, Etsy, Medium and Spotify. Many product design teams have well-defined principles, but I picked these for a few reasons.

• A majority of them have open documentation of the creation process.
• A detailed explanation accompanied each principle.
• I also sought a healthy balance of enterprise and consumer products, with a preference for enterprise given I work in it.

1 — What purpose do these principles serve?

Decision-making, shared language & direction. Design principles help steer and accelerate team decision-making in three areas: individually, within the design team, and across teams. They are a tool to measure, criticise, and drive design decisions with a shared language and vision to foster alignment. They replace the subjective with the objective; arbitrary with reason; randomness with intention. At every step of the design process.

They are a tool to measure, criticise, and drive design decisions with a shared language and vision.

All design teams aim for quality. And industry-wide UX principles are excellent starting points for discussing what makes good design. They can, however, be fairly generic. Crafting a unique set of principles allows you to define what quality is for you. For your domain. For your users.

2 — What directs them?

A vision. Slack strives to be “a workplace tool that feels human”. Spotify aspires “to unlock the potential of human creativity” — by allowing artists to create and allowing listeners to be inspired by it. These are overarching goals and everything they create is meant to push them a step forward towards that vision. Hence, design principles that guide creation should mirror your company’s values, vision, and goals. They should help differentiate your product from the competition. Reflect the experience users uniquely expect from you. They should also be formulated to be easily absorbed and adopted by the team. And resonate authentically in voice, tone and ethos.

3 — What are their themes?

It varies from process to product. Most guidelines specified interactions and experiences and others focused on execution, process, and content.

Essentially, principles are guiding lines that help answer the most difficult questions within your design process.

Hence, they could focus on the process the team wants to reinforce or the outcome they aim to achieve. They may also differ depending on the organizational style, whether the company is a product or consulting firm, or if the product is for consumers or businesses. Take IBM. They intend for their principles to “provide clear criteria for the conception, craftsmanship and creativity our brand demands and our clients deserve”. As a result, they lay out broad principles on experiences, identity, and why and how something should be built. For instance, their first principle notes,

“Carefully Considered — Before we decide to do anything, we must consider its usefulness and utility to others. Then, we must determine how committed we are to enthusiastically explore and progressively deliver the full potential of a design.”

On the other hand, consider Spotify, a consumer-facing platform where digital experiences are meant to be personal and delightful. And hence, they utilise the principles, 'Relevant, Human and Unified’, to guide a mix of editorial, product, and content designers towards that goal.

4 — Who is involved in creating them?

Henry Kissinger, in his book, ‘World Order’ notes,

“Any system of world order, to be sustainable, must be accepted as just — not only by leaders, but also by citizens.”

And I’d like to think a design team’s Order is its set of design principles. I’d also like to think a principle is its fundamental truth. So, for them to be sustainable, these principles should be collaboratively created, agreed upon, and adopted by the people it’s meant to guide.

Collaboration & Deliberation in Spotify’s design principle workshop

For example, Etsy encouraged three groups of people to be part of the creation process — the Principle working group, the influencers, and the admin. Spotify ran a workshop where ideas from each designer were thrown into a giant matrix and voted. By taking an inclusive approach, they hoped to integrate the concept into their daily work and make it a common language and strengthen adoption.

5 —What are their characteristics?

It can seem tedious or meaningless to keep repeating a list of principles in every design discussion. At least with poorly designed ones. By developing a set of 3 to 6 one-liners or short phrases, principles can be remembered and recalled and hence, embraced with less friction.

In addition, design principles must be broad enough to universally apply to the whole product and yet specific enough to be actionable. They need to be explicit instructions rather than vague statements, followed by brief explanations. Medium uses an opposing format to style its early principles (e.g. Direction over Choice) and emphasizes that,

“Rather than stating an obvious goal, such as “Medium should be beautiful” (goals are not principles), we created a framework that forced us to list two positive words in opposition. The outcomes caused slight tension and guided us to make appropriate tradeoffs.”

6 — How does it grow?

Base image from Unsplash

Much like Spotify, several products undergo more than one round of building their design principles as they scale and change directions. Much like any UX framework or process, it’s crucial to observe if the principles serve the team well. And much like the nature of human growth, we develop different needs, get pushed and pulled in different directions, and require recalibration. Evolution. An upgrade.

Kick-off questions

Thinking of establishing design principles for your team? Here are some questions you might want to answer together:

• What's your team’s motivation for creating these principles?
• When & Where will it be used?
• What’s the object of focus? — Process? User & visual experiences? Or Product management? (If your organisation does not have separate product principles, this could be a mix)
• Who should it benefit? Who should be involved in the creation or who should it be socialised with after to increase adoption?
• What does the process look like?