Design Principles
1 min read
In the past 10 years it has become a defacto standard that teams create design principles as part of their design process. They have become so predictable that I come to expect them right after the slide introducing team members and before any designs.
Design principles are statements that attempt to establish some guard rails that guide the design and development of products. They are an attempt to create values that form a shared definition of quality and purpose. If there are two paths in front of the team, the hope is that the principles will make it clear which one to follow.
Design principles became more prevalent in the mid 2000s (although they had been around much longer in the industry). Their popularity coincided with the industry's rediscovery of Dieter Rams 10 Principles for Good Design. This rediscovery was closely tied to Apple's design renaissance under Jonny Ive. His admiration of Rams and Braun design seemed to be a path for designers wanting to mimic Apple's design prowess. The canonization of Rams and his principles made Designers believe that any team of sophistication needed design principles.
I have nothing against design principles. They are a tool. When well written and enforced they are very effective. But most of them fail to achieve their goal. They fail for three main reasons.
Not shared – If a design team creates a set of design principles, they won't do much unless every person on the team adopts them. Design does not operate in a vacuum. Even if the whole Design team adheres to the principles they created, they can quickly be undone if another part of the team makes decisions in opposition to the principles. Principles rarely come with any enforcement, they are, at best suggestions from the Design team.
Too many – I have seen situations where teams will present a deck with 15 or more principles. Even worse I've seen a single team independently create principles by discipline (Design principles, UX Research principles, Content Design principles). This can be compouned the larger and more cross functional or cross organizational the team is. These principles inevitably conflict with each other. The team has no way to reconcile which principle should be followed when two contradict.
Poorly written principles – most of the principles I read are just poorly written. They are too broad as to be uncontroversial and as a result hard to implement. A principle should help guide people through a hard decision. If they are written without a strong point of view they don't offer much direction. They often lack any measure of value. A principle like "be delightful" is not very helpful unless there is a shared definition of delightful to whom, how delightful, how will we know if it is delightful, what is the value of being delightful?
Before spending effort on creating design principles, take a moment to determine if this is the right tool and if the principles can be enforced. Most of the time, the effort to create design principles is not worth it and the team should focus their energy somewhere else.