Divergence

Not all companies use generic design principles. Some define values tailored to their users, values that help their teams build the right products. These kind of rules reveal how a company’s approach is different from their competitor’s. They don’t say we value good design, they imply it. What they do say is this is how we make decisions. This is what our users need.

Manage and upgrade Upkeep and receiving the newest improvements should be as elegant and predictable as using the product every day.

Direction over choice We purposely traded layout, type, and color choices for guidance and direction. Direction was more appropriate for the product because we wanted people to focus on writing, and not get distracted by choice.

Authentic We value the familiarity and trust placed in us. We acknowledge the BBC’s heritage of iconic design and broadcasting history with subtle references.

So what makes a good design principle? There are some good questions to ask:

Is it possible for a fellow designer to disagree with it?

For example, no one (hopefully) would say no to user-friendliness.

Does it apply to your product and your users, in particular?

This means a good principle is based on user research. For example, in choosing direction over choice, Dustin Senos and the early Medium team clearly thought about their users: people that want to write uniquely good stories, as opposed to making them look uniquely different.

What are you trading off?

Establishing that an app should be fast and beautiful doesn’t require you to sacrifice anything. It’s not a difficult decision to make. A good principle should be a tradeoff, a choice. For example, deciding that your app should be fast over beautiful is a better principle. Next time you have to decide whether or not to include that amazing 3D animation that happens to double your page’s load time, you’ll know what to do.

Finding principles for which you have answers to all the above is challenging. But doing so can help you define principles that ensure your users’ needs are constantly prioritised. Principles that make your product better. Principles that serve their intended purpose.