What’s all this about?
I’m sure you have your own personal principles like ‘Live Laugh Love’ (🤣), ‘Be Excellent To Eachother’ (🤙🏼) and ‘Carpe Diem’ (😬). So, having principles for the ‘why’ behind designs should be pretty clear too, right? Instead of going solo and missing out on valuable input from others, go ahead and team up to create Design Principles. They’re an important but simple step in gathering diverse opinions from the people around you to truly enhance your design practice!
The Exercise
Step 1
Start off by showing a group of people these Six Core Elements and their examples. The Core Elements should always be something that you use to help inform design work, but they aren’t your principles yet. Make sure each element is understood before continuing!
eg. Navigation apps smartly suggest the best routes while sharing info about the area, making journeys efficient and informative for users.
eg. Design systems allow people to fluidly use any platform they want, enabled by a framework that caters to evolving demand.
eg. Smartphone keyboards anticipate users' words through predictive text and swipe to text, speeding up typing and reducing errors.
eg. Modern steel buildings often undergo reconfiguration to serve diverse purposes beyond their original design
eg. The aesthetics of period properties are often desirable and preserved in renovations, or copied in to newer structures.
eg. Inclusive websites are compatible with screen readers, have high contrast options and alternative text for visually impaired users.
eg. Navigation apps smartly suggest the best routes while sharing info about the area, making journeys efficient and informative for users.
eg. Design systems allow people to fluidly use any platform they want, enabled by a framework that caters to evolving demand.
eg. Smartphone keyboards anticipate users' words through predictive text and swipe to text, speeding up typing and reducing errors.
eg. Modern steel buildings often undergo reconfiguration to serve diverse purposes beyond their original design
eg. The aesthetics of period properties are often desirable and preserved in renovations, or copied in to newer structures.
eg. Inclusive websites are compatible with screen readers, have high contrast options and alternative text for visually impaired users.
Step 2
Now ask the group ‘How should we be... Efficient, Scalable, Anticipatory, Adaptable, Resilient and Available’, putting their responses on post-its and placing them beneath the corresponding Element.
Step 3
Categorise the responses with nice, snappy titles - these will become your Design Principles! Dot voting on the responses will help you understand some of the detail your principles could cover.
In this example the categories ‘Efficiency Unleashed’, ‘Anticipating Delight’ and ‘Accessible Impact’ have been created and now they act as guiding Design Principles for ongoing work.
