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What are Design Principles and why do you need them?

In this period of ever-changing technology, good design is crucial to create any successful product. Whenever building a product, you must ensure that your designs are not only intuitive but also easy to understand and use. For creating such a quality product, you must adhere to a set of guideline and rules which forms the basis of design and are known as ‘Product Design Principles’.

The product design principles serve as building tools to create a highly effective and quality product. The tools give you a better understanding, and probably a handful of appreciation, of what works best and what you need to reiterate, update and enhance. You can mix and match design principles and apply them in your creative work. Big companies, often make design principles as their driving force and pivot around the same that keeps them on the same path as they move through the design process. They make sure that their design principles are specific and easily actionable.

It must be kept in mind that by design principles we mean product design principles, whether it is an interface design, experience design, service design etc. We will use the term ‘product design principles’ and ‘design principles’ in this article interchangeably.

What are Design Principles?

Design Principles are fundamental guidelines that designers follow to create effective solutions and meaningful designs. They represent the wealth of information accumulated over time by different professionals, such as psychologists, sociologists, cognitive science experts, usability experts etc. These experts provided their wisdom which makes the building block of design principles. These building blocks give you a better insight to maintain consistent standards and make the system flexible. It is an agreed-upon truth that guides you along the path of your design process journey.

The design principles are tried and tested methods in real-world situations. Each principle is thoroughly researched and tested before it became much evident. They help design products for users with or without much context. A combination of functionality when paired with aesthetics always leads to a better user experience.

Why do you need Design Principles?

In UX, designers prioritise users’ time and efforts needed to complete a task, whether it is to make quick decisions, provide them with alternative methods to complete a task or apply a good hierarchy to make text readable. Because, as UX Designers, we are aimed to design products, for users, we must cater to their service – efficiently and effectively. Design principles are aimed towards making those users’ experiences more pleasurable. It helps establish the core values and integrity of your design.

Design principles will help you craft optimal decisions about structuring and presenting information, creating visual hierarchy, using colour and typography and much more. When used successfully, principles can enhance your designs in both terms: visually appealing and functionally performing.

With design principles as the integral value set, you can keep coming back to these principles through an iterative design process. This is an easy way to communicate the same values to new stakeholders even if you are no longer working on the product. Design Principles ensure that these things are documented and held down at the core. They give you an understanding of how you can make specific design decisions faster and more creatively fostering a well-crafted and user-friendly design. Moreover, design principles support the notion of consistency in team building, confidence in decision making and avoiding ineffective meetings.

Conclusion

Now that you know about design principles and why you need them, do not go running before you know your user’s problems. Because at the end of the day, they are taking your product to their bed (literally). Whitney Hess, Empathy Coach and UX Design Consultant say, “Design is not a monologue, it is a conversation.” You must care about what pieces your design is missing and design principles are surely going to help you with that.

Design Accordingly. Design Responsively. Design Better!

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