Design Principles
Creating Design Principles
A collaborative process for discovering principles grounded in real work
Key Insight
Principles are discovered, not invented. Look at your best existing work and ask what made it right-the principles are already there. Creating them collaboratively (designers, developers, PMs) builds buy-in. Process: audit good work → extract implicit rules → draft principles → test against real decisions → refine.
Key Points
- •Start from existing good work, not blank-sheet ideation
- •Involve diverse perspectives: design, engineering, product, content
- •Draft more than you need, then consolidate to the strongest 3–7
- •Test each candidate against a real recent design decision
- •Principles need to be used-make them part of critiques and reviews
Guidelines
- ✓Run collaborative workshops rather than top-down declarations
- ✓Use real decisions as test cases, not hypothetical ones
- ✓Give principles time in use before finalizing-they improve with feedback
- ✓Reference principles explicitly in design reviews to build team habit
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