Design Principles and Tactics: Why You Need Both

Making the case of the best companion for principles

Source
Spotify New Principles: Relevant, Human, and Unified.

Design principles are only as valuable as the underlying processes enabled to honor them

Tactics: Putting Principles to Work

  • Principles are aspirational: they inspire us to up our design game. Tactics are operational: they are the nuts and bolts of how we acknowledge principles.
  • Principles are defined and used when creating new products, teams, and processes. Tactics are used every day when designing in the trenches.
  • Principles are ambitious, bold, and abstract. Tactics are humble, practical, and concrete.

My Own Principles and Tactics

Product Principles

Clarity

  • There are adequate signifiers and affordances that allow the user to focus their attention and know what to do next.
  • The language and microcopy supports the user and informs it to make a decision.
  • There are no superfluous elements that add cognitive load and become a distraction in the interface.

Humane

  • The product, feature, or capability responds to a human motivation.
  • Technology is used to enable the experience, not to mandate it.

Process Principles

Measure twice. Cut once

  • The team conducted a pre-mortem analysis and identified potential risks before committing to invest significant effort.
  • The team relies on over-communication to reduce message ambiguity or lack of shared understanding.

Atomic Assumptions

  • The team conducted a pre-mortem analysis and identified potential risks before committing to invest significant effort.
  • The team relies on over-communication to reduce message ambiguity or lack of shared understanding.

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Takeaways

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Product Designerd @zenput. Mochaholic. Stoic. Everything we design is designing us in return. arturorios.me

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Arturo Ríos

Product Designerd @zenput. Mochaholic. Stoic. Everything we design is designing us in return. arturorios.me