A design principle is a guiding rule or fundamental truth that shapes and informs design decisions. It reflects what’s important to a team, brand, or project, and helps ensure consistency, coherence, and clarity in the design process.
Key aspects
There are several aspects to design principles. Design principles are:
- Guiding, not prescriptive. It’s not a strict rule or checklist but a lens through which designers evaluate choices. It steers decisions rather than dictates them.
- Anchored in values and purpose. Good design principles express what matters most; whether it’s user needs, brand values, or specific business goals. They help teams prioritize when faced with trade-offs.
- Actionable and specific. Though abstract, they should be concrete enough to influence real design work. For example, “Delight with details” encourages designers to sweat the small stuff.
- Consistent across teams. They support alignment, especially in collaborative settings or large-scale projects, where many designers need a shared compass.
- Timeless within a context. While not tied to trends, they can evolve with a product or organization’s growth. They’re durable but not inflexible.
A Google Material Design principle: "Motion provides meaning." Motion isn't just decorative. It supports focus, clarity, and continuity.
Why are design principles important?
Design principles are important because they provide clarity, consistency, and focus in the design process. They act as a shared compass for teams, helping guide decisions, especially when trade-offs or ambiguity arise. Here’s why they matter.
They create alignment
Design principles help teams with different roles (e.g. designers, developers, product managers) make decisions that are consistent with shared goals and values; even when working independently. They reduce debate and decision paralysis by offering a clear north star.
They reinforce brand and purpose
Well-crafted design principles embody a brand’s personality and strategic intent. They ensure that every product, feature, or interaction expresses the right tone and values; even when created by different people over time.
They guide trade-offs
Design often involves conflicting needs (e.g. simplicity vs. flexibility, speed vs. richness). Principles help resolve these tensions by making priorities explicit. For example, if “Clarity over cleverness” is a principle, you’ll choose simpler language in the interface.
They encourage intentionality
Instead of relying on trends, gut feelings, or personal taste, teams can use principles to make deliberate, thoughtful design choices that serve users and goals.
They support scaling and onboarding
As teams grow or become distributed, design principles act as a cultural and creative anchor. They help new team members understand how to design "the right way" within an organization or product ecosystem.
They simplify complex decisions
Design principles distill a lot of nuanced thinking into a small set of memorable, repeatable ideas. This makes them useful in high-pressure or fast-moving environments where decisions need to be made quickly.
In short: Design principles turn abstract values into concrete, usable guidance, ensuring that design outcomes are not just good, but right for the context.
Apple Human Interface Guidelines: "Deference, clarity, depth." The interface serves the content; not the other way around.
Design principles and an OKR framework
Design principles add strategic and qualitative depth to an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) framework. While OKRs define what you’re trying to achieve and how you’ll measure success, design principles help clarify how you want to get there. Especially when it comes to creative or subjective decisions.
Design principles shape how objectives are pursued
Design principles guide behaviour and decision-making as teams work toward objectives. For instance, when an objective for a software product is to improve user onboarding conversion. And a design principle is "Clarity over cleverness." Then the team will avoid over-engineered experiences and focuses on simple, clear communication throughout the onboarding flow.
Design principles maintain quality and consistency at scale
OKRs can be focused on growth, speed, or experimentation; goals that often carry the risk of compromising quality or coherence. Design principles serve as guardrails, ensuring that pursuit of the goal doesn’t lead to poor design choices.
Design principles guide trade-offs that metrics can't solve
Key results often focus on quantifiable outcomes, but design involves many qualitative decisions. Design principles help teams make the right calls when there’s no clear metric-based answer. For example, when choosing between a flashy feature and a consistent UX pattern.
Design principles align execution with brand and vision
Design principles ensure that the way OKRs are achieved reflects the brand's personality and promise. This is especially important when multiple teams are contributing to a shared goal.
Design principles support cross-functional understanding
When design principles are part of the OKR context, product, engineering, and business teams can better understand why certain design decisions are made; even if they’re not easily measurable. This builds empathy and alignment.
Design principles turn abstract aspirations into actionable culture
If your company has a value like “Be user-first” or “Deliver excellence,” design principles help translate that into actual behavior. E.g., “Prioritize user needs over business shortcuts”, which can then guide execution of OKRs in a meaningful way.
Company principle example: "Design for trust." Every interaction (text, flow, or fallback) should build credibility and confidence.
Beware of bad principles
Be aware that defining your design principles can be tricky. Three common pitfalls are:
- Your design principles are too vague; "user-friendly" and "consistent" art too vague.
- Too specific; "use date pickers that allow users to choose the year" is way too specific.
- Too much like a sales pitch; "design supports the business model".
Remember, you need clear, actionable principles that direct your design.
In summary
Design principles enrich OKRs by embedding values and intention into the pursuit of measurable outcomes. They ensure that the how of achievement aligns with both brand and user expectations—not just the what.
In context
Keen uses Design Principles in their Value Driven Design approach to capture branding and cultural values from the organization.
Interested to learn more about Value Driven Design? We've written an introduction to the subject, where you can read about its fundamentals.
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