This is an oldie from Julie Zhou, but it’s a timeless message about the value of good (i.e. actually useful) design principles.
See also what she said on this podcast episode:
When push comes to shove and you have to make a trade off, how are you, in those moments, as a team or a company going to prioritize? What are you going to care about the most? Good values will be controversial in that respect because it’s something that another company might have made a different decision than you.
The value of design principles done right:
What I’ve learnt is that principles are not a luxury. Making explicit and conscious what drives your behaviour can be incredibly powerful as a means to critically shape a team and organisation to be who they want to be.
Shots fired!
I’ve come to believe that accessibility is not something you do for a small group of people. Accessibility is about promoting inclusion. When the product you use daily is accessible, it means that we all get to work with a greater number and a greater variety of colleagues. Accessibility benefits everyone.
I really like this exercise by Harry. I’ve done similar kinds of grading using dot-voting in the past. It feels like an early step to establishing design principles: “this over that.”
By deciding what we value up-front, we have an agreement that we can look back on in order to help us settle these conflicts and get us back on track again.
Relative Requirements remove the personal aspect of these disagreements and instead focuses on more objective agreements that we made as a team.
I like your manifesto, let’s put it to the test-o.
Can my favourite design principle be applied to the process of design?
Using design principles to embody your priorities.