Design Principles: from theory to practice
If you’re reading this post, you must be thinking about the life support your Design Principles are going to need to ensure they don’t die a premature death. Well you’re in luck…
It seems that every design team has its own set of principles, there’s even a Design Principles website bursting with examples (1448 to be precise).
The purpose of principles is to give guidance and provide clarity when making design decisions, so they have to become part of your team’s design toolkit.
Always start with why
We started questioning, Why do we do what we do? What does Auto Trader design look like on its very best day? How does it feel? What does it do? Why do we care/why should others?
After what quickly turned from weeks into months with multiple conversations, workshops and iterations, we finally ended up with our six unique guiding design principles that encapsulate what great design looks like at Auto Trader.
Each of our principles starts with a verb that communicates the action or state of being that connects to our word-combinations. These two important words articulate our approach to design.
For example
collaboration + relationships = collaboships
And by doing so we feel the execution of our word-combinations perfectly encapsulates the passion, enjoyment and energy we want to portray as a design team. And we think they’re pretty unique also.
Promote ecosivity
We’re always connected to (and considerate of) AT’s wider business needs. We’re inclusive of our entire ecosystem and seek the relevant domain knowledge to inform our designs.
Forge collaboships
We can’t succeed in a bubble. Together we create something special, and forging collaborative relationships helps us thrive on AT’s collective expertise.
Balance datassumptions
Making design decisions should be a balancing act of using data and instinct. Don’t be afraid to make assumptions, they are our best hypotheses.
Embody empasign
Empathy in design is essential. We take the time to consider the real needs of our users, and we answer them with an accessibility-first, human-centred approach.
Seek delightivity
We seek to delight with our designs and exceed user expectations wherever we can. We deliver exactly what users need, sprinkled with moments of joy.
Be experimentitious
We can test bigger ideas and discover better things when we experiment with ambitious thinking. We think big, test quick, fail fast and succeed even faster.
Putting theory into practice
It’s not always true that if you build it they will come. You have to turn your principles into practical tools. After all if they’re never used then you have to question why have them at all!
Aid decision making
For each principle we created a set of guiding tips to help our designers understand and use our principles everyday. We felt the more this/less this approach was the best way to communicate that there is still value in the ‘less this’ on the right, but that we put a greater value the ‘more this’ items on the left.
Make them accessible
Meet your teams where they are. If you make it hard for them to find your principles I can guarantee they wont be using them. So make them easily accessible in your software and tools, where they’ll add the most value.
Through the creation of a practical set of design principles, and embedding these in our instant messaging and workshop templates, it’s making our team chats healthier, and adds a new way for us to react towards design work in discussion.
Make them real
Bring your design principles to life. Highlighting those in the team that demonstrate your principles, will enable your team to recognise those traits in others.
If you can do that then your design principles have already come to life and you’re well on the way to them becoming a practical design tool for you and your team(s).
