Guiding UX principles to base your design system and UX framework on

• When working for a startup, there’s so much to do! As a UX team of one or the founding UX team member, you need to rely on doing just enough research and just enough design to keep designs churning out while creating your design system and UX framework to ensure consistency and a connected, enjoyable experience across even complex application interfaces. To keep things moving smoothly and to avoid bottlenecks in a fast-paced startup environment, here are the guiding principles I use:
• Bring data forward:
  Make sure that users have the information they need when they need it. This encompasses not only UI text, but also error messages providing the information users need to resolve errors.
• Good enough design:
  We need to get features and enhancements out quickly. Timebox designs and try not to revisit too many decisions. You can always iterate as you get more info.
• Reduce cognitive burden:
  Don’t make them think! Even developers like using a tool that is fun, engaging, and intuitive. Automate the things you can, make simple the things you can’t.
• Collaboration:
  Your team needs everyone’s insights and experience to make a great experience. Internal and external stakeholders welcome!
• Communicate system status:
  Don’t leave the user hanging or leave them with questions. Make sure people know what is happening in the system at all times, whether an action was successful or not.
• Connectedness:
  Provide a holistic, connected experience, from onboarding and engagement through support.
• Consistency:
  In helping people understand the mental model of your product, consistency of element placement, system behavior and interactions.
• Other design principles:
  Users spend most of their time on other sites. This means they prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know. Simplify the learning process by providing familiar design patterns.
• Operationalize and document
  This one is more about optimizing business processes, including creating internal docs on how to use tools or derive reports or update dashboards. It also is critical to document design decisions. This will save you a lot of time in the future, when even you may not remember exactly why a particular design decision was made. This is very easy to do in the fast-paced environment of a startup. I use the agile mentality to operationalize everything, rather than needing to rely on my own memory (such as for occasional tasks) or on any one person.

Throughout the process of designing with stakeholders and reporting on progress, make sure to use these phrases and terms in support of your design recommendations and decisions. You’ll know you’ve done a good job evangelizing when your stakeholders start using phrases like “needing to reduce cognitive burden” or “needing to bring information forward” as part of their common parlance!