MProduct <Education>: Product Design Principles

Welcome to MProduct Education. The primary function of this series is to consistently provide product managers (PMs) with valuable tools, frameworks, and resources. Whether you have just learned the operating functions of a PM or are well into your career within the realm of product, our educational content will always be created for those hungry to become a better PM.

Why do design principles matter for PMs?

Almost every tech company has product design principles or guidelines to help guide the course of their products. As a PM, you want to make sure your team focuses on a shared vision to bring forth a product that serves your consumers and aligns with your company’s mission. In this article, we’ll talk about how to make these effective design principles. Design principles commonly refer to visual design. However, today we will be discussing product design principles.

What are product design principles?

First off, these guidelines need to accomplish a few things. This includes reflecting on the state of the product and defining a future vision. It is important to see how a product has developed from your set of principles. Then use these principles to steer it into the future. This should also mean focusing the team on a common vision so that everyone understands the direction and desired outcome from a project. A PM will often work with a team of developers, engineers, data scientists, as well as management. These many roles bring differing perspectives on development, so design principles should help align your team around shared a goal and idea for the final concept. Everyone not only needs to know the purpose of the product, but also the need it is filling.

Product principles can be applied to creating standards used for evaluating new and existing features, and for guiding tradeoff decisions. With every project, there are constraints of time, money, people and technology that have to be addressed. Having clear design principles from the start allows a PM to answer the question of what is more important to the consumer, and therefore the company.

A more well-known set of design principles are Apple’s “Human Interface Guidelines” for each of their technologies. One example from iOS is User Control:

These guidelines can easily be seen in their Photos app. For example, if I go to edit a photo, I have the ability to edit a photo however I feel fit. However, Apple allows me to revert to the original image even after I implement the changes. Additionally when I delete an image, it’s not permanently gone. First, the app will show a message asking me to confirm my action. Then, once “deleted”, the photo will still be in my trash folder for another 30 days before it is permanently deleted. So if my action is ever a mistake, the app allows me to avoid unwanted outcomes.

What are effective design principles?

Now that you have an overview of what design principles are and why they are important, let’s move on to defining qualities of successful ones.

Effective design principles should be:

• Broad enough to apply universally to our product
• Specific enough to help us make decisions
• Focused on a consistent vision
• Able to inspire us to create better outcomes
• Simple and memorable

From the Apple example, it is clear their principles are broad enough to apply to all of their iOS products and this characteristic is true for any organization. Because these principles are specific for each product or company, they should help us remain focused on a consistent vision of what makes our product experience valuable or unique.

On this very website, Medium’s principles guide their decisions to make a valuable experience for us as content creators and readers. One such example is “Appropriate over Consistent”. On either the website or app, Medium will give you the information in the header relevant to what you are reading. If you access the article through their business page, Medium will have a “Medium Business” header. Instead if you access the article through a specific author or publication, the Medium header will include their information. This small feature isn’t that impactful overall but demonstrates Medium’s choice guided by their design principles.

Medium: “Appropriate over Consistent”

Another quality listed is that they should inspire us to create better outcomes. No product is perfect or final, we can always improve to make a new or better version. And for all of these qualities to be effective, the principles need to be simple and memorable for your team so that they are remembered through the lifetime of creating a product.

How to decide on design principles

Because design principles are specific to you and need to guide your team, they should be based on your customer base, product, and team. This means looking at metrics of interest and asking “What metrics are we trying to improve via new product principles?” They should also start with the minimum viable product (MVP) with just core functions because these principles will drive iteration on your product in the future. Even though everything we do is for the customer, design principles should align with the brand as well as the core values you and your team believe in. You also need to decide how these values help and cater to the customer. Finally, take a step back and focus on what the product is really for — What is its utility? What is its purpose? What are its aesthetics? This decision making process should help guide the design principles for your product so that they are effective and useful for your team.

Examples of design principles

Another set of design principles from a product that many of us use are Android’s. Examples of these include “Make important things fast” and “Only show what I need when I need it”.

In Google Drive, the first options on the left are creating a new doc or sheet, then what’s in your drive as well as shared and recent documents. These options allow users to go directly to what they want quickly. There is no need to sort through a whole list or click through too many pages. The second design principle I listed can also be seen in Google Drive. Under the “New” button, users can choose what type of document they’d like to create; a doc, sheets, slides, file upload, etc. Instead of having every option listed on the homepage, users get to choose what to show when they need to create a new document.

Below we listed more examples of design principles as well as the ones used in this article:

Apple: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/

Medium: https://medium.com/@dustin/thanks-for-writing-the-article-julie-8362fd235ae0

Airbnb: https://airbnb.design/building-a-visual-language/

Android: https://www.designprinciplesftw.com/collections/android-design-principles

Google: https://material.io/design

As always, we are committed to creating the next generation of product leaders. If you’re someone passionate about product management, we hope you will join our community. If you want to keep up with MProduct, follow us on Medium and LinkedIn, or check out our website!

Go Blue!

MProduct Links:

Medium: https://medium.com/mproduct

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mproduct

Website: https://www.mproduct.org/

Sources Used In Article

• https://medium.muz.li/design-principles-behind-great-products-6ef13cd74ccf
• https://www.designprinciplesftw.com/
• https://www.cultofmac.com/486340/apple-design-principles-sketchnotes/

Written by Jeremy Segal, with help from Austin Haag, Rohan Prashant, Stephanie Shoo, and Atharva Talpade.

Jeremy is a rising junior at the University of Michigan studying Industrial and Operations Engineering with an International Minor.

He enjoys skiing, hiking, and everything outdoors.