Product design principles: beyond table stakes

When you go out to eat at a restaurant, what do you expect? At the very least, you probably expect to browse a menu, give someone your order, and subsequently have that selection brought to you.

For a restaurant, these are table s̶t̶e̶a̶k̶s̶ stakes. This is the minimum of what is expected and acceptable to be a restaurant. But there’s a big difference between your local fast food joint and that swanky place that changes its menu every season. Why? Their principles.

On the one hand, take the fast food place. What drives their product?

• Speed & convenience. It’s not called fast food for nothing…and there’s probably one on every block.
• Consistency. I expect the Big Mac I order in Los Angeles to taste exactly the same as the one I order in New York.

Now what about that fancy restaurant?

• Quality. I don’t care how long it takes or how much it costs, because it’s probably the best meal I’ll eat all year.
• Exclusivity. It’s impossible to get a reservation because everyone and their mother wants a chance to try that 3-course meal from the world-renowned chef that will be taken off the menu next month.

So how does this relate to design?

In Julie Zhou’s piece about design principles, she brings clarity to the fact that ubiquitous and generic principles like “design should be simple” or “design should be pleasing to look at” are essentially meaningless to a brand. These are the table stakes of design much as serving food is to a restaurant.

A good set of design principles, on the other hand, does the following:

Helps resolve practical and real-world questions around specific design decisions.

Applies to an entire class of design decisions, both things we can think of today, as well as questions that will pop up in the future.

Imparts a human-oriented sense of “why?” that is easy for everybody — including non-designers — to understand.

Has a point of view and a sense of prioritization that a rational person could disagree with.

Is generally paired with illustrative examples that show how the principle applies to specific decisions.

Policygenius is about to go through a huge rebrand, so we’ve been revisiting our own principles. In the past, these have been more about what the product aims to achieve and less about how the design makes it happen.

So how did we choose our design principles?

First, we acknowledged the table stakes. They’re still the basis for great design, and they remind us that these are NOT our principles.

Our principles are our design values. They keep the team aligned on what makes a Policygenius design, and help guide our decisions. Most importantly, they have a perspective — they’re not generic platitudes created to induce head nodding.

We’re still working out the kinks, but with a growing team and thousands of design decisions to make, our design principles will not only be crucial in ensuring consistency across our rebranded product, but in driving design decisions from here on out.

And in case you need help remembering…

A restaurant that serves food? Table stakes

A restaurant that serves high-quality meats? Steak at your table