Defining Our Principles, Take Two

A couple years ago, the UX team at Sumo Logic created our first set of principles. We got together in a room and brainstormed how we thought of ourselves as a team, company, and product, who we aspired to be, and how we design. We narrowed our ideas down to the six strongest:

We were happy with these principles, proud to put them up on the wall, and tout them in presentations. But after a while, they started to lose traction. They simply represented a box we had checked — have you written your design principles? Check!

Did we actually refer to them when creating flows? When critiquing designs? When working cross-functionally? Nope. They weren’t useful, they were an artifact that was gathering dust.

When I think about why they weren’t used, I believe some of it comes down to not evangelizing them enough. We could have brought them up more often in meetings, or displayed them all over the office. But ultimately, I think the reason they weren’t really used is because they were lacking specificity and weren’t distinctly Sumo. They were broad, and impossible to disagree with, so they didn’t bring us any clarity in decision making. And we didn’t resonate with them because they don’t actually reflect the way we design day-to-day.

Weak principles were holding us back

We were designing a product without a set of strong principles, which meant the overall experience we were creating wasn’t unified. We weren’t grounded in a shared philosophy as a team, and this was reflected in the product. If we designed in silos, how could this possibly not be mirrored in the finished experience we were creating?

When we would critique each others’ work, our conversations would revolve around best practices in product design, general interaction principles, or simply differences of opinion. This didn’t help us to prioritize our efforts, and it definitely didn’t help us to decide between option A and option B.

What we should have been evaluating is whether the work aligned with our shared vision of the kind of product we wanted to build. Without that vision in place, designers were left to form their own opinions of what “great design” is. Option A and option B may both be well-designed technically, but which brought us closer to the kind of experience we wanted to provide our users?

Starting at square one

To kick off the discussion on our new set of principles, we reviewed our current set and what about them wasn’t working. We also discussed principles from other companies that we thought were particularly memorable, specific, and had a strong point of view. Here are a few examples:

• Design for first impressions (Airbnb)
• Motion provides meaning (Material Design)
• Direction over Choice (Medium)
• Exuberant (Firefox)
• Allow users to focus on their work without interference (Asana)
• Long-term contracts are obscene (37 Signals)
• Pioneering (BBC)
• Transitional interfaces are easier to learn and more pleasant to use (Mapbox)
• Be polished but not ornamental (Shopify)
• Create Fun and A Little Weirdness (Zappos)

We also discussed the ideal format of our new set of principles. We could structure them as dichotomies (e.g. Learnable over Discoverable) which would help us decide between different options. Or they could be written as goals or directives (e.g. Increase confidence through clarity) which feel inspirational and can be very specific. The principles could also simply be a list of descriptors (e.g. Unbreakable) which would be memorable characteristics to help us to evaluate designs, as in, is this user flow unbreakable? We decided to start the ideation and let the format of the principles take shape as we worked.

Putting pen to paper

I wanted to structure the brainstorm somehow, instead of opening it up to any and all possible suggestions. This would feel less daunting and could help to generate more ideas. I created three topics to start the ideation:

1. Describe Sumo. Who are we? What’s the personality of our company, brand, and product? Think about Sumo as a person. This can be realistic or aspirational (but it should be positive).
2. What do our users want? Why do they use Sumo Logic? What will make their lives easier? What are they asking for? How do they want to feel when using Sumo?
3. How are we different? In 1, 3, 5 years, what will set us apart from our competitors? How will we break away from the pack?

Team members jotted down their responses on post-its and added them under the three categories.

You all know what comes next…we can’t help ourselves. We love a good card sort.

We grouped the ideas into the following categories: context, leader, powerful, actionable, humanistic, process, stability, malleability, and productivity.

Crunching the data

After the workshop, I took these 9 themes we established along with the discussion we had around them, and created collections of principles that represented those ideas. For instance, I would take one of the original ideas like flexibility and format it as build flexible solutions.

I gave more weight to the categories that came up more frequently in our discussions. Here is the collection of principles I created based on those 9 themes:

Next, I sent out a survey of all these principles to the UX team and asked everyone to vote on the strongest options, in order to narrow them down even further.

Here are the results from that survey based on number of votes received:

I wanted to visualize these results within their categories in order to determine which themes resonated the most with the group. The four strongest were actionable, humanistic, stability, and malleability.

To be honest, I was pretty surprised just how distributed the responses were across all categories. I had expected some of the categories to emerge as clear front runners, namely leader, humanistic, and powerful. This goes to show how important it is to do your research and gather data from a diverse group of individuals — we would have ended up with radically different principles if I had just decided them on my own, or if they were determined by a smaller group of participants.

Crafting our new commandments

To create the final set, I chose one of the highest rated principles from each of the four categories that received the most votes. In the description for each, I incorporated other principles from that category as well as concepts that had come up in our discussions, to provide a more complete picture of what we meant.

Once we had these final four principles, we ran them by a couple other teams outside of UX to get a different perspective. We realized there was a concept missing that often came up in our discussions at work: attention to detail and craft. Even though this exact idea did not emerge during the brainstorming session, we still felt it was important enough to add to the list.

Without further ado, here is our new set of principles!

signal over noise

The amount of data our customers send us grows every day, but all that data is meaningless unless it can be turned into practical insights. That’s where Sumo comes in. We cut through the noise to show our users the right information at the right time so they can act on it.

This principle also applies to our interface. The product is unusable if the core functionality is obscured by an overly complex UI. Providing our users with the tools they need, and only when they’re needed, empowers them to get their work done faster.

jobs are on the line

Sumo Logic is critical for keeping the apps of thousands of companies up and running. The stakes are high — so building a reliable product that people trust is our number one concern. We can’t release product that hasn’t been carefully thought through and tested, because our users are literally counting on us to keep their jobs.

We take what we do extremely seriously, because if we go down, our customers go down with us.

build for humans

We’re here to serve our users, which means listening to them, empathizing with them, and never forgetting that there are actual human beings on the other side of the screen.

Given how technical the product is, it’s easy to get wrapped up in the complexities of what we’re designing and lose sight of who we’re designing it for. But at the end of the day, we’re making things for people — just like us — to use.

details make the difference

Every word in our users’ logs, every line of their metrics, and every point in their dashboards add up to form a complete picture of their data. Without paying attention to the smallest details, they’ll miss critical information. We need to understand these details to create an experience that matches this level of perfectionism.

We must carefully craft every component, interaction, and workflow, because our customers expect a product that pays as much attention to detail as they do.

design for scale

Technology is constantly changing, and we’ll be left behind if we don’t change with it. At Sumo Logic, we keep our sights set on the future by designing products that will evolve with the industry and our customers.

We don’t know what the world will look like in 1, 5, or 10 years, but we prepare for it by building flexible solutions that adapt to our customers’ needs. We’re always ready for what’s next.