Ten Principles For Good Design
In the late 1970s, a man by the name of Dieter Rams became increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him. As he puts it, the world around hum became “an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises.” So he asked himself the same question that designers across the world have asked. Every startup founder should ask. A question that Silicon Valley pays their industrial and product designers millions of dollars to answer.
“What is good design?”
It is one of those simply poised but devilishly hard questions to ask. One so critical in the release of a product, that a major misstep in form or function can assure the death of your product. So Dieter decided to quantify his answer to this question into 10 simple principles of what he thought was good design.
- Good Design Is Innovative: The possibilities for innovation are not, by any means, exhausted. Technological development is always offering new opportunities for innovative design. But innovative design always develops in tandem with innovative technology and can never be an end in itself.
- Good Design Makes a Product Useful: A product is bought to be used. It has to satisfy certain criteria, not only functional but also psychological and aesthetic. Good design emphasizes the usefulness of a product while disregarding anything that could detract from it.
- Good Design Is Aesthetic: The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness because products are used every day and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
- Good Design Makes a Product Understandable: It clarifies the product’s structure. Better still, it can make the product talk. At best, it is self-explanatory.
- Good Design Is Unobtrusive: Products fulfilling a purpose are like tools. They are neither decorative objects nor works of art. Their design should therefore be both neutral and restrained, to leave room for the user’s self-expression.
- Good Design Is Honest: It does not make a product more innovative, powerful or valuable than it really is. It does not attempt to manipulate the consumer with promises that cannot be kept.
- Good Design Is Long-lasting: It avoids being fashionable and therefore never appears antiquated. Unlike fashionable design, it lasts many years — even in today’s throwaway society
- Good Design Is Thorough Down to the Last Detail: Nothing must be arbitrary or left to chance. Care and accuracy in the design process show respect towards the user.
- Good Design Is Environmentally Friendly: Design makes an important contribution to the preservation of the environment. It conserves resources and minimizes physical and visual pollution throughout the lifecycle of the product.
- Good Design Is as Little Design as Possible: Less, but better — because it concentrates on the essential aspects, and the products are not burdened with non-essentials. Back to purity, back to simplicity.
The principles themselves are quite easy to understand, but in practice, they can be extremely tough. Look around you; almost every great product has likely been influenced directly or indirectly by these principles and Rams’ subsequent work. Famously, Steve Jobs and Jony Ive were prominent admirers of Rams’ philosophy, and their designs for Apple have been deeply influenced by Rams’ principles. These principles have worked in the past and will continue to do so.
I believe it is crucial for startup founders to take these factors into consideration when building their own products. The scope and capabilities may change drastically, but this attention to design should remain constant. It is not just a matter of aesthetics; good design is what differentiates good products from great ones and will ultimately be one of the main pillars that separates you from your competitors.
Check out this Podcast Episode!
You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Podcasts
Doug Weiss, co-founder and CEO of Deets, a platform that helps users find the right restaurants and events for them, joins the podcast to discuss his journey to entrepreneurship and his new company.
His career began in corporate strategy roles at McKinsey and Pepsi. He later transitioned to a Product Growth Manager role at Facebook for the Lead Ads and Offline Conversion Platform. After several position changes within Facebook he eventually became the Head of Creator Commerce at Instagram. He is also an active investor in early stage startups and holds an MBA and MS in Product Design from Stanford, and a BA in International Relations and a BS in Business from UNC.
This podcast was an opportunity to get insight into how Doug and his cofounder, Paul English, are going about optimizing the restaurant discovery process.
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Thanks for reading,
Daivik Goel
