Design principles

Design Principles

Overview

Use this skill to produce principle-level guardrails that reduce design churn and conflicting decisions across teams.

Scope Boundaries

• Use this skill when the task matches the trigger condition described in description.
• Do not use this skill when the primary task falls outside this skill's domain.

Shared References

• Baseline governance contract:
  • references/design-governance-contract.md
• Principle quality heuristics:
  • references/principle-quality-heuristics.md

Templates And Assets

• Principle set template:
  • assets/design-principles-template.md
• Review checklist:
  • assets/design-principle-review-checklist.md

Inputs To Gather

• Product outcomes, user success criteria, and business constraints.
• Recurring design conflicts and inconsistency examples.
• Accessibility, localization, privacy, and brand constraints.
• Existing governance rules or review process already used in the project.

Deliverables

• Principle set written as actionable decision rules.
• Principle rationale with explicit trade-offs and anti-patterns.
• Practical review checklist mapped one-to-one to each principle.
• Ownership and update cadence for principle maintenance.

Quick Example

• Principle: "Optimize for task completion over visual novelty."
• Applies to: interaction density, information hierarchy, and default states.
• Anti-pattern: decorative elements that hide primary actions.
• Review check: critical action is visible without hover or tooltip dependency.

Quality Standard

• Each principle is testable in design review, not just aspirational wording.
• Principles do not conflict with each other or with required constraints.
• Trade-offs are explicit so teams can resolve edge cases consistently.
• Checklist items are concrete enough for independent reviewers to agree.

Workflow

1. Identify repeated decision conflicts from current product/design work.
2. Draft candidate principles in assets/design-principles-template.md.
3. Add anti-patterns and boundary conditions for each principle.
4. Validate against accessibility/localization/privacy constraints and run assets/design-principle-review-checklist.md.
5. Publish approved principles with ownership and revision policy.

Failure Conditions

• Stop when principles are abstract slogans without observable checks.
• Stop when principles directly conflict with mandatory compliance requirements.
• Escalate when ownership is unclear and no team can enforce the principles.