A Pragmatic Approach to Design Principles

• approach, Pragmatic
a-pragmatic-approach-to-design-principles

Two years ago when I joined the product team at Thomas, I faced a design culture where decisions were based on the highest paid person’s opinion (HiPPO). Conversations went somewhere along the lines of “I don’t think XYZ will like this” or “that’s not their taste in design.”

My goal was clear: instill a user-centric culture where design decisions are based on user needs, data, & best practices.

…until I was punched in the face by reality — the team was no longer making design decisions to the taste of upper management, they were now making decisions to my taste. I was the new HiPPO.

Within the first month at the helm of design, we created the baseline for our design system to automate UI decisions, set up a dashboard of KPIs to track our success, and established an inclusive design process that allowed us to effectively get designs out the door.

Things seemed to be going well… until I was punched in the face by reality — the team was no longer making design decisions to the taste of upper management, they were now making decisions to my taste. I was the new HiPPO. (Cue the horror face meme.)

Although we made progress throughout the first few months, we were still missing an important piece to our design process: a set of user-centric & pragmatic design principles that gave the team guidance & autonomy in making optimal design decisions.

(Related: A/B Testing Design — Lessons Learned)

Hello Design Principles

Design principles (not to be confused with the traditional principles of design) are a set of guidelines for what your team or company believes to be good design.

Here’s a definition that’s spot on:

Design principles are the shared criteria for what good design means for our product and marketing materials. Think of them as a set of guiding ideas to help make design decisions, help keep all of our visuals aligned, and to help decide what features are most important to focus on.

Charli Marie, co-host of Design Life Podcast

When done right, they make your design process effective, efficient, & scalable.

But when done wrong, they end up as a list of theoretical cliches that state the obvious and don’t assist in the day-to-day design decisions.

Remember those company values you were asked to live by but struggled to put into practice because, well, they weren’t practical? That’s exactly what we wanted to avoid.

Our First Stab at Design Principles

Our goal was to get as pragmatic as possible to avoid spending time and resources on a set of principles that weren’t going to serve a purpose.

With this in mind, we went through an initial exercise where we documented the reasoning behind the decisions we made as individual designers. It happens to be that every designer on the team had their own internal set of design principles which they used to guide their decisions. Surfacing these principles was extremely useful in helping us build a shared mental model of how we made decisions as a team.

We used a combination of our individual design principles as a baseline. After a few debates, thorough research, and a sprinkle of user-centric best practices we came up with the following list:

1. User-First


It is key that we understand our users and their needs first. We never trick the user, we never manipulate the user.

2. Inclusive & Accessible


Everything we build should be accessible, inclusive and responsive by default. Designs should perform well in different contexts & platforms.

3. Design Consistency


Blueprint (our design system) is the single source of truth for design consistency.

4. Challenge Design Patterns which Don’t Make Sense


Contextually, if a design pattern doesn’t make sense, challenge the use case and consciously modify or suggest a new pattern for the situation.

5. Each Project Starts with the Research Phase


Let’s thoroughly research what we’re trying to solve for. Chances are other companies have already solved this.

6. Data-Driven


Use existing data and KPIs to guide our design decisions.

Looking at these principles two years later, they seem obvious (and maybe a little clunky). And that’s because at the time we were in a place where they weren’t — these were custom-tailored principles to the issues we were struggling with as a team.

For the next year, these principles helped the UX team stay focused on designing for the user and not the HiPPO.

Design Principles Applied at a Company-Wide Level

Time and time again we found ourselves debating and explaining the same user-centric concepts with other teams (e.g. why tricking the user isn’t an option, why this new product needed to be accessible, what accessibility meant, why our opinions should come last, etc).

We decided to use the same approach that helped us think cohesively as a design team and apply it at a company-wide level. The goal was to modify our design principles in a way that would be understood and effectively utilized by the rest of the organization.

After detailed feedback (and plenty of debates) from engineering, product, and marketing we came up with the following principles.

Thomas Design Principles

1. User-Centric


Let’s figure out what the user needs are first and design for that. We are not the user.

2. Accessible


Every design should be fast, responsive, & of low cognitive/physical effort for the user. Accessible products create a larger audience.

3. Data-Informed


Design decisions are better made when guided by data. Opinions come last.

4. Transparent


Transparent design decisions build trust in our products resulting in higher user engagement. No tricking or manipulating the user.

5. Unified*


Each piece is part of a greater whole and should contribute positively to the system at scale. There should be no isolated features or outliers.

6. 80/20


80% of results come from 20% of the effort. Instead of solving everything, let’s aim for the bigger impact.

7. Early Delivery


The earlier we get designs in front of the user, the earlier we know what works and what doesn’t.

* Principle #5 was borrowed from Airbnb’s design principles — I couldn’t have worded this better myself.

We now had a set of company-wide design principles that not only provided us with the guidance necessary for making day-to-day design decisions but also worked as a tool that drastically improved our collaboration with other departments. From engineering to product and marketing, we were all speaking the same language.

The Pragmatic Part

We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless.

Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Canon

Yeah, not what we’re looking for. The following set of guidelines helped us gain traction and create awareness of our principles along with their purpose throughout our company.

Specific to our organization

Each of our design principles addresses a specific friction point of our organization. If I were to take these design principles to another company, chances are they wouldn’t work. One of the most effective ways of getting other teams to adopt an idea or process is by making their lives easier.

Include why

Each definition of a design principle was coupled with a strong why. This takes a design principle from being theoretical and most likely to get ignored (e.g. all design decisions should be transparent without tricking or manipulating the user) to one that is informative and pragmatic (e.g. transparent design decisions promote the trust of our products. No tricking or manipulating the user).

Inclusive of other teams

Nobody wants to follow a set of “rules” that are being dictated by one team. Our design principles were designed to help us collaborate better as a user-centric organization. This meant speaking with other teams and thoroughly understanding the friction points from their perspective. This helped us design a set of principles that addressed issues at every level of our company.

Make Them Obvious

Once you have a set of well-defined principles, make them visible in places where your team and coworkers will be sure to come across them. An option is to design a poster and add it to every single conference room. If you don’t make an effort to increase visibility, no one else will.

To Conclude

Design principles aren’t meant to end all debates nor to get everyone thinking the same — different perspectives and stress testing designs are still crucial and necessary parts of the design process. But like a good design system, design principles are meant for us to automate the smaller decisions to make room for debate of the larger concepts and ideas.

Additional thoughts on design principles? Reach out & let me know.

Resources

A Pragmatic Approach to Design Principles

• approach, Pragmatic
a-pragmatic-approach-to-design-principles

Two years ago when I joined the product team at Thomas, I faced a design culture where decisions were based on the highest paid person’s opinion (HiPPO). Conversations went somewhere along the lines of “I don’t think XYZ will like this” or “that’s not their taste in design.”

My goal was clear: instill a user-centric culture where design decisions are based on user needs, data, & best practices.

…until I was punched in the face by reality — the team was no longer making design decisions to the taste of upper management, they were now making decisions to my taste. I was the new HiPPO.

Within the first month at the helm of design, we created the baseline for our design system to automate UI decisions, set up a dashboard of KPIs to track our success, and established an inclusive design process that allowed us to effectively get designs out the door.

Things seemed to be going well… until I was punched in the face by reality — the team was no longer making design decisions to the taste of upper management, they were now making decisions to my taste. I was the new HiPPO. (Cue the horror face meme.)

Although we made progress throughout the first few months, we were still missing an important piece to our design process: a set of user-centric & pragmatic design principles that gave the team guidance & autonomy in making optimal design decisions.

(Related: A/B Testing Design — Lessons Learned)

Hello Design Principles

Design principles (not to be confused with the traditional principles of design) are a set of guidelines for what your team or company believes to be good design.

Here’s a definition that’s spot on:

Design principles are the shared criteria for what good design means for our product and marketing materials. Think of them as a set of guiding ideas to help make design decisions, help keep all of our visuals aligned, and to help decide what features are most important to focus on.

Charli Marie, co-host of Design Life Podcast

When done right, they make your design process effective, efficient, & scalable.

But when done wrong, they end up as a list of theoretical cliches that state the obvious and don’t assist in the day-to-day design decisions.

Remember those company values you were asked to live by but struggled to put into practice because, well, they weren’t practical? That’s exactly what we wanted to avoid.

Our First Stab at Design Principles

Our goal was to get as pragmatic as possible to avoid spending time and resources on a set of principles that weren’t going to serve a purpose.

With this in mind, we went through an initial exercise where we documented the reasoning behind the decisions we made as individual designers. It happens to be that every designer on the team had their own internal set of design principles which they used to guide their decisions. Surfacing these principles was extremely useful in helping us build a shared mental model of how we made decisions as a team.

We used a combination of our individual design principles as a baseline. After a few debates, thorough research, and a sprinkle of user-centric best practices we came up with the following list:

1. User-First


It is key that we understand our users and their needs first. We never trick the user, we never manipulate the user.

2. Inclusive & Accessible


Everything we build should be accessible, inclusive and responsive by default. Designs should perform well in different contexts & platforms.

3. Design Consistency


Blueprint (our design system) is the single source of truth for design consistency.

4. Challenge Design Patterns which Don’t Make Sense


Contextually, if a design pattern doesn’t make sense, challenge the use case and consciously modify or suggest a new pattern for the situation.

5. Each Project Starts with the Research Phase


Let’s thoroughly research what we’re trying to solve for. Chances are other companies have already solved this.

6. Data-Driven


Use existing data and KPIs to guide our design decisions.

Looking at these principles two years later, they seem obvious (and maybe a little clunky). And that’s because at the time we were in a place where they weren’t — these were custom-tailored principles to the issues we were struggling with as a team.

For the next year, these principles helped the UX team stay focused on designing for the user and not the HiPPO.

Design Principles Applied at a Company-Wide Level

Time and time again we found ourselves debating and explaining the same user-centric concepts with other teams (e.g. why tricking the user isn’t an option, why this new product needed to be accessible, what accessibility meant, why our opinions should come last, etc).

We decided to use the same approach that helped us think cohesively as a design team and apply it at a company-wide level. The goal was to modify our design principles in a way that would be understood and effectively utilized by the rest of the organization.

After detailed feedback (and plenty of debates) from engineering, product, and marketing we came up with the following principles.

Thomas Design Principles

1. User-Centric


Let’s figure out what the user needs are first and design for that. We are not the user.

2. Accessible


Every design should be fast, responsive, & of low cognitive/physical effort for the user. Accessible products create a larger audience.

3. Data-Informed


Design decisions are better made when guided by data. Opinions come last.

4. Transparent


Transparent design decisions build trust in our products resulting in higher user engagement. No tricking or manipulating the user.

5. Unified*


Each piece is part of a greater whole and should contribute positively to the system at scale. There should be no isolated features or outliers.

6. 80/20


80% of results come from 20% of the effort. Instead of solving everything, let’s aim for the bigger impact.

7. Early Delivery


The earlier we get designs in front of the user, the earlier we know what works and what doesn’t.

* Principle #5 was borrowed from Airbnb’s design principles — I couldn’t have worded this better myself.

We now had a set of company-wide design principles that not only provided us with the guidance necessary for making day-to-day design decisions but also worked as a tool that drastically improved our collaboration with other departments. From engineering to product and marketing, we were all speaking the same language.

The Pragmatic Part

We design things which we think are semantically correct and syntactically consistent but if, at the point of fruition, no one understands the result, or the meaning of all that effort, the entire work is useless.

Massimo Vignelli, The Vignelli Canon

Yeah, not what we’re looking for. The following set of guidelines helped us gain traction and create awareness of our principles along with their purpose throughout our company.

Specific to our organization

Each of our design principles addresses a specific friction point of our organization. If I were to take these design principles to another company, chances are they wouldn’t work. One of the most effective ways of getting other teams to adopt an idea or process is by making their lives easier.

Include why

Each definition of a design principle was coupled with a strong why. This takes a design principle from being theoretical and most likely to get ignored (e.g. all design decisions should be transparent without tricking or manipulating the user) to one that is informative and pragmatic (e.g. transparent design decisions promote the trust of our products. No tricking or manipulating the user).

Inclusive of other teams

Nobody wants to follow a set of “rules” that are being dictated by one team. Our design principles were designed to help us collaborate better as a user-centric organization. This meant speaking with other teams and thoroughly understanding the friction points from their perspective. This helped us design a set of principles that addressed issues at every level of our company.

Make Them Obvious

Once you have a set of well-defined principles, make them visible in places where your team and coworkers will be sure to come across them. An option is to design a poster and add it to every single conference room. If you don’t make an effort to increase visibility, no one else will.

To Conclude

Design principles aren’t meant to end all debates nor to get everyone thinking the same — different perspectives and stress testing designs are still crucial and necessary parts of the design process. But like a good design system, design principles are meant for us to automate the smaller decisions to make room for debate of the larger concepts and ideas.

Additional thoughts on design principles? Reach out & let me know.

Resources

What’s the right approach to online marketing for your business?

• approach, Right
what’s-the-right-approach-to-online-marketing-for-your-business?

When it comes to online marketing, there’s a lot of advice out there. I can’t criticize, I’m responsible for a good deal of it myself.

But, everywhere you look, it seems like there’s another person sharing their latest marketing innovation, best practice or hack. It’s almost impossible to keep them all straight, let alone decide which ones are relevant to your business.

So what do you do? How do you sort through all of the clutter and pick a marketing approach that will work for you and your company?

To be honest, the secret to effectively marketing your business isn’t the latest best practice or marketing hack. Those might be tools in your marketing tool chest, but they won’t do you much good if your fundamental approach to marketing isn’t solid. In fact, if they distract you from focusing on the most important things for your business, they can actually do more harm than good.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at why you should take most marketing advice with a grain of salt and a few reliable marketing approaches you can use to get consistent results.

The problem with most marketing advice

When it comes to marketing advice, there’s one thing you have to keep in mind: almost all marketing advice comes from marketers. And marketers are constantly trying to sell something.

Even when they’re not directly trying to sell you on a product or service (or their breakthrough, ultra-secret methodology that will make you an overnight millionaire), marketers can’t help but market. It’s instinctive for them. If they want you to believe in their breakthrough or hack, they’ll do their level best to make it seem awesome.

There’s nothing wrong with that…as long as you remember one thing: your results may vary.

No two businesses are the same. Even direct competitors can struggle to effectively replicate each others’ marketing secret sauce. There’s nothing wrong with that, but this point often tends to get lost once marketers start talking about how great their latest idea is.

So, the next time you’re reading about the latest and greatest in the marketing world (including this article), remember, just because something worked for someone else, that doesn’t mean it will work for you. There’s a lot other people can teach you, but ultimately, what’s right for your business will be specific to your business.

How will you approach marketing?

In light of all that, you might be wondering, How do I know what marketing strategies will work for my business?

That’s a great question.

While there are countless different tricks, tactics and hacks you can use to promote your business online, most of them fall into three basic categories. In my experience, as long as your marketing is effective in at least one of these areas, you’ll be successful. So, it pays to understand each of these marketing approaches and which one(s) you want to use for your business.

Ideally, you want to be strong in each of the following areas, but that can often be overwhelming, so start by trying to identify which sort of strategy best fits your company’s personality, needs, and brand.

1. Create something compelling

Although we all love fun, engaging and compelling content, let’s be honest, most marketing is boring. For every truly brilliant ad or article, there are a million utterly forgettable ones.

But here’s the thing. People want to see something fun, funny, entertaining, novel or just plain compelling. They don’t actually hate marketing – they just hate boring marketing. So, if your company can be clever, thought-provoking, soulful or hilarious, people will naturally be interested in your marketing. 

Engaging content stands out from the crowd. It gives people something interesting to look at, think about and share with others – even if that content isn’t all that unique or different to begin with. 

Take the following image from “The Art of Manliness,” for example.

Squatty Potty a cultural phenomenon.

Obviously, you shouldn’t expect Squatty Potty success from your own marketing, but the point remains that engaging marketing works. There are countless examples of business that made their mark by creating content that their customers love.

The downside to this approach, of course, is that putting together compelling content takes a lot of creativity and work – which is a big part of why most marketing content isn’t all that compelling. If you or your business isn’t creative or willing to put in the time and energy to create engaging content, this approach might not be for you.

But, if you love the idea of creating compelling, stand-out content, this sort of approach can do wonders for your business. Marketing like this makes people remember your business and want to follow you for more great content. It isn’t easy, but it can certainly produce great results.

2. Strike first

Sometimes the easiest way to win against your competitors is to beat your competition…to the competition. It’s not hard to get clicks when your business is the only option people see.

And, when it comes to online marketing, there’s always something new to try.

Social media platforms, ad formats, campaign strategies, those hacks and breakthroughs we mentioned earlier—they all fall into this category. Anytime a new option comes around, if you can be the first one to figure out how to make it work, you win. How much you’ll win may vary, but you’ll almost always have a market advantage until your competition catches on.

The problem is, though, striking first is probably the most popular approach in this article. As marketers, we love shiny new toys, so most businesses eagerly look for the next big thing that will allow them to achieve maximum success with minimum effort.

As a result, the long-term effectiveness of this strategy tends to wane with time. The more people who start using the platform, tactic or ad format, the more competition you have and the less exciting your results become.

Take Facebook Ads, for example. 

Not too long ago, you could get clicks for pennies and there weren’t a ton of businesses running ads. These days, however, Facebook is crammed with ads and the cost per click is pushing up against two dollars.

For advertisers who figured Facebook out early, it was a real cash cow. But, nowadays, you have to have a solid strategy just to make any money with Facebook Ads.

The other challenge with trying to be first is that it can sometimes be hard to predict which options are worth investing in and which ones will be a waste of time and effort. For example, remember Vine?

During its hey-day, Vine was a hub of content creation. Accounts that created memorable video snippets became incredibly popular, almost overnight.

CPC that makes your competitors green with envy.

The point is, most business success doesn’t happen overnight – even if it looks like it does. Behind every story of overnight success are countless days and nights of work. But nobody mentions all of the blood, sweat, and consistent effort that lead to a sudden stroke of brilliance. All we see is the end result – and then wonder why we can’t achieve the same thing without all of the effort.

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my career, it’s that consistently doing the right things usually yields results over time. It’s not always fun to be patient, but eventually, it pays off.

Of course, if your business is struggling to keep its head above water or patience and consistent effort make you miserable, this approach can be hard to employ. But honestly, even if your focus is on one of the other approaches we’ve discussed in this article, you’ll always be well-served by being consistent in your marketing.

Conclusion

With all the chatter out there about online marketing strategies, hacks and breakthroughs, it can be easy to get confused about what applies to your business…and what doesn’t. But honestly, most marketing advice fits into one of the three categories we’ve discussed in this article: 

  1. It helps make your marketing more compelling
  2. It’s a new idea that most businesses aren’t trying
  3. It’s something that needs to be done consistently to yield good results

Understanding which of these approaches you want to focus on in your business can help you figure out which strategies to try and which ones to ignore. If creative, compelling content simply isn’t your strong point, don’t try to implement a big, bold, attention-grabbing strategy. Instead, focus on tactics that play to your strengths.

Your business is unique. You don’t have to replicate what someone else does to be successful. You just have to figure out what makes your business special and the best way to communicate that to your audience.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About The Author

Disruptive Advertising, Jacob has developed an award-winning and world-class organization that has now helped over 2,000 businesses grow their online revenue. Connect with him on Twitter.