The purpose of design principles is to:
- Create a consistency in the process of design thinking about software products.
- Create appealing, minimalist software products.
- Create a ground truth for design discussions.
The principles are:
- Minimal actions
- Maximum information
- User can just use without learning to use
- User rate product as: beautiful, sleek, modern, useful
Minimal actions
To achieve A, user needs to do a minimum steps. Of course there are things that we want user to do multiple step to achieve. Example: delete A: (1) click delete icon -> (2) click confirm yes. In this case, we purposely make it not minial.
Maximum information
A display is always a finite area. What is the information does the user want to see most? Can we display more information but won't compromise the beauty, elegance of the software?
User can just use without learning to use
Can user just look and achieve what they want on the screen or do they have to try many times to get what they want?
Life is already complicated. The software should not make user's life more difficult.
User rate product as: beautiful, sleek, modern, useful
We think our product is sleek and useful. But what user thinks is more important. Do they say so? Why not? How can we make them say so?
Always be humble, learn from user's feedback and comments from competitors.
For inspiration, follow and learn from Apple, BMW and Tesla products.