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Principles for Independent Archives
Goals for an independent archive
Reduce the cost of using and acting on the evidence in the archive. Engage new people in the records. Preserve access to the evidence for as long as possible in as many ways as possible.
- Use open standards
- Think long term
- Stay small, let others create meta-collections
- Strive for universal accessibility, be accessible by default
- Store the original record, present its essense over its resolution
- Work together
- Be wary of other people’s ideas
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
- Focus on the user and all else will follow.
- It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
- Fast is better than slow.
- Democracy on the web works.
- You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
- You can make money without doing evil.
- There’s always more information out there.
- The need for information crosses all borders.
- You can be serious without a suit.
- Great just isn’t good enough.
Ten principles that contribute to a Googley user experience
- Focus on people their lives, their work, their dreams.
- Every millisecond counts.
- Simplicity is powerful.
- Engage beginners and attract experts.
- Dare to innovate.
- Design for the world.
- Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
- Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
- Be worthy of people’s trust.
- Add a human touch.
Government Digital Service
These guidelines are intended for people building digital services for the GOV.UK domain. We believe that the work should do the talking, so underneath each of the principles there are examples of how we have applied that thinking in the work released so far.
- Start with needs
- Do less
- Design with data
- Do the hard work to make it simple
- Iterate. Then iterate again.
- Build for inclusion
- Understand context
- Build digital services, not websites
- Be consistent, not uniform
- Make things open: it makes things better
- Inclusion is better than empathy
- Accessible design is good design
- Start with what works
- If it’s not accessible, it’s not done
- This is still for everyone
National Health Service
These principles guide all of our design. Use them to get started on a project and to help with making decisions. They’re inspired by the NHS Constitution that’s steered the NHS for 70 years.
- Put people at the heart of everything you do
- Design for the outcome
- Be inclusive
- Design for context
- Design for trust
- Test your assumptions
- Make, learn, iterate
- Do the hard work to make it simple
- Make things open. It makes things better
U.S. Digital Services
To increase the success rate of these projects, the U.S. Government needs a new approach. We created a playbook of 13 key “plays” drawn from successful best practices from the private sector and government that, if followed together, will help the government build effective digital services.
- Understand what people need
- Address the whole experience, from start to finish
- Make it simple and intuitive
- Build the service using agile and iterative practices
- Structure budgets and contracts to support delivery
- Assign one leader and hold that person accountable
- Bring in experienced teams
- Choose a modern technology stack
- Deploy in a flexible hosting environment
- Automate testing and deployments
- Manage security and privacy through reusable processes
- Use data to drive decisions
- Default to open
Opower
Opower Product Design Principles
- Design for how people actually behave
- Assume people don’t care
- Always lead to action
- Aim for lasting relationships, not one-night stands
- Build for everyone… who receives a utility bill
Indie Web Camp
- Own your data.
- Use visible data for humans first, machines second.
- Build tools for yourself, not for all of your friends.
- Eat your own dogfood.
- Document your stuff.
- Open source your stuff!
- UX and design is more important than protocols.
- Build platform agnostic platforms.
- Build for the long web.
- Have fun.
British Airways
Our 8 design principles outline our approach to design for digital channels — they are the foundation of our UI and UX output. Using them will help with decision making and can be used to measure the success of a design.
- Design for customers
- Design with knowledge
- Focus on the task
- Make it clear & simple
- Make use of conventions
- Be consistent not prescriptive
- Avoid errors
- Create contrast
Co-op
Our digital design principles reflect how we think about design. They provide a way for us to look at the work we create and how we create it: building the right thing; building the thing right.
- We design in context
- We design with purpose
- We design for everyone
- We design with honesty
- We design in the open
- We design iteratively
Pitch
At Pitch, we believe that software development is inherently collaborative. After growing to more than 70 engineers around the world, we decided it was a good time to write down our principles to keep us aligned as we scale.
- Unlocking the team over individual contribution
- Group knowledge over individual expertise
- Small incremental changes over perfection at first try
- Growing the team over shipping code
Design Patterns for Mental Health
Principles are high-level values that run through the patterns and examples that sit underneath them.
- Listen and respond People need to be genuinely listened and responded to.
- Make it human Enable access to help from a real person where possible.
- Give control People should be able (where they can) to make informed choices about the support they receive.
- Be clear Mental health services need to be clear in how they are delivered, what they offer and when and how change will occur in order for people to make informed choices.
- Adapt to changing needs Services need to be able to adapt in response to individuals’ requirements changing due to different situations arising.
- Create a safe space People should feel they are able to safely engage in expressing themselves and receive support in a safe manner with appropriate guidance and rules to ensure theirs and others’ safety and privacy is maintained.
- Be reliable and consistent Build reliability and consistency in your service delivery. This ensures the promise you make can be reliably delivered for people to use and retains a level of consistency in service continuity for users, particularly across multi-service provision.