Principle #1: Good design works for everyone
There are many reasons for this principle but my favourite is that designing for a minority makes things better for everyone.
Examples:
- Subtitles don’t just help deaf people; they allow people to watch a video in a loud cafe
- Plain language isn’t just easier to read for people with low literacy; experts find it easier to read too
- Large radio buttons don’t just help people with motor impairments; everyone finds them easier to click
Principle #2: Good design makes things obvious
Chris Pratley, founder of OneNote said “You know you have a good design when people say ‘oh yeah, of course’ like the solution was obvious”.
Examples:
- Instead of using a hamburger menu, just show the navigation items and let them wrap if necessary
- Instead of using sticky menus, just let users scroll and put calls to action in context
- Instead of hiding hint text in tooltips, just show the hint inline
Principle #3: Good design puts users in control
Design for real life. People prefer to interact in different ways. And we should design for both an idealised work flow as well as when things don’t go to plan.
Examples:
- Instead of expecting users to fill out a form in one go, expect them to get interrupted
- Instead of showing a menu on hover, show it on click
- Instead of infinite scrolling, let users paginate
Principle #4: Good design is lightweight
According to Google increasing the page load time from 1 to 3 seconds increases the chance of abandonment by 32%. At 6 seconds it increases to 106%. Slow interfaces are stressful and untrustworthy.
Examples:
- Kill the background video and prioritise the content and flow
- Kill the tooltips and reduce the content to its irreducible core
- Kill the carousel and show the content inline
