Design Guidelines
Design Processes
Prescribed rules and recommendations for consistent and cohesive design implementation across various elements of a project. Design guidelines ensure uniformity in visual aesthetics, interaction patterns, and branding, facilitating collaboration among design teams and maintaining a cohesive user experience across different touchpoints.
In practice
Provide a set of recommendations and best practices to guide the design process. Design guidelines are crucial at various stages of the design process, ensuring consistency and adherence to established standards. Their significance lies in streamlining the design process, promoting a unified design language, and facilitating collaboration among team members by providing a shared set of principles and practices. Design guidelines contribute to the creation of cohesive and user-friendly designs across different projects and teams.
Questions
What is Design Guidelines?
Design guidelines are the written rules for how a design system should be applied: spacing, tone, behaviour, and when to use which component.
Why do you use Design Guidelines?
Components alone do not produce consistency. Two people using the same button in different ways still produce two different products.
How do you use/apply Design Guidelines?
Write them as decisions with reasons rather than as commandments, show the wrong way alongside the right way, and keep them where the work happens.
When do you use Design Guidelines?
Once more than a couple of people are building the same product.
Who uses Design Guidelines?
Design system teams, read by every designer and engineer on the product.
