Ethical Web Principles

The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a positive social benefit. As we continue to evolve the web platform, we must therefore consider the consequences of our work. The following document sets out ethical principles that will drive the W3C's continuing work in this direction.

1. There is one web
2. The web does not cause harm to society
3. The web supports healthy community and debate
4. The web is for all people
5. The web is secure, and respects peoples' privacy
6. The web enables freedom of expression
7. The web makes it possible to verify information
8. The web enhances individuals' control and power
9. The web is an environmentally sustainable platform
10. The web is transparent
11. The web is multi-browser, multi-OS and multi-device
12. People can render web content as they want

Principles for Independent Archives

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.

1. Use open standards
2. Think long term
3. Stay small, let others create meta-collections
4. Strive for universal accessibility, be accessible by default
5. Store the original record, present its essense over its resolution
6. Work together
7. Be wary of other people’s ideas

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.

Design Principles

1. Start with needs
2. Do less
3. Design with data
4. Do the hard work to make it simple
5. Iterate. Then iterate again.
6. Build for inclusion
7. Understand context
8. Build digital services, not websites
9. Be consistent, not uniform
10. Make things open: it makes things better

Accessibility Principles

1. Inclusion is better than empathy
2. Accessible design is good design
3. Start with what works
4. If it’s not accessible, it’s not done
5. This is still for everyone

National Health Service

Design principles

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.

1. Put people at the heart of everything you do
2. Design for the outcome
3. Be inclusive
4. Design for context
5. Design for trust
6. Test your assumptions
7. Make, learn, iterate
8. Do the hard work to make it simple
9. 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 government build effective digital services.

Playbook

1. Understand what people need
2. Address the whole experience, from start to finish
3. Make it simple and intuitive
4. Build the service using agile and iterative practices
5. Structure budgets and contracts to support delivery
6. Assign one leader and hold that person accountable
7. Bring in experienced teams
8. Choose a modern technology stack
9. Deploy in a flexible hosting environment
10. Automate testing and deployments
11. Manage security and privacy through reusable processes
12. Use data to drive decisions
13. Default to open

Opower

Opower Product Design Principles

1. Design for how people actually behave
2. Assume people don’t care
3. Always lead to action
4. Aim for lasting relationships, not one-night stands
5. Build for everyone… who receives a utility bill

Indie Web Camp

Key Principles

• 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

Digital design principles

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

Design manual: Principles

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

Pitch Engineering Principles

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

Browse principles

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.

Calm Technology Institute

Principles of Calm Technology

Calm Technology is a process for designing technology that works with human attention, instead of against it.

1. Technology should require the smallest possible amount of attention
2. Technology should inform and create calm
3. Technology should make use of the periphery
4. Technology should amplify the best of technology and the best of humanity
5. Technology can communicate, but doesn’t need to speak
6. Technology should work even when it fails
7. The right amount of technology is the minimum needed to solve the problem
8. Technology should respect social norms

HTML5

HTML5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML.

HTML Design Principles

1. Compatibility

   1. Support existing content
   2. Degrade gracefully
   3. Do not reinvent the wheel
   4. Pave the cowpaths
   5. Evolution not revolution

2. Utility

   1. Solve real problems
   2. Priority of constituencies
   3. Secure by design
   4. Separation of concerns
   5. DOM consistency

3. Interoperability

   1. Well-defined behavior
   2. Avoid needless complexity
   3. Handle errors

4. Universal access

   1. Media independence
   2. Support world languages
   3. Accessibility

Microformats

A set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

Microformats principles

1. Solve a specific problem
2. Start as simple as possible
3. Design for humans first, machines second
4. Reuse building blocks from widely adopted standards
5. Modularity / embeddability
6. Enable and encourage decentralized and distributed development, content, services

WCAG 2.0

Understanding the Four Principles of Accessibility

The guidelines and Success Criteria are organized around the following four principles, which lay the foundation necessary for anyone to access and use Web content. Anyone who wants to use the Web must have content that is:

Perceivable

It can't be invisible to all of their senses.

Operable

The interface cannot require interaction that a user cannot perform.

Understandable

The content or operation cannot be beyond their understanding.

Robust

As technologies and user agents evolve, the content should remain accessible.

AMP Project

AMP Design Principles

These design principles are meant to guide the ongoing design and development of AMP. They should help us make internally consistent decisions.

• User Experience > Developer Experience > Ease of Implementation.
• Don’t design for a hypothetical faster future browser.
• Don’t break the web.
• Solve problems on the right layer.
• Only do things if they can be made fast.
• Prioritise things that improve the user experience – but compromise when needed.
• No whitelists.

Front-end Development

I realized that in order to really know whether our work is any good, we need a higher level of principles that can be used as a measuring stick for implementing design. We need something that is removed from a specific language like CSS or an opinionated way of writing it.

The Nine Principles Of Design Implementation

Structured

The document is written semantically and logically, with or without styles.

Efficient

The least amount of markup and assets are used to achieve the design.

Standardized

Rules for common values are stored and used liberally.

Abstracted

Base elements are separated from a specific context and form a core framework.

Modular

Common elements are logically broken into reusable parts.

Configurable

Customizations to base elements are available through optional parameters.

Scalable

The code is easily extended and anticipates enhancements in the future.

Documented

All elements are described for others to use and extend.

Accurate

The final output is an appropriate representation of the intended design.

Inclusive Design

They are intended to give anyone involved in the design and development of websites and applications - designers, user experience professionals, developers, product owners, idea makers, innovators, artists and thinkers — a broad approach to inclusive design.

Inclusive Design Principles

Provide comparable experience

Ensure your interface provides a comparable experience for all so people can accomplish tasks in a way that suits their needs without undermining the quality of the content.

Consider situation

People use your interface in different situations. Make sure your interface delivers a valuable experience to people regardless of their circumstances.

Be consistent

Use familiar conventions and apply them consistently.

Give control

Ensure people are in control. People should be able to access and interact with content in their preferred way.

Offer choice

Consider providing different ways for people to complete tasks, especially those that are complex or non standard.

Prioritise content

Help users focus on core tasks, features, and information by prioritising them within the content and layout.

Add value

Consider the value of features and how they improve the experience for different users.

Exclusive Design

Where Inclusive Design is about designing for everybody in every context, Exclusive Design is for those of us who do not know everybody in every context yet.

The Exclusive Design Principles

Study Situation

We work with one real person with a disability, and closely observe how they react to our design.

Ignore conventions

If during our tests it turns out the conventions/guidelines/best practices aren't good enough, we improve them.

Prioritise Identity

We get to know the person we work with closely, and soak our design, our process and our organisations with their identity.

Add Nonsense

We explicitly allow crazy/weird/uncommon/uncomfortable ideas to flourish. That’s where the unknown things are hidden.

Web Development

As web developers, we are responsible for shaping the experiences of user’s online lives. By making choices that are ethical and user-centered, we create a better web for everyone.

Principles of Ethical Web Development

1. Web applications should work for everyone
2. Web applications should work everywhere
3. Web applications should respect a user’s privacy and security
4. Web developers should be considerate of their peers

JavaScript

I want to introduce 7 actionable principles for websites that want to make use of JavaScript to control their UI.

7 Principles of Rich Web Applications

1. Server rendered pages are not optional
2. Act immediately on user input
3. React to data changes
4. Control the data exchange with the server
5. Don’t break history, enhance it
6. Push code updates
7. Predict behavior

Drupal

An open source content management platform

Drupal 7 User Experience Project

1. Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable.
2. Design for the 80%
3. Privilege the Content Creator
4. Make the default settings smart

Foodspotting

Instead of reviewing restaurants, you can recommend your favorite dishes and see what others have recommended wherever you go.

About Foodspotting

1. It’s about dishes, not just restaurants
2. It’s visual
3. It’s positive
4. It’s global

Facebook

It's what enables us to debate whether something “Is Facebook” or “Isn't Facebook,” it's what allows us to evaluate whether anything we’re designing could be improved.

Facebook Design Principles

1. Universal
2. Human
3. Clean
4. Consistent
5. Useful
6. Fast
7. Transparent

Medium

It’s never too early to talk about principles for your product. They can feel premature because they’re not what we typically consider signs of progress, such as mocks or prototypes. Nevertheless, if written correctly, you’ll be surprised at how often they will come up in conversations, during new employee onboarding, design critiques, and brainstorms.

Creating useful design principles

Direction over Choice.

This principle was often referred to while we were designing the Medium editor. We purposely traded layout, type, and color choices for guidance and direction. Direction was more appropriate for the product because we wanted people to focus on writing, and not get distracted by choice.

Appropriate over Consistent.

This might seem controversial, but when applied across devices, its purpose is clear. We were willing to break consistency if it was more appropriate for the OS, device, or context.

Evolving over Finalized.

This is exemplified in the ability to share Medium drafts, write responses, and leave notes. The content on Medium should be antifragile, improving with use and evolving overtime. We did not want to design printed books for the internet.

Mapbox

After a few weeks sketching and debating, we stepped back and created some simple design principles before moving forward:

Our principles

• Interaction is the basic unit of design.
• Transitional interfaces are easier to learn and more pleasant to use.
• Interactions should be delightful and surprising.
• Focus the user on one primary action at a time.

Firefox

Is what we’re making a clear expression of what it means to be Firefox? What will make it more Firefoxy? What will we not do because it’s not true to Firefox?

Firefox Design Values

1. Takes care of you

   • user-sovereignty
   • default to privacy
   • no surprises
   • actionable advice

2. You help make it

   • research gives a voice to our non-core community
   • start people with smart defaults
   • implicit as well as explicit customization
   • invite people to be more than users

3. Plays well with others

   • user control and choice
   • simple to use the services you choose
   • suggest ways to get the most out of the web

4. Exuberant

   • feels like there is a person at the other end
   • fun tools are easier to use
   • humour and whimsy
   • have a point of view

5. Finely crafted

   • see also our visual design guidelines
   • continuity of look and feel across platforms
   • perceivable quality is vital

6. Global

   • global means local and local and local

7. Balances power and simplicity

   • 80/20/2: default to surface minimalism and easy access to the rest
   • user-agency and understanding, not just less

8. Makes sense of the web

   • focus on real human tasks and contexts
   • many real tasks involve a browser and other tools
   • quick access to your stuff and web
   • no jargon

9. High user-performance

   • performance is objective, but responsiveness is subjective
   • a happy user performs better

Windows

Windows UX Design Principles

• Reduce concepts to increase confidence
• Small things matter, good and bad
• Be great at “look” and “do”
• Solve distractions, not discoverability
• UX before knobs and questions
• Personalization, not customization
• Value the life cycle of the experience
• Time matters, so build for people on the go

Windows Apps

Microsoft design principles

• Pride in craftsmanship
• Do more with less
• Fast and fluid
• Authentically digital
• Win as one

Android

These design principles were developed by and for the Android User Experience Team to keep users' best interests in mind. For Android developers and designers, they continue to underlie the more detailed design guidelines for different types of devices.

Android Design Principles

• Enchant Me

  • Delight me in surprising ways
  • Real objects are more fun than buttons and menus
  • Let me make it mine
  • Get to know me

• Simplify My Life

  • Keep it brief
  • Pictures are faster than words
  • Decide for me but let me have the final say
  • Only show what I need when I need it
  • I should always know where I am
  • Never lose my stuff
  • If it looks the same, it should act the same
  • Only interrupt me if it's important

• Make Me Amazing

  • Give me tricks that work everywhere
  • It’s not my fault
  • Sprinkle encouragement
  • Do the heavy lifting for me
  • Make important things fast

Android Wear

These design principles provide some simple heuristics about how you should plan and assess your Android Wear app design.

Design Principles for Android Wear

• Focus on not stopping the user and all else will follow
• Design for big gestures
• Think about stream cards first
• Do one thing, really fast
• Design for the corner of the eye
• Don’t be a constant shoulder tapper

Google Glass

Glass is fundamentally different than existing mobile platforms in both design and use. Follow these principles when building Glassware to give users the best experience.

Principles

• Design for Glass
• Don’t get in the way
• Keep it relevant
• Avoid the Unexpected
• Build for people

Harmony by Intuit

Our vision is to create a cohesive, multi-device user experience that unites Intuit’s small business products.

Design Principles

• Be simple, easy to use, and guiding.

  1. Establish a familial resemblance.
  2. Maintain user context by staying in place.
  3. Guide the user where appropriate.

• Design for the customer and instill confidence.

  1. Be trustworthy and helpful.
  2. Imbue confidence.

• Establish modern and iconic ownable moments.

  1. Define a standard personality.
  2. Celebrate unique tasks.
  3. Project a voice.
  4. Define ownable visualizations.

• Celebrate data while respecting user and device context.

  1. Be smart and appropriate for the task at hand.
  2. Understand the broader contexts of use.

Arch Linux

The following five core principles comprise what is commonly referred to as the Arch Way, or the Arch Philosophy, perhaps best summarized by the acronym KISS for Keep It Simple, Stupid.

The Arch Way

Simplicity

Arch Linux defines simplicity as without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications, and provides a lightweight UNIX-like base structure that allows an individual user to shape the system according to their own needs. In short: an elegant, minimalist approach.

Code-correctness over convenience

Simplicity of implementation, code-elegance, and minimalism shall always remain the reigning priorities of Arch development.

User-centric

Arch Linux targets and accommodates competent GNU/Linux users by giving them complete control and responsibility over the system.

Openness

Arch Linux uses simple tools, that are selected or built with openness of the sources and their output in mind.

Freedom

By keeping the system simple, Arch Linux provides the freedom to make any choice about the system.

Web Design

What principles do designers need to understand to create better designs?

Front-End Principles for Designers

1. Let go of control
2. Avoid too much variation
3. Keep performance in mind
4. Understand source order
5. Know your numbers
6. Let content determine breakpoints
7. Maintan consistency
8. Communicate early and often

Moo.com

I wrote these up just before I left MOO I think.

'MOO.COM UX rules' - circa 2008

• Optimise for the common case
• Build tools that focus on meeting one simple need
• Build tools for users without experience
• Users needs are not always the same as the features they ask for
• One action per page
• Context is more important than consistancy
• Optimise for average user's return rate
• Make pages functionally readable
• Only tell people things once per page
• Contextual help is best
• Let people teach themselves
• Keep the user path as short as possible
• Make decisions for people
• Make people confident in their actions
• Pages make sense before and after action
• State should always be maintained between pages
• Make sure pages content can be linked to forever

Wayfindr Open Standard

Designing for vision impaired people

These principles provide guidance about:

• The design and development process of a wayfinding and digital navigation system for vision impaired people
• The high level thinking for creating audio instructions
• The usage of sound in a wayfinding system for vision impaired people

1. Involve users in the process
2. Focus on the environment not the technology
3. Use simple and concise messages
4. Use active words
5. Provide reassurance information
6. Provide an instruction at every decision making point
7. Provide different techniques for diagonal directions
8. Provide auditory cues
9. Divide the route into clear segments

Malleable Systems Collective

Principles

For all of these principles, it is not yet clear how to best achieve them, and there are sure to be many possible solutions with different tradeoffs. We’ll need to experiment as community with various approaches. The collective’s primary goal is to report on such efforts and raise awareness of work in these directions.

Easy to change

Software must be as easy to change as it is to use it.

Arbitrary recombination and reuse

All layers, from the user interface through functionality to the data within, must support arbitrary recombination and reuse in new environments.

Open-ended potential

Tools should strive to be easy to begin working with but still have lots of open-ended potential.

Retain ownership and control

People of all experience levels must be able to retain ownership and control.

Freely sharable

Recombined workflows and experiences must be freely sharable with others.

Modifying in the context of use

Modifying a system should happen in the context of use, rather than through some separate development toolchain and skill set.

Thoughtfully crafted

Computing should be a thoughtfully crafted, fun, and empowering experience.

The Clock Of The Long Now

These are the principles that Danny Hillis used in the initial stages of designing a 10,000 Year Clock. We have found these are generally good principles for designing anything to last a long time.

Principles

Longevity

With occasional maintenance, the clock should reasonably be expected to display the correct time for the next 10,000 years.

Maintainability

The clock should be maintainable with bronze-age technology.

Transparency

It should be possible to determine operational principles of the clock by close inspection.

Evolvability

It should be possible to improve the clock with time.

Scalability

It should be possible to build working models of the clock from table-top to monumental size using the same design.

WikiHouse

Guide for Designers

1. Rather than solving problems from scratch, adapt other people's solutions, and then give them credit.
2. Design for materials and components which are reasonably cheap to buy, low-carbon and fully recyclable or biodegradable.
3. Design structures which can be assembled with minimal formal skill or training, and without the use of power tools.
4. WikiHouses should be capable of being habitable throughout the year, and as efficient as possible in the use of energy and water.
5. Design in such a way as to offer maximum provision for the safety, security and health (both mental and physical) of the users at all stages of the structure's life.
6. As a general rule, design for the climate, culture, economy and legal / planning framework in which you live, and you know best. Others will then be able to adapt the design to suit their environment.
7. Share your work as much and as openly as possible, it might come back better. At very least you'll have contributed to solving a common problem.
8. “It is easier to ship recipes than cakes and biscuits” — John Maynard Keynes
9. Design to dismantle. The easier it is to dismantle structures or replace individual parts, the better.
10. Design for mistakes. Try to design components which either make it impossible for the assembler to get it wrong or are designed in such a way that it doesn't matter if they do.

Chindōgu

The Ten Chindōgu Tenets

1. A Chindogu cannot be for real use.
2. A Chindogu must exist.
3. Inherent in every Chindogu is the spirit of anarchy.
4. Chindogu are tools for everyday life.
5. Chindogu are not for sale.
6. Humour must not be the sole reason for creating Chindogu.
7. Chindogu are not propaganda.
8. Chindogu are never taboo.
9. Chindogu cannot be patented.
10. Chindogu are without prejudice.