We want to uncover better ways to build user-centered products and services. Our principles provide a framework which serves to align us with our goals and help us invest our time and money wisely. They are an essential but straightforward set of rules which guide us to better solutions.

Principles of product and service design

We focus on our user's needs

We seek to understand their emotions, feelings and aspirations rather than making assumptions about what they want.

We add value and not features

Every piece of functionality we add to the system should add value for our users.

We test and iterate

We are aware that our solutions are assumptions unless tested with real users. We test hypotheses, learn and improve our ideas.

We learn from failure

We encourage failure, embrace setbacks, and allow mistakes. We learn, iterate and grow from them.

We are obvious

The experiences we craft are obvious, transparent and inevitable. We go the extra mile to make the experience feel predictably inevitable.

We are consistent

We are consistent with our designs, the language we use on interfaces, our code and our data. We understand that consistency will make our design better, easier to use, and practically invisible.

We make it usable and attractive

We care about how our solutions look and feel. We make our work pleasant to look at, and a delight to interact with.

We make it accessible and inclusive

Everything we build should be accessible, responsive and inclusive. We sacrifice elegance over inclusiveness, readability and legibility.

We imbue ownership

We imbue ownership with reliability, clear privacy and control. We design experiences for the right type of ownership.

We design with data

We embrace data-driven decision-making. We make sure analytics are built-in and always on.

We collaborate

We tackle problems together. We listen, we understand, and we encourage rather than force solutions. We learn from each other and understand the value of what we are building.

We make it shareable and reusable

If we have found a way of doing something that works, we share it whenever we can instead of reinventing the wheel every time.

We acknowledge that design never stops

Design is an ongoing imperative. We listen to user feedback and make data-driven decisions to refine and improve our product.

Made in Switzerland especially for you by Niklaus Gerber - © 2019 unless otherwise noted. Supported by Peter Powell.