We want to uncover better ways to build user-centred 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 users’ 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 put inclusiveness, readability, and legibility before elegance.
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.