Link tags: principles
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IndieWeb principles · Paul Robert Lloyd
I really, really like Paul’s idea of splitting up the indie web principles into one opinionated nerdy list of dev principles, and a separate shorter list of core principles for everyone:
- Own your identity An independent web presence starts with an online identity you own and control. The most reliable way to do this today is by having your own domain name.
- Own your content You should retain control of the things you make, and not be subject to third-parties preventing access to it, deleting it or disappearing entirely. The best way to do this is by publishing content on your own website.
- Have fun! When the web took off in the 90’s people began designing personal sites with garish backgrounds and animated GIFs. It may have been ugly but it was fun. Let’s keep the web weird and interesting.
On Principles – technogoggles
The value of design principles done right:
What I’ve learnt is that principles are not a luxury. Making explicit and conscious what drives your behaviour can be incredibly powerful as a means to critically shape a team and organisation to be who they want to be.
Kinopio’s Design Principles
Pirijan talks us through the design principles underpinning Kinopio, a tool I like very much:
- Embrace Smallness by Embracing Code as a Living Design System
- Building for Fidget-Ability, hmmm
- Embrace Plain Text
- A Single Interface for Mobile and Desktop
- Refine by Pruning
4 design principles I use every day to avoid bad UX and create products that work for everyone – Adam Silver – designer, London, UK
- Good design works for everyone
- Good design makes things obvious
- Good design puts users in control
- Good design is lightweight
Putting growth at the heart of GOV.UK’s strategy - Government Digital Service
This may mark the beginning of Gov.uk’s decline. The top-listed priorities are the very antithesis of starting with user needs. Instead from now on it’s going to be about growth, shiny new technology, having a native app, and literally pivoting to video.
It’ll be interesting to see if they try to maintain their existing design principles while simultaneously abandoning them.
How you want me to cover artificial intelligence
Seven principles for journalism in the age of AI
- Be rigorous with your definitions.
- Predict less, explain more.
- Don’t hype things up.
- Focus on the people building AI systems — and the people affected by its release.
- Offer strategic takes on products.
- Emphasize the tradeoffs involved.
- Remember that nothing is inevitable.
WebPageTest’s Guiding Principles - WebPageTest Blog
- Make the right thing easy
- Always answer “so what”?
- Close the gap between “something is wrong” to “we fixed it”
Accessibility strategy – GOV.UK Design System
The primary goals of this strategy are to inform decision-making and enhance the success of accessibility-related activities within the GOV.UK Design System team.
Interestingly, accessibility concerns are put into two categories: theoretical and evidenced (with the evidenced concerns being prioritised):
- Theoretical: A question or statement regarding the accessibility of an implementation within the Design System without evidence of real-world impact.
- Evidenced: Sharing new research, data or evidence showing that an implementation within the Design System could cause barriers for disabled people.
Design Principles For The Web - Jeremy Keith - YouTube
Here’s the video of the talk I gave at Web Dev Conf in Bristol recently. I think you can tell that I had fun—it was a good audience!
Malleable Systems Collective
Modern computing is far too rigid. Applications can only function in preset ways determined by some far away team. Software is trapped in hermetically sealed silos and is rewritten many times over rather than recomposed.
This community catalogs and experiments with malleable software and systems that reset the balance of power via several essential principles…
I’ll be adding those principles to my collection.
W3C TAG Ethical Web Principles (slides)
The slides from Tess’s presentation on the W3C’s ethical web principles—there’s a transcript too.
ADL Social Pattern Library | Anti hate by design
A collection of design patterns and principles for mitigating the presence and spread of online hate and harassment in social platforms.
A Matter of Principle
This is an oldie from Julie Zhou, but it’s a timeless message about the value of good (i.e. actually useful) design principles.
See also what she said on this podcast episode:
When push comes to shove and you have to make a trade off, how are you, in those moments, as a team or a company going to prioritize? What are you going to care about the most? Good values will be controversial in that respect because it’s something that another company might have made a different decision than you.
WWC22 - Design Principles For The Web - YouTube
Here’s the video of the talk I gave in front of an enormous audience at the We Are Developers conference …using a backup slidedeck.
Reinventing W3C Governance
To be honest, I’m not all that convinced by Robin’s arguments here about overhauling the governance model at the World Wide Web Consortium (partly because the way he describes the current model sounds pretty okay to me). But I’m very interested in what he has to say in the broader philosophical sense about using values to solve problems:
A value is worth something if it’s there to help you when the rubber hits the road and starts hydroplaning. Sure, you’ll need a handful of high-level lofty values as reminders, if only because there’s always a vocal guy (it’s always a guy) who thinks it’s just outrageous to put people before profits. But mostly you want Values You Can Use.
That might be the best description I’ve come across yet for design principles: values you can use.
When we say that engineering is about trade-offs, we’re saying that engineers solve their hardest problems using values (which they call “heuristics” because everyone’s entitled to be fancy some). In implementing a system, you might need to decide between an option that provides people with the best experience, another that delivers the greatest value to the shareholders, and yet a third one that makes the control centre blinkenlights dance in the prettiest way.
Agile and the Long Crisis of Software
Time and again, organizations have sought to contain software’s most troublesome tendencies—its habit of sprawling beyond timelines and measurable goals—by introducing new management styles. And for a time, it looked as though companies had found in Agile the solution to keeping developers happily on task while also working at a feverish pace. Recently, though, some signs are emerging that Agile’s power may be fading. A new moment of reckoning is in the making, one that may end up knocking Agile off its perch.
The Design System Priority of Constituencies - Cloud Four
Jason applies my favourite design principle to design systems.
User needs come before the needs of component consumers, which come before the needs of component developers, which come before the needs of the design system team, which come before theoretical purity.
Also: how frickin’ cool is it that the Cloud Four office has the priority of constituencies emblazoned on the wall!
Defining the WHAT and WHY of Design Principles — Anton Sten — UX-lead
Just like brand values, mission statements, or vision decks, design principles can be generic and provide little to no actual value.
But used correctly, design principles help you make decisions resulting in a superior experience.
New principle: Do not design around third-party tools unless it actually breaks the Web · Issue #335 · w3ctag/design-principles
There’s a really interesting discussion here, kicked off by Lea, about balancing long-term standards with short-term pragmatism. Specifically, it’s about naming things.
Naming things is hard. Naming things in standards, doubly so.