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Design Maturity
The Design Principles Workshop
The 5-step process to work out your guiding principles.
With topics like component libraries, role-and-permission models, workflow automation, design systems, and more, we currently see a lot of push towards design and product maturity. Publications like Design Better by InVision are packaging the insights from leading product organizations and are showing us what the higher levels of maturity in this space are today.
Working towards higher design maturity levels is a long journey that includes many trials and tribulations. Yet, there are many repeatable patterns and learnable tools and skills that can be used. A significant factor in moving towards higher maturity levels in a design and product organization is their vision. That needs to be articulated clearly, for the growing organization to stay aligned.
Closely tied in with the vision should be the guiding principles. Any product organization looking to create strong governance around their work (including introducing a design system) needs to figure out their design principles. Design principles are essential articulations of guiding considerations that will help the team make important decisions along their journey and reflect the organization’s vision and values.
An example of well-formed design principles comes from Atlassian. Their product organization champions value like “Trust,” “Collaboration,” “Familiarity,” “Momentum,” and “Mastery.” Those values are both highly connected to their business, as they provide expert tooling for product organizations and really show in the products they create. Their principles help them stay focused on who they are and what they need to build.
When you look around, you find examples from AirBnB, Apple, Uber, and others. Yet how do you find the principles that actually matter to your organization, and that should be guiding your team? To answer precisely this question, we have developed the “Design Principles Workshop.”
