Design Canon
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape design practices. Crucial for maintaining design consistency and ensuring high-quality outcomes.
Fundamental guidelines that inform and shape the design process, ensuring consistency, usability, and effectiveness in product creation. Essential for creating coherent, user-centered designs that align with organizational goals and user needs.
The study of the principles and practices that inform and guide the design process. Essential for understanding the foundational concepts that underpin effective design.
The principles and guidelines that govern the moral and ethical aspects of design, ensuring that designs are socially responsible and beneficial. Crucial for creating designs that are ethical, inclusive, and socially responsible.
A design language developed by Google that uses shadow, depth, and motion to create a realistic and intuitive user interface. Crucial for creating modern, consistent, and user-friendly interfaces.
Principle of Least Astonishment (POLA) is a design guideline stating that interfaces should behave in a way that users expect to avoid confusion. Crucial for enhancing user experience and reducing the learning curve in digital products.
A system of design variables used to maintain consistency in a design system, such as colors, fonts, and spacing. Crucial for ensuring uniformity and scalability in design across different platforms and products.
A cohesive system of visual and interaction design principles and guidelines that ensure consistency and coherence across a product or brand's interfaces and experiences. Essential for creating a unified and recognizable user experience, ensuring consistency, usability, and brand identity across all platforms and touchpoints.
User-Centered Design (UCD) is an iterative design approach that focuses on understanding users' needs, preferences, and limitations throughout the design process. Crucial for creating products that are intuitive, efficient, and satisfying for the intended users.
A design principle that suggests using an odd number of elements in a composition to create visual interest and balance. Crucial for creating aesthetically pleasing designs.
A design principle that suggests dividing an image into nine equal parts using two equally spaced horizontal and vertical lines to create more engaging and balanced compositions. Important for creating visually appealing designs and improving aesthetic quality in visual compositions.
A comprehensive review of a brand's design assets and practices to ensure consistency and effectiveness. Important for maintaining a cohesive and effective brand identity.
The practice of designing applications specifically for a particular operating system or platform, leveraging its unique features and capabilities. Important for delivering high-performance and responsive user experiences.
A dark pattern where the user interface is manipulated in a way that prioritizes certain actions over others to benefit the company. It's crucial to avoid this tactic and design fair interfaces without manipulating user actions.
A dark pattern where the user is required to do something in order to access certain functionality or information. Designers must avoid compulsory actions and provide optional choices to respect user autonomy.
The area within which a user can interact with an element, designed to be large enough for easy tapping. Essential for creating accessible and user-friendly touch interfaces.
A dark pattern where a process is made more difficult than it needs to be to discourage certain behavior. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to design straightforward user processes.
A set of ten general principles for user interface design created by Jakob Nielsen to improve usability. Essential for evaluating and improving user interface designs.
A dark pattern where options to opt out or cancel services are deliberately hidden or made difficult to find. It's essential to avoid hiding options and provide clear, accessible choices for users to manage their preferences.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a set of guidelines developed by WAI to make web content more accessible. Essential for ensuring that websites are usable by individuals with disabilities, thereby promoting inclusivity and compliance with accessibility standards.
A dark pattern where repetitive notifications or prompts are used to wear down user resistance. Recognizing the annoyance of this tactic is important to maintain respectful user interactions and avoid interruptions.
A dark pattern where options that benefit the service provider are pre-selected for the user. Designers should avoid default selections and ensure users make active choices that are in their best interest.
A dark pattern where it's easy to subscribe but very difficult to cancel the subscription. Awareness of this tactic is important to provide straightforward and user-friendly subscription management.
Providing clear, concise, and relevant navigation options to help users find what they need quickly. Crucial for improving user experience and efficiency in digital products.
The Principle of Objects is an information architecture guideline that treats content as living, distinct entities with behaviors and attributes. Crucial for creating modular, reusable, and flexible content structures.
A set of rules and standards that define how a brand should be represented across all media and platforms. Crucial for ensuring brand consistency and maintaining brand integrity.
A usability inspection method where experts review a user interface against a set of heuristics to identify usability issues. Crucial for identifying usability problems early in the design process.
A writing and design principle that suggests that things grouped in threes are more satisfying, effective, and memorable for audiences. Important for creating impactful and memorable content and designs.
A dark pattern where the user is guilt-tripped into opting into something by using language designed to shame them if they decline. Designers must avoid this manipulative tactic and respect user decisions without using guilt or shame.
A dark pattern where questions are worded in a way that tricks the user into giving an answer they didn't intend. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to maintain clarity and honesty in user interactions.
The design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities or specific needs. Crucial for creating inclusive products that can be used by everyone, including those with disabilities.
A dark pattern where the cancellation process is intentionally complicated to discourage users from canceling. Designers must avoid complicating cancellations and respect user decisions with a straightforward process.
Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust (POUR) are the four main principles of web accessibility. These principles are essential for creating inclusive digital experiences that can be accessed and used by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities.
The principle that ensures user interface elements maintain their size and proportion across different screen densities. Essential for creating a consistent user experience across various devices.
UI patterns that excessively demand user attention, often interrupting the user experience. Important for identifying and avoiding practices that can frustrate or annoy users.
The degree to which a product's elements are consistent with external standards or other products. Important for ensuring compatibility and user familiarity across different systems.
Web Accessibility Initiative รป Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) is a set of guidelines for making web content and applications accessible. Essential for ensuring web accessibility and inclusivity for people with disabilities.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape user research practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality user insights.
A dark pattern where a free trial ends and the user is automatically charged without warning. Designers should avoid this practice and ensure users are clearly informed about charges to maintain ethical standards.
A dark pattern where advertisements are disguised as other types of content or navigation to trick users into clicking on them. Awareness of this tactic is crucial to maintain transparency and prevent misleading users with disguised content.
The Principle of Growth is an information architecture guideline that plans for the future expansion and evolution of a system. Crucial for ensuring that information structures can scale and adapt over time.
A dark pattern where practices are used to make it hard for users to compare prices with other options. It's essential to avoid this tactic and promote fair competition by allowing users to make informed decisions.
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) is a program developed by W3C to improve web accessibility. Essential for creating guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
The Principle of Front Doors is an information architecture guideline that acknowledges multiple entry points into a website or system. Crucial for ensuring that all entry points provide a coherent and navigable experience.
A document that outlines the guidelines for how a brand should be presented, including visual identity, messaging, and tone. Essential for maintaining brand consistency and integrity.
Guidelines and principles designed to ensure that AI systems are developed and used in a manner that is ethical and responsible. Crucial for building trust and ensuring the responsible use of AI technologies.
The Principle of Choices is an information architecture guideline that emphasizes providing users with meaningful options to navigate and interact with a system. Crucial for enhancing user experience by ensuring users can easily find what they need without being overwhelmed.
Guidelines that dictate how a brand should be presented across various media to ensure consistency. Crucial for maintaining brand integrity and ensuring uniformity in brand communications.
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) is a set of attributes that enhance the accessibility of web content for people with disabilities. Essential for making web applications more usable and inclusive.
A document that defines the functionality, behavior, and features of a system or component. Important for providing clear requirements and expectations for product design and development teams, ensuring alignment and successful project outcomes.
A set of standards and guidelines used to ensure the integrity, security, and compliance of business processes and IT systems. Important for establishing robust governance and control mechanisms in digital product design and development.
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops open standards to ensure the long-term growth of the Web. Essential for creating and maintaining protocols and guidelines that enable the Web to function and evolve.
A set of fundamental principles and guidelines that inform and shape marketing practices. Crucial for maintaining consistency and ensuring high-quality marketing outcomes.
The reduction of restraint in behavior, often due to the absence of social cues, which can lead to impulsive actions and emotional outbursts. Important for understanding user behavior in online and anonymous contexts.
Product Requirements is a document that outlines the essential features, functionalities, and constraints of a product. Crucial for guiding the development process and ensuring all stakeholders have a shared understanding of the product's goals.
The practice of developing artificial intelligence systems that are fair, transparent, and respect user privacy and rights. Crucial for ensuring that AI technologies are developed responsibly and ethically.
A psychological state where individuals lose their sense of self-awareness and personal responsibility in groups, often leading to atypical behavior. Crucial for understanding group dynamics and designing experiences that promote positive group interactions.
A dark pattern where the product asks for the user's social media or email credentials and then spams all the user's contacts. Recognizing the harm of this practice is important to protect user trust and avoid spamming their contacts.
The percentage of times a keyword appears in a text relative to the total number of words, used to evaluate the relevance and optimization of a webpage for specific search terms. Important for optimizing content for search engines without overstuffing keywords.
The Principle of Exemplars is an information architecture guideline that uses representative examples to illustrate content categories. Crucial for enhancing user understanding and facilitating content discovery.