Design standards are the set of principles, guidelines, patterns, elements, and user experience requirements that ensure consistency, clarity, and effectiveness in the design of products, services, systems, or environments. They are the criteria for measuring the quality of design solutions and achieving the goals of usability, aesthetics, innovation, and accessibility. In this post, we will answer the most popular questions about design standards and show you how to apply them to your projects.
Design principles are the fundamental ideas that guide the design process and decision-making. They are based on empirical research, best practices, industry standards, and user feedback. Some examples of design principles are simplicity, clarity, consistency, flexibility, affordability, sustainability, and empathy. Design principles help designers to create meaningful and functional designs that meet users' needs and expectations.
Design guidelines are specific recommendations or rules that describe how to implement design principles in a particular context or domain. They provide detailed instructions on typography, color schemes, layout grids, navigation systems, feedback mechanisms, error messages, etc. Design guidelines help designers to achieve consistency and coherence across different aspects of their designs and avoid common mistakes or pitfalls.
Design patterns are reusable solutions to recurrent design problems or tasks. They provide a proven way to solve complex issues without reinventing the wheel every time. Some examples of design patterns are tabs & sections pattern for content organization; filters & sorting pattern for search results; breadcrumbs & categories pattern for site navigation; etc. Design patterns help designers to save time and effort in designing similar features or components and enhance users' familiarity with interfaces.
Design elements are the visual components or building blocks that make up a design system. They include typography (font faces & sizes), color palette (hue & saturation), iconography (symbols & signs), imagery (photos & illustrations), shapes (lines & curves), space (margins & padding), etc. Design elements provide a coherent and recognisable style for the design and help users to understand the hierarchy, meaning, and relationship of different elements.
Design user experience (UX) is the holistic and subjective perception that users have of a product or service based on their interactions with it. It includes the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses that users have to the design. UX design aims to create positive, engaging, and memorable experiences for users by addressing their needs, goals, preferences, and expectations. UX design involves research, analysis, ideation, prototyping, testing, and iteration.
To implement design standards in your projects, you need to follow the following steps:
Some examples of well-known design standards are:
