<aside> ℹ️ Design guidelines are sets of recommendations on how to apply design principles to provide a positive user experience. Designers use such guidelines to judge how to adopt principles such as intuitiveness, learnability, efficiency, and consistency so they can create compelling designs that meet and exceed user needs.
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Design guidelines are a set of principles, best practices, and recommendations that provide guidance to UX designers during the design process. These guidelines help designers create user-centered, effective, and efficient digital products that meet the needs of the end-users.
Design guidelines are an essential part of the UX design methodology as they ensure consistency, accessibility, and usability across various digital platforms. They are often based on research, user testing, and industry standards, and can be used as a starting point for design solutions.
Over many years, cognitive psychologists provided the foundations of many design guidelines through findings from their studies. Still, other design guidelines exist thanks simply to common sense. For example, users can tell when a webpage looks too busy the moment they see it. So, designers should also be able to tell and understand why. Design guidelines fall into several groups, including these:
✦ Style – e.g., brand logos, colors
✦ Layout – e.g., grid or list structure
✦ User interface (UI) components – e.g., menus, buttons
✦ Text – e.g., font, tone, labels/fields
✦ Accessibility – e.g., Aria markup for disabled users
✦ Design Patterns – e.g., forms
Design guidelines are rules of thumb for you to create work that never frustrates users. Likewise, you should also cater to users who have a wide range of disabilities. How you apply design guidelines also depends on the contexts of use, your design’s platform, and the type of interaction users will have with it (e.g., voice-controlled).
Industry pioneers such as Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen identified areas that designers and developers should consider to design products that offer the best user experience. Here’s an example of how a designer might realize one of Jakob Nielsen’s ten design principles.
Design principle: Provide plain-language error messages to pinpoint problems and likely solutions.
Design guideline: Write the large-lettered, jargon-free text in a web-safe font. Use short sentences and draw users’ attention to causes and remedies.
Design rule: Use 20-pt, black Georgia on a lavender background (#e6e6fa Hex). Put instructions in bold.
Note the differences. The principles represent general points of direction. The guidelines reveal how to approach these. The rules are direct instructions. So, the designer approaches the design principles and then uses design guidelines to determine the design rules. Designers often apply design guidelines subjectively when they design products. One designer might interpret a guideline differently from another.
It’s vital to give users what’s most fit for their purpose. Brands have various guidelines for designers to tailor dashboards to minimize cognitive load and maximize readability. Microsoft, Apple, and Google are examples of companies that have exemplary standards (e.g., Google’s Material Design) for use in customization.
Designers also have to accommodate users’ cultural considerations (e.g., color use and text direction). Moreover, when you design for mobile devices, you have to balance brand consistency and maximal use of limited screen space. That’s why designers often use pictures or icons to represent information in mobile designs.
Google’s Material Design is a good example of company-specific design guidelines that relates both to branding and user experience.