- Dieter Rams is a world-renowned designer, primarily having worked at Braun throughout his career. His designs are highly regarded. He's influenced numerous designers, including Apple's Jony Ive.
- Good design is innovative
- Good design makes a product useful
- Good design is aesthetic
- Good design makes a product understandable
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is honest
- Good design is long-lasting
- Good design is thorough down to the last detail
- Good design is environmentally-friendly
- Good design is as little design as possible
Here, we're gonna examine his 10 principles for design.
1. The first good design is innovative:
+ Technological innovation is constantly creating opportunities for new and innovative designs. This doesn't mean that you need to reinvent the wheel with every design.
+ Often, there are standard design elements that will make sense for your product, like a button. But especially when you're building an innovate product, it's worth asking if you're being innovative with your design or applying old design ideas to something new.
2. Secondly, good design makes a product useful.
+ We want our products to be used and loved, which means they need to be useful. The design has to make the product functional, but also psychological pleasing. Dental head gear is a great example of a functional product that's not psychologically pleasing, which means the customer may not want to use it.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
+ The aesthetic quality of a product is integral to it is usefulness because products are used everyday and have an effect on people and their well-being. Only well-executed objects can be beautiful.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
+ Design can help make a product's intended function clear, and great design makes the product usable without any training. When it fails to make the product understandable, the customer often gets frustrated by trying to use the product over remembering how to use.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
+ Products exist to help a customer be awesome and achieve a goal, not to be revered by themselves. If a design is neutral and restrained, it lets the focus be on the customer rather than calling attention to itself.
6. Good design is honest.
+ A well-designed product doesn't make the customer believe it does something that it doesn't actually do or that it is something more valuable than it actually is. Painting the product gold won't make it actually be as valuable as if it were made of gold.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
+ While it can be tempting to make something trendy and fashionable, good design will last so that even as style changes your product won't go out of fashion.
8. Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.
+ You wanna think out every aspect so you make sure no matter how customers interact with your product, they're encountering a great experience.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
+ Design can help us preserve our planet for future generations by minimizing the resources it needs, whether we're talking about compute cycles that require power, or physical design that needs raw materials.
10. Lastly, good design is as little design as possible.
+ As Rams puts it, "Less, but better." As you evaluate a design, ask yourself if you can eliminate elements. Focus on reducing the design to its essentials as that purity and simplicity will help make your products aesthetic, understandable, unobtrusive and honest.
Not every principle will apply to every design with equal weight. When you're building an app, you likely don't care as much about its long-lasting or environmentally friendly impacts, but when a designer gives you a wireframe, prototype, or mock-up, and asks you what you think, most of these criteria will give you a way to provide thoughtful and precise feedback and enhance the customer experience.
