3 So-what's to Develop Design Principles from UX Research 💎

What are UX Design Principles?

Design Principles are a UXR deliverable / output that establishes the tangible pathway to achieve a desired user experience for the company. The job of Design Principles is to lay out 4–7 key UX opportunity areas ✨, along with reasoning why, that the company needs to tackle in the next 1–3 years.

Example of Design Principles from our work at UnitedHealth.

Design Principles provide strategic guidance for significant — and systematic — improvements to be made to the user experience.

Design refers to the process of creating and managing user experiences. User experiences are designed. Whether intentionally, or not. The UX of your product and company is the result of untold decisions made by internal teams ranging from Product, Design, Marketing, Operations, Digital, Content, Leadership, and more. All of these teams are effectively designing the end-user experience(s). Some more directly, and knowingly, than others.

Principles refers to the guidance and direction provided. In organizations where numerous internal constituents wield various levers of influence (sometimes with competing interests), UX decisions are made for all types of reasons. And not all are inline with one another, or pointing in any one specific direction. Principles provide the much needed UX guardrails 🚧 about what and where to focus, to achieve a best-in-class user experience.

Therefore, Design Principles provide the necessary guidance and direction to the process of creating and managing user experiences. Additionally, systems thinking is useful for Design Principles. This is because products and related UX touchpoints can become very complicated over time. Design Principles help internal stakeholder wrap their heads (and hands) around what's most important to improve on the macro scale. Design Principles inform everyone about where to align efforts, and how to move in a coordinated 🤝 fashion towards an envisioned UX.

First — You've got raw data about the user in terms of behavior, commentary, feedback, etc. So, what? Elaboration on that question include: What sense can you make from it? What's important that we should care about? What are early patterns in the data?

The transition from raw user data to insights is the first step.

This transition from raw user data ➡ insights is the first step of the 3 so-what's to achieving Design Principles.

The process of parsing, picking, and putting together insights from raw user data is a fundamental activity for all UX research projects. There's nothing revolutionary here. All UXR projects need to make sense of user data for Product in the form of insights (see 12 Frameworks to Assist in Data Analysis 🔎). Consider this the foundational ground floor of the construction of Design Principles. You need to first accomplish this step, and do so hundreds — if not thousands — of times, before you're ready for Design Principles.

Typically, individual UXR projects will advance to step-2 (creating Insight Themes) before sharing with stakeholders even happens on a project-level basis. So let's discuss that now...

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Second — You've got plentiful insights about the users, mental models, journeys, etc. So, what? Expansion on the question include: What coalescing themes or opportunities stand out? What actionable recommendations exist for the product? Of those, which recommendations are most important to act upon?

The transition from insights to Insight Themes is the 2nd step.

The transition from insights ➡ Insight Themes represents the second step of the 3 so-what's to establishing Design Principles.

The process of sorting, arranging, re-arranging, and theming insights — both qualitatively and quantitatively — is a powerful building block to establishing meaning. Also, this evolution is inherent to most individual UXR projects. You'll inevitably generate 3–7 Insight Themes on any given project engagement so that you can deliver meaningful opportunities and recommendations to Product (see 7 Components of Compelling Insight Themes 🤯). In this phase, expertise, focus, creativity, and efficiency all play a role in navigating the step-2 transition with grace.

Even better, when you employ standardized Insight Theme deliverables for every UXR project, you can more easily advance to step-3 of developing Design Principles...

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Third — You've got Insight Themes that summarize key opportunity areas. So, what? Evolution of the question include: What are broader implications for different internal departments? What are significant, long-term changes we should make as a result? How should we more seriously consider our system of user experiences differently?

The transition from Insight Themes to Design Principles is the 3rd step.

The transition from Insight Themes ➡ Design Principles represents the third step of the 3 so-what's to developing Design Principles.

The process of identifying 3–5 common opportunity areas among Insight Themes — that outline strategic, long-term improvements for the user experience — represents the third step of the 3 so-what's to Design Principles. Typically, this step does not happen within individual projects. UXR sprints will stop at creating and communicating Insight Themes. However, a strategically-minded UXRr or UXR team will take the extra time once per half (every 6-months) to review the Insight Database and develop UX Design Principles (see 4 Ways an Insight Database Creates Value 💡). The purpose is to uncover unmet user needs, product opportunity gaps, and competitive UX opportunities.

Useful skills include: sound documentation of Insight Themes via an Insight Database, knowledge of the business goals and objectives, and the ability to synthesize large data sets with ambiguous parameters. All of these play pivotal roles in generating Design Principles that are actionable by many different functional departments (Design, Product, Operations, Digital, Marketing, Copy/Content, etc.).

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6 Components of Design Principles

6 components of standard UX Design Principles

1. Title — 2–6 words that succinctly title the Design Principle
2. Visual — representative image to establish a visual reference
3. Statement — 1-sentence Guiding Principle to describe the opportunity
4. Reel — video highlight reel summarizing user behavior / commentary
5. Context — User Stories from supporting Insight Themes
6. Direction — 'How might we…’ statements to enable ideation

Now that we better understand the process of developing Design Principles, let's double-click into their form. In this section, we'll break down exactly what Design Principles look like. Through practical application, we've developed a standard template for disseminating Design Principles. That's not to say there aren't other ways, but we've curated this framework with success.

1. Title — 2–6 words that succinctly title the Design Principle

All Design Principles need a good title. And preferably, that title leads with action. Our recommendation is to begin with a verb to prompt action 🎬. Some examples from past work include: "Simplify Decision-making", "Lead with Positivity", and "Put the User in Control". All of which are action-oriented, not overly specific, and leave ample room for explanation / interpretation. They provide a solid platform for ideation. And do so in a short and memorable way.

2. Visual — Representative image to establish a visual reference

Visuals are useful for memorability. They provide a respite from word overload. We recommend to choose a simple icon, photo, or graphic that summarizes the Design Principle in visual 🎨 fashion. It doesn't have to be explicit. An image that evokes an implicit meaning for the principle is good enough. Keep a theme amongst all the Design Principles' imagery, and adhere to a certain visual style for a more holistic look and feel.

3. Statement — 1-sentence Guiding Principle to describe the opportunity

The statement of intent. The Guiding Principle provides the 1-sentence description about what ought to change and why. This statement is the core of the Design Principle. In effect, it states a UX recommendation on the macro 🌈 scale. An example from our work at UnitedHealth, "Give members multiple ways to send their data, and provide them with feedback that the nurses reviewed it." Be specific, yet allow for a wide application across a variety of touchpoints. It should not be easily solvable, so that teams can create many workstreams and ideas that would potentially align.

4. Reel — Video highlight reel summarizing user behavior / commentary

Video can be extremely powerful. It's especially useful in showcasing real users talking about real challenges or opportunities. We're big advocates for quality video that summarize the overall Design Principle. The purpose of the video highlight reel 🎥 is to show undeniable evidence from multiple users speaking/behaving/showing the crux of the matter. Video snippets also do a great job in keeping the user's voice alive throughout. As projects or business needs evolve, stakeholders may come and go, but video reels will stand the test of time. Video highlight reels are always ready to share the user's perspective about the strategic opportunity at hand.

5. Context — User Stories from supporting Insight Themes

Context is critical. Design Principles are the amalgamation of many related Insight Themes from a variety of projects. It's very important for credibility and back-tracking 👣 to know from where Design Principles originated. Therefore, including the specific User Stories from Insight Themes that were used to develop the Design Principle is pertinent to painting the complete picture. Embed 3–5 User Stories that are (more or less) mutually exclusive / comprehensively exhaustive, to contextualize the Design Principle. You'll want adequate coverage of details, without excessive repetition.

6. Direction — 'How might we…’ statements to enable ideation

Lastly, set the intended direction for ideation. Design Principles represent big, gnarly problems for the organization to solve. There shouldn't be one specific solution or action to take. Rather, create a platform for ideation among cross-disciplinary stakeholders. Include 1–4 'How might we...' (HMW) statements that summarize the Design Principle into specific opportunity areas to go after. You might choose to break off several conceptual elements to focus ideation via multiple HMWs. Or, draft fewer, all-encompassing HMWs that really challenge the business to shoot for the moon 🌙 in terms of solutioning sessions. You're call.

Where Design Principles fit within the broader UXR process

Design Principles fit within the Influence phase of the overall UXR process

The Influence phase is where the process of generating Design Principles exists. Notice how it sits outside of the core 5-phase project guide as an additional macro-level undertaking. As we learned, not every project will output Design Principles. Only after completing 10+ projects will you have the content and Insight Themes available to begin yielding value-add Design Principles.

Need help determining where to start, or how to progress on your UXR project? Check out our end-to-end UX research project guide to learn which activities, deliverables, and outputs are useful at every stage. Ensure you're completing the necessary preliminary steps, such as scoping, executing, analyzing, and synthesizing, before moving to influencing.

Templates to assist in developing Design Principles

UX research template toolbox for guided approach to projects.

If you're looking for some free starter templates for UX research, look no further. We've put together 6+ UXR templates for running your projects from end-to-end. Check out the TurboUXR template resource article to download ready-to-go blank copies of word documents, spreadsheets, and presentation decks.

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