VertiGIS Design Principles
Design Principles are a set of considerations that form the basis of any good product.
VertiGIS products must be EPIC
Effective
Focus on creating software that enables users to efficiently and successfully complete their tasks. To achieve effectiveness, the user experience should prioritize usability and functionality, emphasizing intuitive user interfaces, clear navigation, and streamlined workflows. By designing for effectiveness, VertiGIS products can maximize user productivity and satisfaction, ultimately leading to a positive user experience.
Polished
Create a visually appealing and refined experience. By adhering to a polished design aesthetic, VertiGIS products convey professionalism, credibility, and trustworthiness. Pay attention to the details, such as consistent and visually pleasing layouts, typography, color schemes, and imagery. Ensure that there are smooth transitions, responsive interactions, and error handling that provides a seamless user experience.
Inclusive
Emphasize solutions that are accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities or technological limitations. Inclusive design involves considering a diverse range of users and their needs, including those with visual, auditory, motor, or cognitive impairments. By embracing inclusivity, VertiGIS products can reach a broader audience, promote equal opportunities, and enhance usability for everyone.
Cohesive
Create a harmonious and consistent user experience throughout the suite of VertiGIS products. This involves maintaining a unified design language, visual style, and interaction patterns across different software solutions, features, and devices. By adhering to a cohesive design, VertiGIS products can foster a sense of familiarity and predictability, enabling users to navigate and interact with all VertiGIS products more confidently and efficiently.
It’s important to remember that the perfect solution does not exist. To avoid straying too far towards any single design principle, it is always necessary to make trade-offs when making design decisions. Inevitably, this process involves testing and iterating many different solutions until a balanced solution is found.
Why do we need a common set of Design Principles?
Educate
Design Principles help establish a framework for decision making, providing guidance about the right direction. By understanding the principles, designers and developers will have a better understanding about how to solve design problems and create compelling applications.
Clarify design decisions
Ensure that better decisions are made in a project by using the Design Principles as a framework for decision making. With the backing of these principles, the final product becomes more defensible both within the company as well as to partners and customers.
Align company-wide design
Design Principles give the team a common, known set of guidelines to work against, to measure and evaluate any design decisions made. Invaluable at the start of a project, these principles will also help throughout the entire development life-cycle, keeping a project unified in it’s look and feel from start to finish..
Additional Resources
10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design – Jakob Nielson
Written in 1994, these principles for UI design still hold true today. If you haven’t already, familiarize yourself with Jakob Nieslon’s Usability Heuristics
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/
Principles of Design – Don Norman
From Don Norman’s book, The Design of Everyday Things (2002)
https://principles.design/examples/don-norman-s-principles-of-design