Have you ever got a really good piece of life advice from your dad? Something along the lines of Good intentions matter, but your actions will define you.That’s basically what a design principle is, but instead of your dad, it’s a designer. And instead of advice about life, it’s about the thing you’re building.

We work on a wide range of digital products here at Sparkgeo. The design of each can take on different forms. Our design principles act as a foundation when making tough design decisions.

A lot of companies have their own set of design principles specific to their product or service. A great example are Don Norman’s Design Principles taken from his book The Design of Everyday Things. Norman, who in 1986 introduced the term “user-centered design” has created a solid set of principles for all designers to follow. His 6 principles talk about things such as Visibility: the more visible functions are, the more likely users will be able to know what to do next and, Consistency: referring to designing interfaces to have similar elements for achieving similar tasks. Norman’s principles, like any piece of advice, act as a foundation to guide decisions. They’re not specific to any individual element in a design. They could be applied to any object you interact with, like an electric kettle or a pocket knife. As well as any aspect of your job—from writing emails to database design.

If you’re looking for specific how-to’s on design, these won’t really help. Quite often it comes down to “it depends” when designing and building software. The design principles are one of the things that those decisions depend on.

We came up with 6 principles that are loosely based on Sparkgeo’s Mission: 

1. Getting geospatial into non-expert hands
2. Modernize legacy enterprise geospatial
3. Unlock pixels and pixel value

Let’s look at some examples:

1. Empathy First

Let’s say that Sparkgeo is building a bird watching app called Plumage Pal. We’ve identified a persona as Bella the Beginner Birder. She is interested in learning about the birds in the parks and on the trails that she frequents.

One of the key stakeholders for this project says that it’s important to indicate the bird’s scientific classification. However, if we apply the Empathy First principle, we’ll see that Bella could be intimidated by the scientific taxon of what she thinks is just a cardinal. The design shouldn’t scare Bella away with big long scientific taxa of bird species, but instead create a welcoming interface.

We could either:

1. Show the full scientific name 
2. Show the friendly name 

While both are correct, one of them lends itself to empathize more with Bella the Beginner Birder. 

2. Industry Leader

Bella has now spotted a lot of birds in her local park and on the trails. She’s built up quite a list of sightings in the app. She’s interested in viewing all of her sightings on a map in Plumage Pal to better plan more bird watching outings. Let’s apply the Industry Leader principle to come up with a way to add value to Bella’s bird watching experience.

We could either:

1. Show a map with pins where she recorded a bird sighting, or
2. Show other users’ anonymized data as well as data about bird migration to show different habits of birds from day-to-day and season-to-season. 

Now that Bella is feeling more comfortable about bird watching and using Plumage Pal, she can use more advanced features. This could help Bella better plan activities around bird watching. 

These are just a couple mock-ups of made-up examples with no definitely correct answer. They’re meant to highlight how design principles can be applied. When it comes down to a tough design decision and there isn’t a correct answer, we turn to our design principles for guidance. Much like remembering the things your dad told you when you were a kid to get out of tough situations that life may present.

We invite you to think of what principles guide your design decisions in the work that you do.