design
how it looks and how it feels — the standard every surface is held to
Holds the standard a surface is reviewed against: three to five principles a reviewer can hold a screen up to. Take it when more than one person or agent ships things people look at.
structure generate department designDesign — Mission
how it looks and how it feels — the standard every surface is held to.
Purpose. One paragraph. Say what design is accountable for here — the experience end to end, or the visual system, or both — and who holds the final call on a surface. If the answer is "we argue about it in the moment", write that down instead of a sentence nobody follows.
How work gets done here. Steering docs live at this root — the principles a surface is reviewed
against. Repeatable how-tos in processes/; the system itself (tokens, components, the words on the
buttons) accumulates in records/.
---
type: mission
standing: draft
owner: "{{owner}}"
updated: "{{date}}"
---
# Design — Mission
_how it looks and how it feels — the standard every surface is held to._
**Purpose.** _One paragraph. Say what design is accountable for here — the experience end to end, or
the visual system, or both — and who holds the final call on a surface. If the answer is "we argue
about it in the moment", write that down instead of a sentence nobody follows._
**How work gets done here.** Steering docs live at this root — the principles a surface is reviewed
against. Repeatable how-tos in `processes/`; the system itself (tokens, components, the words on the
buttons) accumulates in `records/`.
type: department
name: design
description: "how it looks and how it feels — the standard every surface is held to"
about: "Holds the standard a surface is reviewed against: three to five principles a reviewer can hold a screen up to. Take it when more than one person or agent ships things people look at."
version: "0.1.0"
Also in the folder
Design Principlesdepartments/design/principles.md
Design Principles
What good looks like here, said so plainly that a reviewer can hold a screen against it. Three to five. Each has to be able to lose an argument it would be nice to win.
The principles. Numbered, one line each, with a sentence on what it costs. "Fewer states, honestly labeled" costs you the loading spinner that hides how slow the thing really is.
The register. How the product sounds: the words on buttons, what an error says, whether it apologizes. A product's voice is design, and it is the part that gets written by whoever is closest to the keyboard unless it is written here.
What a surface has to have before it ships. Empty, loading, error and too-much-content — the four states that are skipped and then found by a customer. Add the ones that bite in your product.
Who reviews, and against what. Name the person and the moment. A design review that happens after the build is a complaint.