Back in the late 1970s, Dieter Rams coined his famous 10 principles for good design. Apparently, it was always Rams’ intent that these principles would be re-evaluated and updated by future generations, and I’ve decided to take him up on the challenge.
Over the last 50 years, the world has changed a lot, and the way that we define design has developed significantly in both breadth and sophistication. My list of principles aims to reflect where we’ve arrived and where I think we may be headed.
1. Good design starts with purpose
The designer’s first and most important job is to figure out what kind of change they’re attempting to make. What’s it supposed to do? Who’s it supposed to serve? Arriving at this kind of clarity requires the designer to take a stance about who they’re working for, and what’s right. The logic that follows must influence every subsequent decision about the thing they’re creating.
Although it’s tempting to develop projects in ways that align with our personal expertise, they have a better chance of success if we remain solution and medium agnostic, and allow them to become whatever their raison d’être needs them to be. Why put up a building if a website would do the trick?
2. Good design is the whole thing
In order for a project to succeed, the designer must consider so much more than what it looks like and how it works. Economics, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing are all in some sense the designer’s responsibility. Of course it’s usually possible to address these things as an afterthought, but that rarely works as well as when they’re baked in from the start.
3. Good design is regenerative
Net zero doesn’t fly in a world where so much damage has already been done. Our future depends on designing things that actively strengthen the stability and success of the systems, life forms, politics, and environmental conditions on which they depend. Designers who do this correctly know that “externalities” are an illusion caused by arbitrary definitions of scope. If your design makes it happen, it’s part of your design. And since all things are connected, this requires us to negotiate complexity in ways previous generations never imagined.
4. Good design is concerned with the future
It’s impossible to predict where we’re going, but that’s hardly an excuse to ignore probable trends. We have to make guesses while acknowledging the probability of being wrong.
Since we’re bound to be caught off guard sooner or later, it’s critical for designers to build flexibility and resiliency into their work wherever possible.
Most designers believe that their job is to create some kind of “finished” product, but if the intent is to do something that lasts, it’s far better to design in a way that’s amenable to future revision and the inevitable consequences of entropy.
5. Good design is good storytelling
Happy humans need health, food and shelter, but they also need a sense of security, community, status, and self-worth. While that first group has fixed physical requirements, the second group is all about how people feel, and thus the stories we tell ourselves govern far more than the physical utility of the objects or experiences involved. A yacht tells a powerful story about status, but it does so at tremendous cost. In the right context, a small object or ritual could serve just as well, and it could do so practically for free.
In a world with limited resources, and billions of people, the only way we’ll have enough for everyone is to find efficient ways of telling stories (and helping people tell stories) that create emotional fulfilment on a modest budget. It’s not that hard, but it requires the designer to be deliberate.
6. Good design is high leverage
This means the designer makes a conscious choice to go after the issues that matter, at the expense of the ones that don’t. It’s about enthusiastic embrace of opportunity cost. From a big picture perspective, the most important place to apply this principle is in the selection of a project’s purpose. An adequately ambitious purpose addresses at least two of the following three criteria:
- Helping the people or causes in most urgent need.
- Supporting initiatives that will affect a lot of people or things.
- Tackling an important area that other designers are neglecting.
When pursuing a project like this, it’s useful to consider how something will scale from the outset. Projects that don’t scale are rarely high-leverage, however thoughtful they may be.
7. Good design is systems thinking
It’s set up in a way that’s conscious of the structure of systems, as outlined by Dana Meadows. The designer must understand the nature of stocks and flows, feedback loops, time delays, and governing goals. These are the tools that reveal the root causes of the problems we seek to solve. Figuring out what’s really going on at a deeper level (usually by asking “why?” repeatedly) is the only way we can go beyond merely addressing symptoms.
8. Good design is pragmatic
Rather than trying to be perfect, good design does its best. It engages the world as it is, not as the designer would wish it to be. It prioritizes getting built, shipped, published etc. over matching the designer’s exact creative intent or aspirations. Design that only works in an academic version of reality isn’t design at all.
9. Good design dances with ethics
Intervening in complex systems is a messy business. It’s hard to design anything without encountering murky territory regarding who and what will be affected, and where the money’s coming from to fund it all. There’s always going to be a cost-benefit analysis involved, and the designer’s job is to avoid getting trapped in ethical paralysis. Most designs contain ethical impurities, and the world can only move forward if we’re willing to let some of those slide. What’s important is remaining mindful of our Overton Window — if something breaks our typical rules, we must take care to prevent this from establishing a new norm.
10. Good design strives to make life better
Not just human life, but the condition of existence for everything that thinks and feels. People are but one member of that broad category of beings, and it’s our obligation to treat the others at least as well as we treat ourselves. The difficult task is to figure out how. Empathy would be a good starting point.
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