Are your design principles actually doing anything?

Paste them in below. In a few seconds you’ll see which ones genuinely guide a decision, and which are slogans, rules, or values wearing a principle’s clothes.

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What this checks

Every principle you submit gets checked against five things:

  • Does it guide a decision, or just describe an intent? (“Be user-centric” doesn’t resolve anything when two reasonable options are on the table.)
  • Does it reveal a trade-off? A principle that nobody would ever argue against isn’t doing any work.
  • Is it a principle, or a rule in disguise? Principles should bend to context. If it reads like a policy that must never be broken, it’s drifted into being a rule.
  • Is it a principle, or a value? “We value transparency” describes a belief. It doesn’t guide a specific choice.
  • Is the set itself the right size? Long lists are hard to recall and tend to become documentation instead of tools.

Based on the rationale here.

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