Blockchain Design Principles

The IBM Blockchain Design Team design supply chain flows and open source tools. Most users were new to blockchain. So they needed to be reassured by the principles of trust and consistency. Exposing blockchain transaction data to inform the user's understanding was a way to achieve this. By seeing what was happening a user could understand of what was actually happening. "People want to “see the blockchain” even when they don’t need to."

Motion and animation were used to give meaning to unfamiliar processes. Subtle use of animation provided constant feedback so the user always knew what was going on. A consistent visual language guided the user through unfamiliar empty states.

Excitement for new technology should improve lives and not create more problems. To achieve this the team's principles were informed by user needs from the beginning.

Overview by @benbrignell

Design for trust
Data exposure
Consistency
Constant feedback
Allow for and anticipate mistakes to be made
Active Guidance

Help needed for "Blockchain Design Principles"!

The following is missing from this set of principles:

Summary: Each design principle can have a brief summary, these could be a couple of lines or a detailed paragraph outlining how this principle is used or measured, e.g.

- principle: Strive to be universal
summary: Our aim is to be a resource that is helpful to everyone. We do this by strictly adhering to principles of progressive enhancement…

Tip! You may be able to find the missing information at the source URL:
https://medium.com/design-ibm/blockchain-design-principles-599c5c067b6e.

It would be great if you could contribute and update this set of principles with anything that's missing!

Design for trust

Data exposure

Consistency

Constant feedback

Allow for and anticipate mistakes to be made

Active Guidance