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Intercom's Product Design Principles

Our product design principles are intended to help us make decisions when faced with competing options that seem valuable along different dimensions.

  1. Connected, modular systems

    We favor modular systems over bespoke optimizations. We reuse, evolve and merge before creating something new.

  2. Opinionated by default, flexible under the hood

    We optimize our designs to feel simple and opinionated by default, but progressively reveal power and flexibility.

  3. Follow the fundamentals

    We favor established best practices and avoid overly clever, non-standard design patterns.

  4. Make it feel personal

    Our designs reflect that we’re connecting real people, not entries in a database.

  5. What you ship is what matters

    Our deliverable is not the design file. We take pride and ownership of what we ship.