Your Design Principles Are Useless (Here's What Actually Works)

"Simple, clear, beautiful" doesn't help with real decisions. Have you ever heard someone saying, I need complex and ugly design? Let's discuss what actually does.

I've worked with more than half a dozen brands over the years. The process always starts the same way: everyone gets excited about words like "simple," "clear," "beautiful," and "user-friendly."

But isn’t it the fundamentals of design itself? Who would want the opposite of that? Literally no one. So when someone in the team or a client says that I need simple, I always say, “Of course, but what else do you need from the product?"

After getting such questions and consistently hearing debates and choices designers make internally, I realized design principles are mostly platitudes. No one argues against simplicity, clarity, or user-centricity. These words sound profound but offer zero guidance when you're choosing between two genuinely good options.

What teams actually need are design tenets — opinionated decision-making directions that help you pick a side when it matters.

Why This Keeps Happening

The more I dug into this pattern, the clearer it became. Teams are not being lazy or unthoughtful. They're just following what everyone else does — collecting aspirational words that sound professional and comprehensive.

Most design principles read like motivational posters. "Be user-centric." "Keep it simple." "Make it accessible."

I started testing this with my clients. Try this with your team's principles: ask what the opposite would be. If you can't imagine another successful product using the opposite approach, you don't have a principle — you have a platitude.

Here's what happened a couple of years back when a client I worked with tried to redesign their onboarding flow. Their principles said "simple", “Users first“, and "intuitive." We presented two designs. Both design options met those criteria. One was a single-page form (simple!). The other was a multi-step wizard (also simple, but guided!).

They spent three weeks debating. I watched this patiently and realized their principles provided zero help because both approaches could claim to be simple and intuitive.

That's when I knew we needed a different approach entirely.

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Design tenets are different. They're opinionated statements that help teams choose between real options by clearly stating what's in and what's out.

Steve Jobs gave us the perfect example when developing the Keynote app for Mac. Instead of vague principles, he established three specific tenets:

1. Make it difficult to create ugly presentations

2. Focus on cinematic quality transitions

3. Prioritize innovation over PowerPoint compatibility

That third tenet was genius. It prevented years of debate about compatibility versus innovation by making a clear directional choice. Every feature decision could be measured against it.

What I've Learned Makes Tenets Work

Working across different industries, from fintech to AI applications, I've noticed patterns in what makes tenets actually work.

Here's what works:

• Must be memorable: Limit to 3-4 maximum. If your team can't recite them, they're useless.

• Should be opinionated: "Documentation is a failure state" tells you something. "Make it user-friendly" tells you nothing.

• Context-specific: Generic advice helps no one. "Optimize for creator productivity over enterprise features" helps a specific product team.

• Help resolve recurring debates: If you find yourself having the same argument repeatedly, you need a tenet that settles it permanently.

A design team I consulted with debated whether to add advanced features or keep things minimal. Once they established "We optimize for the daily user, not the power user," those debates ended. Every feature request was measured against that tenet.

It was like watching a light switch flip.

Some Tenets That Actually Work

The best tenets I've encountered solve real problems:

• "Product should feel like it came from a single mind" — Combats the natural fragmentation that happens in large organizations. This tenet becomes the tie-breaker when teams in different locations/time zones build different parts of the same product.

• "Documentation is a failure state" — Rejects reliance on manuals and training. Forces teams to focus on making features self-explanatory rather than writing better help docs. Users don’t have time to read the knowledge base or the company feature email. Trust me.

• "Optimize for creator success over platform consistency" — Tells you exactly what to prioritize when the design system conflicts with what creators actually need.

Did you notice how each one makes a clear directional choice? You can imagine successful products that do the opposite, which makes these tenets valuable.

How I Help Teams See Things Clearly with Tenets

Don't start by brainstorming aspirational statements. I always tell my clients to start by identifying their recurring debates.

What arguments keep coming up even though they were "settled" before? Where do you spend hours going in circles? Those moments reveal where you need tenets.

For each debate, ask: What's the deeper philosophical difference here? Then craft a tenet that picks a side permanently.

If your team constantly argues about adding features versus keeping things minimal, maybe your tenet is "We choose depth over breadth." If you debate whether to optimize for new users or power users, pick one and make it official.

The goal is not to eliminate all debate; it's to eliminate the same debate happening over and over.

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The real power of tenets is that they let you move from control to choreography. Instead of having every decision flow through leadership, you give teams the philosophical framework to make consistent decisions independently.

I've watched distributed teams across different time zones use tenets to maintain product consistency without constant meetings. When everyone understands "We prioritize speed over perfection," individual contributors can make decisions that align with the overall vision.

This is what I mean when I say moving from control to choreography.

That's the difference between principles and tenets. Principles tell you to build good products. Tenets tell you how to choose between good options.

Your team probably has enough aspirational statements already. What you need are opinionated tools that help you decide which direction to go when both paths look reasonable.

Because the hardest decisions are not between good and bad. They're between good and also good.

And that's exactly where I see most teams get stuck, not because they lack talent or vision, but because they lack the philosophical clarity to pick a side when it matters.

What recurring debates does your team keep having? That's where your tenets should start. If you want to discuss more, buzz on LinkedIn - let’s chat.

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