I was cleaning my bedroom closet over the weekend and came across an item I’d received at an Adobe design team offsite back in 2006–a Timbuktu messenger bag with the Adobe XD (experience design) principles embroidered on it. It’s a very nice bag, trendy orange with black straps.
The principles are as follows:
1. Simplify the problem.
2. Trust your instincts.
3. Share everything.
4. Fail (really) fast.
5. We are all peers before the object.
6. Together we will build the experience.
(Sounds like something Tom Kelly of IDEO would say, doesn’t it?)
I gotta admit, It was nice to pause from cleaning for a moment and reflect upon these principles, which I think are valuable for any designer or design problem. It has been awhile since I’ve pondered them. They make a nice cultural statement overall. They’re succinctly stated as tidy axiomatic phrases you can easily refer to in a design jam. However, their true effectiveness primarily depends on the leadership team, project management, and overall cultural context–as well as the sincerity (by individual designers and the team overall) to support them in daily practice. Else what seem to be powerful principles become empty rhetoric…