By Laine Hendricks, Rebecca Woodbury
Overview
Guiding principles help organizations align their values to their goals. They serve as an aspirational North Star to help teams make design and content decisions. Guiding principles enable collaboration and consistency so products and services achieve better outcomes and build trust.
Problem
Local governments have a variety of products and services, such as websites, permits, and 311. Each service is managed by teams working within their own context and usually without a shared vision for success and desired outcomes. This can lead to inconsistency and make it hard for teams to collaborate.
Solution
A set of guiding principles gives teams managing products and services a shared vision for how to achieve their organization’s goals. Using these principles, teams make decisions and collaborate more easily. This alignment makes services more effective. It also ensures a consistent customer experience across all products or services.
Context
Guiding (or design) principles can be overarching or for specific projects or services. The primary audience is often the people responsible for managing the services. The secondary audiences are typically leadership and constituents.
Be memorable
Principles should be memorable. For example, the U.K. government’s third design principle is “Do the hard work to make it simple.” By acknowledging that making something simple isn’t easy, the concept sticks in your head and feels important.
Be concise
They should be concise, yet clear and specific. One of the design principles for the U.S. Web Design System is “Start with real user needs.” In five words, they say it’s important to do this at the beginning of a process.
Reflect real needs
Guiding principles should also be grounded in user research. This ensures they will reflect the needs of the people the organization serves.
Marin County, CA’s first guiding principle for web content is to be “findable.” This was based on extensive user interviews with the community as well as employees that showed the biggest pain point people had was finding what they were looking for. Community needs will change, so periodically revisit and revise guiding principles to ensure relevance.
Get buy-in
Get organizational buy-in on your guiding principles by creating them through an inclusive process. The principles themselves should be written together with your team, and with the community. The user research you use to inform them should be reflective of the community you serve.
Reference often
Once your principles are established, they should be referenced often. Share them:
- At project kick-off meetings
- In procurement materials
- On posters in the office, or stickers
Mantras
- Be principled
- Guide with principles
Checklist
- Create your guiding principles through an inclusive process.
- Share your guiding principles with your organization and the community.
- Refer to your guiding principles when making decisions.
- Include your guiding principles in relevant procurement announcements so vendors understand your goals.
- Revisit your guiding principles annually and revise if needed.
Questions to ask
- What are we trying to achieve?
- How do our services relate to the organization’s strategic goals?
- Do our principles reflect your community’s needs?
