Universal Principles of Design

About

Universal Principles of Design provides convenient access to cross-disciplinary design knowledge to help you create better products and services. Each principle is motivated by a real-world problem faced by designers. Analysis and potential solutions are proposed by applying the principle. Afterwards, a takeaway section goes deeper into when, where, and how to apply the principle.

Website Author

Xiang (Kevin) Li is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is interested in Programming Language Theory, User Experience, and Linguistics.

References

All written materials are derived from source 1 and transcripts of source 2. All images are taken from source 2.

  1. Lidwell, W., Holden, K., & Butler, J. (2010). Universal principles of design: 125 ways to enhance usability, influence perception, increase appeal, make better design decisions, and teach through design. Rockport Publ.

  2. Lidwell, W., & Butler, J. (2017, July 19). Universal principles of design online class. LinkedIn Learning. https://www.linkedin.com/learning/universal-principles-of-design

Next Steps

The Universal Principles of Design is a set of common principles shared by many fields. You can learn more about specific principles and ways of thinking from the journal articles, conference papers, and books below:

Principles of User Experience Design

  1. Yablonski, J. (2020). Laws of UX: Using psychology to design better products & services (First edition). O’Reilly Media, Inc.
  2. von Saucken, C., Lachner, F., & Lindemann, U. (2014, June). Principles for user experience: what we can learn from bad examples. In KEER2014. Proceedings of the 5th Kanesi Engineering and Emotion Research; International Conference; Linköping; Sweden; June 11-13 (No. 100, pp. 1331-1341). Linköping University Electronic Press.
  3. Stull, E. (2018). UX Fundamentals for non-UX Professionals: user experience principles for managers, writers, designers, and developers. Apress.

Systems Thinking

  1. Arnold, R. D., & Wade, J. P. (2015). A definition of systems thinking: A systems approach. Procedia computer science, 44, 669-678.
  2. Monat, J. P., & Gannon, T. F. (2015). What is systems thinking? A review of selected literature plus recommendations. American Journal of Systems Science, 4(1), 11-26.
  3. Hale, P. (2008). Systems thinking comes of age. INSIGHT, 11(5), 3–4. https://doi.org/10.1002/inst.20081153
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