Design Principles

Trigger Boundary

• •Use when team-level design principles are missing or inconsistent.
• •Do not use for component inventory design; use design-system-foundations.
• •Do not use for visual polish-only tasks; use visual-design.

Goal

Define clear principles that guide interaction, visual, and content decisions.

Shared Design Contract (Canonical)

• •Use references/design-governance-contract.md as the single schema and gate source.
• •Validate principle IDs as DSN-PRN-* and keep append-only history.
• •Run machine validation: python3 scripts/validate_design_contract.py --manifest <path/to/manifest.json>.

Inputs

• •Product strategy and user outcomes
• •Existing design inconsistencies and pain points
• •Accessibility and localization requirements

Outputs

• •Principle catalog with DSN-PRN-* IDs
• •Principle rationale and anti-pattern examples
• •Review checklist aligned to principles

Workflow

1. •Convert user and business outcomes into principle candidates.
2. •Define principles as actionable and testable statements.
3. •Attach anti-pattern examples for each principle.
4. •Validate principles against accessibility and localization gates.
5. •Publish principle set with ownership and revision policy.

Quality Gates

• •Each principle is specific and reviewable.
• •Principle set has no unresolved contradiction.
• •Accessibility and localization constraints are represented.
• •Review checklist maps directly to principles.

Failure Handling

• •Stop when principles are abstract slogans without test criteria.
• •Escalate when principles conflict with mandatory compliance constraints.