Source UI (SUI) 1.0.1 Design Principles

Design Principles

• From 1.0.0 release
• Going forward...
  • Cultivate credibility + trust with users
    • Consumer-culture informed credibility expectations and mental models.
    • Not the forgiving FOSS crowd, intrinsically curious hackers, or older geeks familiar with patterns ubiquitous years ago but not so much now.
  • Follow usability best practices
    • Consistency, patterns; follow the knowledge.
    • Embrace modern patterns users are accustomed to.
      • When a modern pattern requires Javascript, focus on how to still meet the same need w/ CSS/HTML; vs reverting to older patterns not commonly seen anymore.
  • Guide behavior to inform safe choices
    • Design for known user needs and motivations, first.
    • Iterate and validate through testing: Written language choices, visual language choices, all contextually within the E2E experience journey.
    • When testing is not possible, optimise against known usability principles to get the user to make the right choice. Often, this will mean suppressing the grammar police—which with translators, shd be communicated and understood.
  • Prioritize Inclusion
    • What might work for the widest swath of folks?
    • Written language, translations across languages, semiotics across cultures, color/contrast, legibility, a11y best practices
  • Cultivate Calm
    • Strive for page balance, not decoration.
    • Typography that prioritizes OS native-ubiquity (cough, Tor), legibility, and smooth reading to inform comprehension, in whichever charset the user will be choosing.
  • Clear, human, humble, neutral
    • Visually appealing, without calling attention to itself.
    • SD is the messenger, not the message. Newsrooms are the carriers.

...of note

Users do not know what interactions depend on javascript or invasive technologies, vs what we have available in our stack with SD. Cultivating Trust means empathizing with a user's internal red-flag being triggered, because a feature or functionality is not available to be used in an interactive pattern they've come to expect for a given need.