tomevault-io Design Principles
Overview
Use this skill to produce principle-level guardrails that reduce design churn and conflicting decisions across teams.
Scope Boundaries
- Use this skill when the task matches the trigger condition described in
description. - Do not use this skill when the primary task falls outside this skill's domain.
Shared References
- Baseline governance contract:
references/design-governance-contract.md
- Principle quality heuristics:
references/principle-quality-heuristics.md
Templates And Assets
- Principle set template:
assets/design-principles-template.md
- Review checklist:
assets/design-principle-review-checklist.md
Inputs To Gather
- Product outcomes, user success criteria, and business constraints.
- Recurring design conflicts and inconsistency examples.
- Accessibility, localization, privacy, and brand constraints.
- Existing governance rules or review process already used in the project.
Deliverables
- Principle set written as actionable decision rules.
- Principle rationale with explicit trade-offs and anti-patterns.
- Practical review checklist mapped one-to-one to each principle.
- Ownership and update cadence for principle maintenance.
Quick Example
- Principle: "Optimize for task completion over visual novelty."
- Applies to: interaction density, information hierarchy, and default states.
- Anti-pattern: decorative elements that hide primary actions.
- Review check: critical action is visible without hover or tooltip dependency.
Quality Standard
- Each principle is testable in design review, not just aspirational wording.
- Principles do not conflict with each other or with required constraints.
- Trade-offs are explicit so teams can resolve edge cases consistently.
- Checklist items are concrete enough for independent reviewers to agree.
Workflow
- Identify repeated decision conflicts from current product/design work.
- Draft candidate principles in
assets/design-principles-template.md. - Add anti-patterns and boundary conditions for each principle.
- Validate against accessibility/localization/privacy constraints and run
assets/design-principle-review-checklist.md. - Publish approved principles with ownership and revision policy.
Failure Conditions
- Stop when principles are abstract slogans without observable checks.
- Stop when principles directly conflict with mandatory compliance requirements.
- Escalate when ownership is unclear and no team can enforce the principles.
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