Core Philosophy
Design is not a phase — it is a perspective applied across all product processes.
| Process | Design's Role |
|---|---|
| Opportunity Discovery | Journey maps, pain point visualization |
| Solution Generation | Design principle-driven ideation |
| Assumption Validation | Prototype generation → usability testing |
| PRD Definition | Usability risk confirmation for user stories |
| Reflection | UX learning accumulation |
Design Principles Reference
Always reference docs/product/design-principles.md for this product's design principles (3-5 principles).
Design principles are product-specific guardrails that guide all design decisions. They are not generic best practices but choices that reflect this product's values and trade-offs.
State Design
See product-principles skill for the authoritative State Design definition (Loading / Empty / Error / Partial / Success).
In practice:
- PRDs should specify behavior for all states in acceptance criteria
- Prototypes should demonstrate at minimum: empty, success, and error states
- User stories addressing Usability risk should consider all relevant states
Accessibility Standards
Baseline: WCAG 2.2 AA compliance
Key requirements:
- Perceivable: Text alternatives for non-text content, sufficient color contrast (4.5:1 for normal text, 3:1 for large text), content adaptable to different presentations
- Operable: All functionality available via keyboard, sufficient time for interactions, no content that causes seizures, clear navigation mechanisms
- Understandable: Readable text, predictable behavior, input assistance for error prevention
- Robust: Compatible with assistive technologies, valid markup
Accessibility is a Usability risk dimension — factor it into confidence scoring.
Persona and Context Integration
When making design decisions, always reference:
- Personas (
docs/product/personas/) — Who is using this? What's their context, skill level, environment? - Journey Maps (
docs/discovery/journeys/) — Where in their journey does this interaction happen?
When creating or updating personas, use references/persona-template.md for the standard structure (demographics, JTBD, pains/gains, behavioral patterns, validation status).
Design decisions without persona/context grounding are assumptions that need validation.
Blueprint Integration
See blueprint-standards Artifact Overview for the full blueprint artifact list.
When docs/product/design/ exists, blueprint artifacts provide shared structural context:
information-architecture.md— page hierarchy and navigationcontent-model.md— entities, relationships, and stateful databrand-direction.md— tone, visual direction, and Visual Tokensflows/— critical user flows and edge pathsai-interaction-model.md— AI interaction patterns, guardrails, and error taxonomy
Prototypes and PRDs should reference these artifacts when available instead of re-inferring structure from scratch.
Design in Hypothesis Validation
When validating Usability risk through prototypes:
- Define what "usable" means for this specific user story (tied to persona/context)
- Identify the critical interaction path to test
- Specify success criteria (task completion rate, time-on-task, error rate)
- Generate prototype with design context injected (see prototype-guide skill)
- Record results with specific UX learnings
Key Principles for Daily Decisions
- Design principles first: Check product design principles before making UX decisions
- All states matter: A feature isn't designed until all states are considered
- Accessibility is not optional: WCAG 2.2 AA is the baseline, not a stretch goal
- Context over aesthetics: A beautiful design that ignores user context fails the Usability risk
- Test with real scenarios: Validate UX with persona-grounded scenarios, not abstract tasks
Why Design Is a Perspective
Treating design as a phase (something done after requirements and before development) leads to surface-level UI work disconnected from user needs. As a perspective:
- Design thinking applies at Opportunity Discovery (journey maps reveal pain points that metrics miss)
- Design thinking applies at Validation (prototypes make hypotheses testable before code is written)
- Design thinking applies at Definition (state design and accessibility in ACs catch gaps that functional specs miss)
- Design principles are product-specific trade-off resolutions, not generic aesthetics guidelines