Core UX/UI Principles: The Must-Know Rules for Every Designer
Universal design principles that apply across all interfaces and contexts. Master the fundamental heuristics that create predictable, learnable, and delightful user experiences through consistency, feedback, and user control. These time-tested principles form the backbone of usable interface design, providing a framework for evaluating and improving any digital product. Whether you're designing a mobile app, web application, or complex enterprise system, these core principles ensure your users can accomplish their goals efficiently and confidently.
Key Concepts:
Key Concepts:
Essential insights for designers, developers, and product managers
Core principles provide a universal language for design decisions. They help you justify your choices, evaluate designs objectively, and create interfaces that users intuitively understand. These heuristics serve as a quality checklist for every screen you design.
Understanding these principles helps you build interfaces that behave predictably and handle edge cases gracefully. You'll make better decisions about error handling, state management, and user feedback mechanisms that align with user expectations.
Core principles offer objective criteria for evaluating design quality and prioritizing improvements. They help you articulate why certain design approaches work better than others and provide a framework for making trade-off decisions.
30 principles organized into 2 chapters
16 principles
14 principles
Tailored learning paths for different experience levels
From Subjective to Scientific
Start with Consistency and Standards (C.1.1.01) and Visibility of System Status (C.1.2.01). These are the most fundamental principles that you'll encounter in every interface design project.
From Guesswork to Guidelines
Focus on the more nuanced principles like Jakob's Law (C.2.2.02) and Aesthetic-Usability Effect (C.2.2.01). Study how top products apply these principles in practice.
From Features to Outcomes
Explore the tensions between principles (e.g., consistency vs. flexibility) and learn when to prioritize one over another. Conduct heuristic evaluations using these principles as your framework.
Where to apply these principles in your daily work
Apply what you learned with these exercises
Evaluate your current product against all 30 principles
Identify which principles are most critical for your context
Compare how competitors implement these principles
Document improvements when applying core principles
Use these principles as a structured review checklist
Recommended knowledge before starting
While you can start here, understanding the psychological principles from Part I will deepen your comprehension of why these core principles work.