Universal Principles of Design

created: July 2024

One of my favorite classes in college was Human Computer Interaction, and since then I've been fascinated by design thinking. I recently finished a book called Universal Principles of Design that explores 125 principles of human thinking and behavior, each unpacked in concise 3-5 page chapters that examine how these principles shape product design. It's a perfect breadth-first approach to understanding design fundamentals.

Below are some principles that caught my attention, but the full book is worth exploring if you're interested in design.

Corner Bias

Humans have a natural preference for objects with rounded corners compared to objects with sharp edges.

This has been validated with fMRI studies, where the amygdala, the part of the brain that responds to fear, is increasingly activated when the subject is presented with sharper or more angular objects.

This explains the ubiquitous rounded rectangles in modern interfaces. It's not just an aesthetic trend—it's tapping into our evolutionary psychology. The next time someone questions your rounded corners, you'll have neuroscience to back up your decision.

Entry Points

People do judge books by their covers, Internet sites by their first pages, and buildings by their lobbies.

The initial impression of your product fundamentally shapes how users approach all future interactions with it. This principle validates why onboarding deserves obsessive attention. I've been involved in countless onboarding redesigns, and it's astounding how much a refined first-time user experience can impact key metrics.

The book suggests focusing on three elements: minimizing barriers to entry, orienting the user immediately, and progressively drawing people deeper into the product. This is essentially the playbook for any successful modern app launch.

Gutenberg Diagram

Western readers navigate displays predictably: starting at the top-left, moving across, and then downward. The Gutenberg diagram maps this journey across four quadrants and suggests aligning information importance with natural eye travel patterns.

This is why placing your call-to-action in the bottom-right corner of a landing page often works better than you'd expect—it's the terminal area where the eye naturally lands after consuming the content. Designing with these patterns in mind means working with users' natural behavior rather than against it.

Performance Versus Preference

Engineers, listen up: Users frequently prefer designs that are technically less efficient.

The multi-page form example perfectly illustrates this principle. While a single-page form allows faster input via tabbing, users typically prefer multi-page forms with their reduced cognitive load, increased whitespace, and sense of progress. This explains why so many checkout flows are split into steps despite the technical advantage of a single form.

This preference-performance gap challenges the engineering mindset that optimization always equals better user experience. Sometimes the less efficient solution produces significantly better user satisfaction.

Aesthetic-Usability Effect

A design which is aesthetic is perceived to be easier-to-use than an unaesthetic design. It can evoke a positive, emotional response from the user. So yes, taste matters and you should build beautiful products.

Flexibility-Usability Trade-Off

The more a design can do, the less efficiently it can do it.

The ability of an audience to anticipate future uses of a product is a key indicator of how they will value flexibility versus usability in design. When an audience can clearly anticipate its needs, more specialized designs that target those needs will be favored. When an audience cannot clearly define its needs, more flexible designs that enable people to address future contingencies will be favored.

This principle highlights a crucial decision point when building AI-native features. When users can't articulate clear needs (common with emerging technologies like AI), flexibility wins. As users' needs crystallize and segments emerge, usability takes priority.

Finding the balance is critical. I've seen teams push too far toward usability, creating rigid systems that fail when user needs inevitably evolve. The sweet spot is hard to balance, I am still learning.

MAYA

Consider MAYA [Most Advanced Yet Acceptable] when designing commercially for mass audiences. When introducing innovative products that essentially define a new category consider incorporating elements that reference familiar forms. In contexts where aesthetic assessments are made by design or art experts (e.g., design competitions refereed by expert judges), MAYA does not apply —emphasize novelty, as it will be weighed more heavily than typicality.

Basically consumers reward and prefer familiarity, while also being attracted to novelty. The most advanced, novel form of a familiar design will perform best.

This means, for mainstream products, innovate within recognizable frameworks. For design competitions and expert audiences, emphasize novelty over typicality. This explains why design award winners often don't achieve commercial success—they're optimizing for the wrong audience.

Recognition over Recall

People are better at recognizing things than recalling them from memory. This is why templates, prompts, and personalized suggestions are so powerful—they transform a high-cognitive-load recall task into a simpler recognition task.

This principle is the foundation of modern interfaces. Dropdown menus work better than text fields. Autocomplete outperforms manual entry. The explosion of AI-generated suggestions leverages this principle perfectly—users can recognize the right option rather than producing it themselves. I think it is one of the most powerful principles when it comes to AI apps.

Progressive Disclosure

Progressive disclosure is the sequential disclosure of information as needed. Information presented all at once is overwhelming for most people. Progressive disclosure provides only the information needed at the moment, with options to access more detailed information.

This principle recognizes cognitive limitations—humans get overwhelmed when presented with too much information simultaneously. By revealing details incrementally, interfaces remain comprehensible while still offering depth.

The Learn More pattern, expandable sections, and tooltips all implement progressive disclosure.

Wabi-Sabi

Wabi-sabi is at once a world view, philosophy of life, type of aesthetic, and, by extension, principle of design. The term brings together two distinct Japanese concepts: wabi, which refers to a kind of transcendental beauty achieved through subtle imperfection, such as pottery that reflects its handmade craftsmanship; and sabi, which refers to beauty that comes with time, such as the patina found on aged copper. In the latter part of sixteenth-century Japan, a student of the Way of Tea, Sen no Rikyu, was tasked to tend the garden by his master, Takeno Jo-o. Rikyu cleared the garden of debris and scrupulously raked the grounds. Once the garden was perfectly groomed, he proceeded to shake a cherry tree, causing a few flowers and leaves to fall randomly to the ground. This is wabi-sabi.

We all love some wabi sabi right?

Highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about design, especially if you come more from engineering background. There are many more principles they explore. The grander message is that the best design isn't just visually appealing—it's psychologically aligned with how humans think, perceive, and behave. Understanding these principles is essential to building great products.