19 October 2021

Nord Design Principles

These principles form the foundation of the Nord Design System. They guide their team when working on different parts of the system and help them do better and take more informed decisions.

Source: Nord Design System


The principles

  1. Put user needs first

    We care for the people who use our products. We’re here to make their day-to-day and long-term work better and more pleasant through great user experience.

  2. Strive for consistency, not uniformity

    We should use the same language and design patterns wherever possible. This helps people get familiar with our services. Same holds true for the system and its developer experience.

  3. Default to openness

    We should share what we’re doing whenever we can. Building our services transparently increases their visibility and accountability and makes us push towards higher quality.

  4. Make it accessible

    Our services are for everyone. We make sure people with different needs can use our products and that they meet the accessibility standards outlined in WCAG 2.1.

  5. Provide a good developer experience

    Providing a good developer experience is very important to us. Developers should be able to start using our tools in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.

  6. Automate everything you can

    We value the time of our colleagues, users, and our future selves over our own. We are always proactively looking for ways to automate repetitive tasks and testing.

1. Put user needs first

We care for the people who use our products. We’re here to make their day-to-day and long-term work better and more pleasant through great user experience.

2. Strive for consistency, not uniformity

We should use the same language and design patterns wherever possible. This helps people get familiar with our services. Same holds true for the system and its developer experience.

3. Default to openness

We should share what we’re doing whenever we can. Building our services transparently increases their visibility and accountability and makes us push towards higher quality.

4. Make it accessible

Our services are for everyone. We make sure people with different needs can use our products and that they meet the accessibility standards outlined in WCAG 2.1.

5. Provide a good developer experience

Providing a good developer experience is very important to us. Developers should be able to start using our tools in minutes, not hours, days or weeks.

6. Automate everything you can

We value the time of our colleagues, users, and our future selves over our own. We are always proactively looking for ways to automate repetitive tasks and testing.

Tags

  • design system