UI Design Principles

Critical rules

• Design with distinctive identity — reject generic Bootstrap / AI-aesthetic defaults.
• Context before design: product, users, goals, constraints first.
• Show, don't tell — visual artifacts, not prose-only specs.
• Implementation-ready: every interactive and data state documented.
• Explore completely diverse directions (opposite spectrum ends), not color swaps.
• Accessibility is non-negotiable: contrast, visible focus, keyboard, never color alone.
• Before discovery/exploration examples or state/token catalogs, read the matching resource below.

Workflow

1. Research product type, users, strategic goal, and constraints.
2. Before proposing directions, read references/exploration.md.
3. Produce ≥3 genuinely diverse visual directions; pick with the user.
4. Before documenting tokens and states, read references/states-and-tokens.md.
5. Specify tokens (color, type, space, border, shadow, motion) and full state sets.
6. Deliver visuals that unblock developers — no "figure it out in code."

Resources

• references/exploration.md — discovery, diverse directions, anti-patterns. Read before designing.
• references/states-and-tokens.md — state specs, tokens, a11y, checklist. Read when documenting.

Validation

• Context researched before pixels
• Directions are genuinely diverse
• All interactive and data states documented
• Accessibility built in (contrast, focus, keyboard, multi-cue status)
• Developers can implement without unanswered questions
• Delivered visual artifacts, not descriptions only

Constraints

• Implementing already-specified UI → react-development. Browser verification → agent-browser. Charts → data-visualization.
• Adjacent: storybook-journeys, design-principles, documentation-standards.