#  Guiding Principles 

 



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## Guiding Principles

Guiding principles include:

- [Design System Principles](/node/1276#design-system-principles)
- [First Principles of Digital Design](/node/1276#first-principles)
- [Universal Principles of Design](/node/1276#universal-design-principles)
- [Principles of Professional Ethics](/node/1276#professional-ethics)

### Design System Principles

Design of the HarvardSites Design System is guided by our ACES principles:

- **Accessible** – to support disability inclusion on our digital campus.
- **Communal** – to support digital governance centrally and in schools and units.
- **Empowering** – to support creation of attractive, engaging, accessible, and effective websites.
- **Scalable** – to allow websites to adapt gracefully along with standards and technologies.

### First Principles of Digital Design

Our design approach is influenced by industry standard first principles of digital design:

- **Accessibility First** — designing accessible user experiences from the start rather than retrofitting designs for accessibility.
- **Content First** — focusing designs on foregrounding content rather than aesthetics.
- **Mobile First** — designing the user experience on mobile devices first, before designing for larger viewports.

### Universal Principles of Design

Design system components incorporate Gestalt principles of perception and other universal design principles, including:

- **Alignment** — aligning elements to create balanced and cohesive designs.
- **Good Continuation** — grouping and aligning elements to convey relatedness.
- **Proximity** — using proximity to associate related elements.
- **Similarity** — designing similar elements with similar characteristics.
- **Uniform Connectedness** — enclosing related elements and regions to convey relatedness.
- **Figure-Ground Relationship** — emphasizing content over background to focus attention.
- **Consistency** — providing elements consistently to improve usability and ease of learning.

Additionally, the HarvardSites Design System is designed to support best practices for content and interaction, including:

- **Chunking** — breaking content into targeted and cohesive units to make it easier to process and remember.
- **Legibility** — focusing on clarity of content and controls to support ease of use and readability.

### Principles of Professional Ethics

Finally, our work is guided by professional ethics, and we take as a starting point the principle, **Avoid harm**. Therefore, the elements that comprise the HarvardSites Design System are intentionally designed to minimize the potential for negative effects on product and platform users (see [Principle 1.2, Avoid harm of the ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct](https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics#h-1.2-avoid-harm.)).



 



 

 See also:- [ Principles ](/page-categories/principles)