Style Guide Development
A style guide is useful to document the look and feel of a new or redesigned system. It can also help describe how the system should behave. The result is a satisfying and consistent experience for users and designers alike.
Style guides typically begin with high-level, research-based usability principles, and move down into lower level detailed guidelines such as colours and fonts. That way, your designers will understand why the design is the way it is, as well as how it should function and feel.
Benefits
- Reduce future design costs. Having consistent and reusable design elements means less head-scratching for your designers.
- Ensure good usability. A style guide can help ensure the usability of a system by providing usable, actionable guidelines that define task flow, navigation requirements and help solve deeper, interaction-level problems.
- Promote a shared vision. A style guide illustrates the conceptual approach to a user interface, and keeps usability in focus for future development.
Typical deliverable
- Draft style guide, with design guidelines that may include:
- High-level design principles
- General screen layout
- Navigation
- Page design (including screen elements, position, size, fonts, colours, logos)
- Data presentation (including fields, grids, links)
- Messages (errors, warnings, success, help)
- Content
- Forms
- Presentations to help socialise the style guide.
Typical duration
2 - 4 weeks
Clients
Optimal Usability has developed style guides for large systems for organisations including:
- Ministry of Social Development
- Kiwibank
- Westpac
- Hewlett Packard
Last updated: Thursday, May 07, 2009
