Style guide creation
A User Interface style and the associated UI style guide are intended to guide and inspire the work of developers involved in the design and production of the products and services for a given platform. Very often companies suffer from non-uniform styles and non-focused user experience in heterogeneous products throughout the product portfolio. The aim of the style guide is to enhance the brand and to a ensure a seamless user experience throughout service/product portfolio, considering the unique user needs and business goals.
Documentation design is one of our areas of expertise. Over the last six years we have done over 200 different user interface and user experience related documents to major mobile manufacturers - from copywriting to style guides and UI specifications, to user experience related articles and columns. For examples of our work, go to Forum Nokia.
In addition to written guidelines, we aim to produce as concrete help for developers as possible. This includes templates for various tools, such as Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and Flash.
Style documentation
The purpose of the style documentation is to help the development teams create consistent User Interfaces by following a common UI style. Guidelines are used to give instructions on how to use different UI components effectively and consistently.
These documents contain general guidelines and specific standards for:
- How service/application look
- How user interface works
The UI style is developed based on the following:
- User research: a study on the needs and desires on a specified target group reveals real user requirements for the application.
- Usability evaluation: the style is developed in co-operation with usability experts that have provided input and feedback for the design and continuously evaluated the project outputs. Common usability heuristics are applied in the development of the style and the components.
- Adopted conventions and usage models: an important part of creating a usable applications is to identify the common usage patterns existing users have adopted. The style ensures that these are taken into account.
- Design for context: the style considers the limitations and possibilities of desktop, web and mobile devices and the design is specifically targeted to the context.
- Consistent visual style: the graphic style is tailored to support the consistent look and feel through the entire platform.
These guidelines and standards form a baseline from which innovation should grow. Guidelines are not all inclusive.
