Eight product decision gates

Apply these gates before visual direction. A feature that fails purpose, responsibility, or agency review should not be polished into acceptability.

Gate	Required evidence	Reject when
Purpose	One sentence naming the human outcome and explicit non-goals	The pitch names technology, engagement, or parity but no human value
Agency	Exit, undo, recovery, and proportionate confirmation	A path is coercive, irreversible, or surprising
Responsibility	Minimum data, misuse model, safeguards, removal threshold	Risk cannot be bounded or data is requested speculatively
Familiarity	Learned semantics and stable placement for recurring actions	Similar-looking controls behave differently
Flexibility	Declared adaptations for context, ability, language, and expertise	One layout is merely scaled everywhere
Simplicity	Clear hierarchy, plain language, and enough decision context	Minimal appearance hides consequences or removes needed explanation
Craft	Type, color, graphics, feedback, performance, reliability, security	The happy path is polished while latency, failure, or accessibility is not
Delight	Named intended emotion supported across the journey	Novelty, confetti, or motion is added without purpose

Review sequence

1. Write purpose and non-goals before choosing a pattern.
2. Map the shortest safe path and every exit or recovery path.
3. Inventory data, permissions, foreseeable misuse, and a do-not-build line.
4. Reuse established semantics unless evidence supports a complete replacement.
5. Test capability and accessibility variation before visual refinement.
6. Remove friction and jargon, not essential context.
7. Review performance, security, failure, and maintenance as design quality.
8. Ask what the person should feel, then verify that the whole system earns it.

Manual prompts

• What are we asking a person to spend: time, attention, data, money, trust?
• What changes if they decline, make a mistake, lose connectivity, or return?
• Which people or contexts does the default exclude?
• Would we remove the feature if safeguards cannot make its harm proportionate?

Source: Principles of great design, WWDC26, observed 2026-07-13. This is an AwesomeDS synthesis, not reproduced Apple copy.