#design principles

#design principles

In NHS England, all our work is measured against the NHS service standard and we use the NHS design principles to help make decisions about how to align our work with our values. While both documents are useful, I've observed teams struggling with a lack of clarity about how to put them into practice. It doesn't help that we have many teams working autonomously, all trying to keep up in a fast paced environment.

There's a melancholy in watching software die. One day, it's the tool you swear by, shaping your work and your life. The next, it's sunsetted, acquired and dismantled, or quietly abandoned in a forgotten GitHub repo. If you've been on the internet long enough, you've buried many of your digital companions, such as del.icio.us, Google Reader, ICQ, Winamp, and countless others that once felt eternal.

Good system design often looks underwhelming, appearing as if nothing is going wrong for a long time. It creates ease and reliability without impressive complexity.