The 3 P's of design

I recently worked on some content of a before and after redesign of a fake budget app.

I created this to walk through the 3 primary lenses you need to make sure you are using when working on design.

I call them the 3 P’s.

They each ask one main question.

Purpose = What’s this for?​
Principles = What’s wrong?​
Personality = What belongs?

Broken down further those questions might look like this.

Purpose is all about deeply understanding the problem beneath any assumed solution.

When you question the solution by analyzing the problem, you can more easily come up with new ideas for other solutions.

Purpose is about gaining clarity.

Once you gain clarity, you can THEN move forward confidently with your principles.

The principles of design.

The font choice. The font size. The display type or not. The colors. The layout and interactions. What happens when you scroll?

Then the personality.

This is the direction, the concept, the style.

Something big, bold, colorful, and fun, might not work for something super serious.

Sharp corners, black colors, and delicate shiny touches, might not work for a children’s museum.

If you think about extremes of style it’s easy to see how style influences design decisions.

I made a new tool with Claude Code that tracks design decisions to use as a teaching mechanism.

Plus a ~20 minute video walkthrough of the 3 P’s in action along with lots and lots of design decisions.

Happy designing,