7 Actionable Design Zen Principles You Need To Know

We used to think Zen is something about meditation, relaxation, and mental health. This is a great way to take a break from your daily tasks, and work and make yourself calm.

“Each morning, we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.” ― Buddha

I personally love to use some Zen principles when I feel overwhelmed with my work. I listen to calm music, staying in a quiet place. In such moments my brain recharges fully.

When it comes to design, can we use Zen principles? You might be wondering if there is a connection between tech and meditation. Not exactly, but here is how to use your own design Zen principles.

Break in the Routine

Every day you wake up, brush your teeth and go to work. You start your workday with calls, design tasks, and collaboration with other team members.

There are routine tasks that you do every day at your work. For example, check your email, meetings, etc.

This is what you can call your work routine.

The set of tasks you do again and again every day. When you perform those actions in the same sequence for many months or even years, your work might become boring.

For a UX designer it’s very important to stay innovative, so feeling bored isn’t what you need. Here is where we need to use the first design Zen principle.

You need to break your daily routine!

Instead of checking your emails, try to do other activities every day. For example, talk to your colleagues, drink a cup of coffee, or plan your day out of work.

Think about something besides your work.

You need to remember that making your day different from the previous is important to keep an innovative mood and create amazing design solutions.

Simplicity

Being a UX or UI designer means providing value to your users. Sometimes you might go too creative, and your product becomes complex.

Fortunately, use another design Zen — the simpler product, the better.

When you try to use simplicity for your design solutions, your brain will generate more productive ideas.

Instead of concentrating your attention on illustrations, icons, and complex flows, create one feature, one icon, and one illustration.

Minimize your design components to a minimum. People don’t really love hard ways to solve their problems. All they need is a prominent solution that they can use immediately.

For example, there are two products with the same goal — help people to book a room in a hotel.

One of the products gives you the ability to book a hotel instantly, within just a few clicks.

Another product provides the same option but walks you through a complex flow where you need to fill out many fields.

What solution would you prefer? I bet this will be the first simple and fast.

The same design Zen principle should be included in your work. Use fewer components, steps, and buttons. Don’t try to go crazy with super illustrative components that make your product hard to navigate over.

The simpler, the better.

Naturalness

Why are we talking about naturalness? Is this something that we can use for the design?

We used to think about naturalness for gardens or interior directions for example.

It’s also a great example of feeling relaxed. But what is the connection with our UX/UI design industry?

Believe it or not, naturalness is another design Zen principle that I love to use in my works.

I try to find inspiration and build my mood boards based on nature. The sky, trees, flowers, and other things can inspire me.

But not only does inspiration matter. I can find lines and shapes in nature to use in my works. For example, if I want to create a new product based on naturalness, I’ll replicate as much as possible from nature.

The sky is not only one color. It has tones, multiple colors, and clouds. You can start looking into the sky and find a principle for your interactive elements.

Or maybe you’re interested to create a unique component. Let’s try to find it in nature.

Check the surrounding flowers. Even simple grass has lines. You can find some principles everywhere. You just need to pay attention to your environment.

Imperfection

In most cases, you build products with a grid system. You try to do everything within some hierarchy, so all components look perfect to each other.

Sometimes you need to do something extraordinary and go beyond your limits.

Here, you can use another design Zen principle — imperfection.

Imperfection is another method of creating something unique without any logic. Yes, as a designer you will create a balanced solution, but it will look like there is no logic at all.

A quick example of such a solution is asymmetry, where elements aren’t aligned with each other. Because of the different sizes, it can be composed organically.

I would say that perfection is another form of perfection.

When you want to do extraordinary things, try to break down your layout and make it again. It’s a game, where just your design feeling will be required.

One of the best inspirations for imperfection principles can be found on the Awwwards design contest website.

Designers show super-crazy ideas that sometimes have no logic.

But because of their high-level skills, they can perfectly present their imperfection products.

Stand out from the crowd and try to go a little bit crazy with imperfection. You’ll see how interesting it is.

Subtlety

Now I want to tell you a bit more details. You create products for so many industries and so many different target audiences.

Did you know that there is one method that helps you to create a masculine or feminine look? The only one you can use for sure.

It’s subtlety.

For example, you need to build an app to sell products for beauty. That means that your primary audience is women.

Let’s work with this design Zen principle. Think about lines, shapes, and colors that will work for your target audience.

Check your competitors to find similarities. You’ll quickly understand that these are the same design principles your competitors use. The same color, lines, shapes, or anything else.

The pink color is associated with blonds. This is something most of us feel unconsciously and this is why this color is often used for beauty products.

Maybe you need to concentrate on this color and try to find another method to highlight the feminine direction of your product.

Professionals work with long hair in the beauty industry, so maybe you can use long narrow lines in your app to make it feel like long hair.

You see when you try to think about subtlety, your solutions come by themselves.

This is a powerful design principle you can use for your design work.

Stillness

Some objects don’t move. For example, stones. We can put them together and create amazing small gardens.

But we can use stillness not only for mini-gardens but for UX/UI direction as well.

The easiest example is to translate stillness feeling into your work. Avoid using interactive elements and concentrate on static presentation.

Gray color with its amazing tones makes your product calm and gives a still feeling. Maybe it’s not the creative idea, but the easiest method to explain how stones can be translated into your UX/UI solutions.

Start creating wireframes with solid components, create your product logic, and start working on the UI. You can play with multiple tones of the same color.

Think of professional photos in gray shadows. How beautiful they are.

Maybe you can use gray photos along with your solid components, so your final look will remind stones and give this stillness effect.

There are many other ways you can play around and give your user’s stillness feel.

To sum up, stillness is a great design Zen principle to create your own amazing solutions.

Austerity

The last design Zen principle wants to talk about is austerity. Unlike all previous principles, you can use this one as one of the most powerful methods for masculine products.

Depending on your needs, you need to create heavy components and give your elements a masculine look.

This principle can be used for other industries as well. For example, corporate direction.

For corporate direction, it’s important to have trust feeling, and the austerity design Zen principle can grant it.

Imagine a business that has combined austerity and stillness, and is super easy to use. Will it look professional? Yes, it will.

Combining multiple design principles is another method to boost your current design to a new level.

Austerity can be used in unusual ways. It can be combined with asymmetry and any other methods, but the major goal is to give a trusting feeling.

When people can trust websites or apps, they trust companies. It means that businesses are going to have more customers and this is where designers are needed.

Final Thoughts

When you think of design Zen principles, don’t associate them with self-improvement only. It’s not for your meditation or mini-gardens.

These are the methods you can use for your UX/UI career.

You can boost your products to a new level by using the principles I have talked about.

Start by applying one or a combination of multiple methods to see the results. When you try to mix things up, maybe you get the result you couldn’t even expect to have.

Start to use design Zen principles today and make your products stand out from others.