Never produce more measurements until you have tested the existing ones against real pages.
By Pawan Nayar · from the LLOS AI Learning record
Never produce more measurements until you have tested the existing ones against real pages.
A design system built in theory measures things that do not exist. Real pages have real constraints — dense instructional content, highly visual pages, articles with cards and components. Each type behaves differently. The right way to build measurements is backwards: pick a small number of real pages that represent the range, measure what actually works on each one, and let those measurements become the rules. Do not calculate the rules first and apply them to pages later. Until existing measurements have been tested on real pages, adding more measurements makes the problem worse. You are building a bigger system on an untested foundation.
A responsive track produced hundreds of fluid type calculations before testing them on a single real article. When finally applied, the sizes were wrong for dense instructional content — too large on desktop, too small on mobile. All the calculations had to be redone from real observations.
Resolved from this lesson's own record — real definitions, not invented for this page.
More from the same record, pulled by shared topic — not written new for this page.
The system uses 50 hand-crafted noun silhouettes. These are organized into five domains.
A good design uses a three-layer system. The first layer is an icon strip.
A new design must use the exact layout proportions of a proven design. The proven design has been refined over many hours.
The user interface for Chapter 1 is the master design. All other chapters must use this design.
Never produce more measurements until you have tested the existing ones against real pages.