Governance & Quality

The three-layer quality system that guides every pattern and component decision.

Every pattern and component decision is guided by three governance layers that form a quality net above the implementation.

Design Principles

Cross-cutting composition intent — proximity, hierarchy, contrast, affordance, cognitive load, consistency.

Interaction quality rules — feedback, error prevention, recognition, user control, accessibility.

Judgment layer — evaluates quality beyond compliance through structured reasoning and critique.

The layers stack from concrete to abstract:

Design Principles — the "why" of composition

informs

Usability Heuristics — the "how" of interaction

evaluated by

Design Intelligence — the "is this good?" judgment

Pattern rules must cite at least one principle ID and one heuristic ID.
Component rules must preserve the cited pattern intent.
Validation rules must point back to principle, heuristic, pattern, or component rule IDs.
Design Intelligence is applied during reviews — it does not produce citable IDs but ensures overall quality.