Adding Criteria

Overview

Guideline criteria are the individual standards inside each category. They are the checks your team uses during evaluations to decide whether a flow meets the expected design standard.

Each criterion should be objective, testable, and easy to evaluate consistently. During an evaluation, criteria are reviewed as clear pass or fail checks so results can roll up into category-level and overall analytics.

Add a Criterion

To add a criterion:

1. Open Guidelines.
2. Select the guideline set you want to update.
3. Choose the category from Select category.
4. Enter the criterion in Add condition....
5. Click +.

Add each criterion to the category that best matches the type of issue it is meant to measure. This keeps the guideline set easier to review and makes analytics more useful later.

Writing Strong Criteria

A strong criterion is:

• Specific and testable.
• Focused on one idea.
• Observable in a mockup, wireframe, or flow.
• Easy to judge as pass or fail.
• Non-opinionated and factual in nature.

❌ Not clear: "Is the design good?"
✅ Clear: "Primary actions are visually distinct from secondary actions."

❌ Too broad: "Are buttons clear and accessible?"
✅ Better: "Primary buttons are clearly distinguishable from secondary actions."
✅ Better: "Interactive elements meet minimum touch target size requirements."

❌ Too vague: "Is the spacing adequate?"
✅ Better: "There is at least 16px spacing between form fields."

Write criteria as factual checks rather than opinion-based prompts. If the evaluator has to guess, debate, or interpret the wording too much, the criterion should be tightened.

Keep Criteria Concise

Keep each criterion short enough to scan quickly during evaluations. Long, paragraph-style criteria are harder to read, harder to review consistently, and slower to use when working through mockups or flows.

If a criterion needs extra explanation, keep the main criterion concise and use the surrounding category structure to provide context.

Criteria IDs

Each criterion receives an auto-assigned ID based on its category. These IDs make it easier to reference specific criteria in tickets, design reviews, and handoff notes.

For example, a team might call out a criterion such as ACC-012 or USR-008 instead of repeating the full text every time.

This is especially useful when teams are tracking issues in external tools or discussing fixes across design and development.

Example Structure

Accessibility
├── ACC-001 Text meets minimum contrast requirements.
├── ACC-002 Interactive elements meet minimum touch target size requirements.
└── ACC-003 Text remains readable when zoomed.

Usability
├── USR-001 Primary actions are visually distinct from secondary actions.
├── USR-002 Navigation labels are clear and consistent.
└── USR-003 Form inputs provide clear labels and states.

Edit or Remove a Criterion

To manage an existing criterion:

1. Find the criterion inside its category.
2. Open the criterion action menu.
3. Choose Edit Condition, Exclude Condition, or Delete Condition

Exclude Condition

Use Exclude Condition when a criterion should stay in the guideline set but should not be used in the next evaluation.

An excluded criterion is not deleted. It stays in the set, but it is not shown during the evaluation and is not included in the evaluation math.

This is useful when a criterion is temporarily not relevant to the work you are reviewing. Excluding it before you run the evaluation helps avoid skewing the results with checks that do not apply.

To update the wording directly in the list:

1. Choose Edit Condition
2. Update the criterion text.
3. Click Save

Best Practices

• Use consistent language across related criteria.
• Place each criterion in the category that best reflects the type of issue it measures.
• Keep criteria stable over time if you want cleaner trend comparisons in analytics.
• Aim for a practical sweet spot. Too few criteria can limit the value of analytics, while too many can make evaluations slower and harder to maintain.