Design Principles

Our Design Principles pose three questions that help us ensure our day-to-day decisions align with the big-picture values described in our Guiding Principles. Despite their name, we’ve found that these Design Principles are helpful in all areas of our work, not just design.

What can we simplify?

We aim for designs that are “as simple as possible, but no simpler.”¹The power of our tools comes not from adding many features, but from prioritizing fewer, flexible features that work together seamlessly. We seek out every opportunity to simplify, combine, and build on top of existing features.

Whose ideas are we celebrating?

Our job is to show people that they’re brilliant and creative, not that we are. We’re proudest when our work feels invisible, allowing people to focus on the math they’re exploring rather than the tool they’re using. And we’re most delighted when our users create things that surprise even us.

Where are the desire paths?

Taking inspiration from the concept of Desire Paths, we look for opportunities to reinforce and build upon natural ways people use our tools — what they try, where they look, and what they build. Before we invent a new path, we consider how we might widen one that already exists.

¹Quote attributed to Albert Einstein, ironically likely a simplification of this actual quote: “It can scarcely be denied that the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.”

Note: each of the images on this page was built using the Desmos Geometry tool. Try dragging different parts of them, or open the full versions of the Tessellation, Spotlight, or Desire Paths graphs.