Start with the verdict. Three of Dieter Rams' ten principles cannot be carried over unchanged into 2026: rule 7 (good design is long-lasting), rule 5 (good design is unobtrusive) and rule 10 (good design is as little design as possible). Two have become more important than they were in Rams' day: rule 4 (good design is understandable) and rule 6 (good design is honest). And all ten describe whether a product is good after it is made — none of them says whether it can be repaired. So there is a rule 11 to add: good design is repairable.
The short version: dimmable hardware, an app, and a cloud promise are three different lifetimes. A small appliance we designed for export to Europe went into a structural review with the client's legal counsel in the room, and the conversation was not about the form — it was about the spare-parts obligation. That is when I re-read the ten principles and noticed the premise underneath all of them: powered, standalone, long-lived, offline, with no firmware updates.
First, the origin: it is not an industry standard
The ten principles were not issued in 1976 as a standard. Rams distilled them in the late 1970s while reflecting on his own work; his stated motivation was a world that had become "an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises", and his question was "is my design good design?" — a designer's self-audit, not a rulebook for an industry.
The authoritative source is the Vitsœ website; Rams worked with the British furniture company from 1959. The objects he had in mind were specific: Braun small appliances (radios, calculators, juicers, record players) and Vitsœ furniture. All of them are powered, standalone, long-lived, offline and free of firmware updates. That premise is what the three failures grow out of.
Failure 1 — rule 7, long-lasting: true physically, false commercially
Rams' own catalogue is full of discontinued models. The ET 66 calculator went out of production in 1987; the T 1000 world receiver in 1963. Both are still chased in the second-hand market at healthy prices. Long-lasting holds on the physical level and fails on the commercial one — a manufacturer retires the model to make you buy the next one. Design all you like; the schedule says end-of-life.
In 2026 the lifetime of a product is not decided by its form. It is decided by firmware support, by whether the battery can be replaced, and by when the cloud service shuts down. The working formula: service life = min(physical life, firmware support life, service availability life). Whichever is shortest wins. Braun products had no firmware and no service, so rule 7 tested the designer alone. Today it tests legal and the CFO's roadmap.
One real case: a smart plug whose structure was designed for eight years, while the client would only commit to three years of cloud service. In year four the app came down; the plug still had power, but scheduling and statistics were gone. From the user's side, the product was broken. The fix is not an aesthetic attitude but three requirements written into the spec: replaceable battery, usable offline, exportable data.
Failure 2 — rule 5, unobtrusive: the firmware puts it back
On screen products, 2026 does the opposite of restraint: a five-second brand animation at boot, a breathing LED in standby, a confirmation sound on every interaction. In the appearance review we did achieve restraint — a clean panel, no ornament. Then the prototype reached the software team and restraint was added back, one line at a time.
This is not the designer's call. Rams had no retention or daily-active metrics to satisfy, and Braun did not earn money from time spent. The test is blunt: if a product's revenue model depends on user time, it cannot be unobtrusive. That is a business-model problem, not a design problem. What the industrial designer can do is treat the boot animation as a form element and fight it in the review — not complain after the software schedule is frozen.
Failure 3 — rule 10, as little design as possible: the wrong thing is being removed
Rams meant less visual noise. His products had eight knobs, but the knobs were organised: one function each, fixed positions, positional memory, reachable and operable without looking. Today "less" usually means swapping physical keys for a display. Visually it is cleaner; in use, the reachable entry points are what got removed, and the interaction path got deeper.
Rams reduced ornament; much of the industry now reduces reachable controls. A physical knob has positional memory and can be operated blind — your hand goes there without your eyes. A menu hierarchy has no positional memory: wake the screen, find the entry, go two levels down, every time. Eight knobs to one screen is less to look at and more to think about.
We built a car-mounted device: the first version was all touch, and in testing the client said they did not dare operate it while driving. The second version brought the volume and one switch back as physical knobs and left settings on the screen. It grew two bumps and someone in the review called it less clean, but the test pass rate went up clearly. So rule 10 needs a qualifier today: reduce interference, not entry points.
Rule by rule
| Verdict | Principles | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Needs rewriting | 5 unobtrusive, 7 long-lasting, 10 as little as possible | Premises changed: revenue model, firmware and service life, ornament and entry points conflated |
| More important | 4 understandable, 6 honest, 9 environmentally friendly | Complexity is up, AI claims and inflated specs, EU compliance is already on the schedule |
| Still valid | 1 innovative, 2 useful, 3 aesthetic, 8 thorough | Bound to technology, the three-layer floor, criteria diverge by category, precision only rises |
The three that still hold should not be thrown out with the rest. Rule 4 has a low-tech test that works: take the manual away, put the product in front of someone who was not on the project, and see whether they can complete the main task. We now run that in every internal review; it is more informative than looking at renders.
Rule 6 is violated most often by AI exaggeration — calling template matching "AI" — and by inflated specs, such as quoting peak charging power instead of sustained. Designers tend to think this is not their business, but the images and copy on the product page are part of the design delivery.
The rule that should be added: rule 11, good design is repairable
All ten principles judge whether a product is good after it is made. None asks whether it can be repaired. In the late 1970s that was not a gap — repairing a radio was normal. Today the gap has widened.
I would add: good design is repairable. This is not a moral appeal; it is a compliance cost. The EU is pushing a repairability index and spare-parts availability requirements, and any Chinese manufacturer exporting to Europe has to meet them. On export projects our structural review input list now includes a spare-parts list and a disassembly path as fixed items.
| Dimension | Executable standard | Design action |
|---|---|---|
| Battery | Non-destructive access, regular Phillips or Torx, no proprietary jig | Independent battery hatch, not buried under the mainboard |
| Wear parts | Buttons, ports and seals individually replaceable | Separate small parts, not double-shot integrated modules |
| Screws | No more than two specifications across the product | Unify at structural review, cut the tool count |
| Disassembly | Public service manual; main modules within 12 steps | Measure and record step count at T0 prototype |
| Firmware | At least two years' notice before end of support, plus offline usability | Core functions do not depend on the cloud |
The last one is the hardest. It sits outside the designer's control, yet it decides whether the first four matter — a repairable product with a dead cloud is still a dead product. We raise it separately in the concept presentation and ask the client's technical lead for an answer on the spot, rather than discovering it after tooling.
How to use the ten principles now
Read them as a list of constraints that have changed, not as a standard to copy. After each one, ask whether its premise still holds for this category in 2026. If it does, follow it; if not, rewrite it as a quantified requirement.
In practice: at concept stage we go through all ten, mark the ones that do not hold for the category, turn those into quantified items in the requirements document — replaceable battery, offline usability, disassembly step count, screw specifications — and only then move into form development. It costs very little time and keeps legal and software schedules from overturning the design later.
FAQ
Were the principles issued in 1976?
No. Rams distilled them in the late 1970s while reflecting on his own work; they were never a one-off 1976 industry standard. The authoritative source is Vitsœ, where he has consulted since 1959. Understanding the original objects — powered Braun appliances and Vitsœ furniture, offline, no firmware — is what lets you judge which rules still apply.
Why is rule 7 the hardest to keep?
Because service life is now the shortest of three clocks: physical life, firmware support life and service availability life. Rams' products had no firmware and no cloud, so rule 7 tested the designer alone. ET 66 (1987) and T 1000 (1963) were discontinued and are still collected, which shows long-lasting holds physically and fails commercially. The countermeasures are battery replaceability, offline usability and data export.
What is wrong with rule 10?
It conflates reducing ornament with reducing entry points. Rams reduced visual noise while keeping eight logically arranged, positionally memorised knobs that can be operated blind. Swapping them for one screen looks like less and costs more in cognition, because a menu has no positional memory. Our car-mounted device had to bring the volume knob back after all-touch testing failed.
Why is repairability a compliance cost?
Because the EU is advancing a repairability index and spare-parts availability rules; without them a product cannot be placed on that market. That makes it a schedule and cost issue. The executable standards — non-destructive battery access, individually replaceable wear parts, at most two screw types, modules within 12 steps, two years' notice on firmware — change the structure, so they belong in the review as early as possible.
Originally published at hezidesign.com
Top comments (0)