Design Guidelines

The following guidelines have been established to provide our users a consistent and productive environment. The app shall integrate itself inconspicuously into the exisiting products and services of Ulm University. All users, which are primarily students, staff and guests of the university, shall feel confident and trust when using our products. Therefore, at its core, we adopt the look and feel of existing university offers, like the websites and print publications.

Code of Conduct

We think that our university shall be an open place, where everyone is welcomed. We are proud that Ulm University, among others, has committed itself to the Universities open to the world program (Weltoffene Hochschulen). Therefore, we think it is important to set the following foundations for designing and developing the project.

We, as developers and project members, are committed to making the use of our apps and services a harassment-free experience for all, regardless of age, height, disability, ethnicity, gender characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socioeconomic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, religion or sexual identity and orientation. We are committed to acting and interacting in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive and healthy community.

Visual Style Guide

Foundation

As mentioned before, all frontends shall make use of the colors and logo of the Ulm University corporate identity. Please note that these are only reachable from the university’s network or via VPN. At this moment, we use the default typography on iOS and Android rather than the university’s typography.

Guidelines

For our Android apps, the design follows the Google Material Design Guidelines. The implementation for Apple platforms shall follow the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

For the project website, no design guide is established yet. However, it shall be adapted from and inspired by the Ulm University website design and its general specifications:

A clear, user-friendly navigation structure

A topic- and target group-oriented approach

A high information value on the start page, e.g. through links to current topics

Possible extension of functionalities, e.g. multilingualism

Content Style Guide

Images

Images and photographies shall follow the Ulm University Corporate Design guidelines. Most importantly, this includes:

Bright and friendly atmosphere

Light, discreet, bright color mood

Exciting image composition, reduced choice of motifs, clear image statement, not overloaded

Media-compatible focus in the images

Pictures are predominantly in landscape format

In accordance with those, we use the Humaaans design library for illustrations in our apps. These are primarily used as placeholders for empty views, onboarding modals, or error screens.

Particular attention should be paid to ensure that images and illustrations used in the apps and websites are inclusive of all people (see Code of Conduct).

Text

Text on your frontends shall be friendly, clear, concise, understandable and free from spelling and grammatical errors. As part of internationalization (i18n), it must at least be available in English and German. The language shall be derived from the user’s system settings, where possible, and defaults to English.

English:: Text shall be written in American English. For formatting of dates, measurements, currency, etc. the en_IE locale can be used.
German:: Text shall be written in high-level German (Hochdeutsch). We use the formal Du (capitalized) in the app and for communication related to the project. For formatting of dates, measurements, currency, etc. the de_DE locale can be used.