Design Principles
Our design principles guide how we create product experiences at Brevo.
Overview
Our design principles define how we want Brevo experiences to feel and behave.
They help us make better decisions across journeys, interactions, and product surfaces — especially when there is no obvious pattern to follow.
They are a shared reference for anyone designing, building, or reviewing Brevo experiences.
End-to-end
Design the whole journey, not just the feature.
Brevo experiences should feel connected from one step to the next.
Users come to Brevo to achieve a goal, not to use isolated features.
Understand the user's broader objective and consider what happens before, during, and after an interaction.
Design connected journeys that help users move through Brevo with clarity and continuity, rather than treating each feature as a standalone experience.
Base design decisions on real user needs, business goals, context, and evidence.
Validate assumptions through research, data, and feedback. Adding more features does not necessarily create a better experience; focus on solving the right problem in the simplest effective way.
Familiar
Make experiences predictable and easy to learn.
Users should be able to rely on what they already know.
Familiar patterns reduce cognitive effort, build confidence, and make Brevo easier to use.
Reuse established components, patterns, and behaviours whenever they already solve the problem well.
Consistency should be the starting point, while still allowing the system to evolve when a new need is justified.
Introduce new behaviours only when they create meaningful value.
Follow common interaction conventions where possible, and consider the learning cost of introducing something unfamiliar.
Innovation should improve the experience, not make it harder to understand.
Plural
Design for different people, contexts, and levels of expertise.
Brevo serves users with different goals, businesses, backgrounds, languages, and levels of experience.
Our experiences should work for that diversity by default.
Make experiences approachable for new users without limiting more advanced ones.
Provide guidance when needed, allow users to build confidence over time, and support efficient workflows for those who already know what they are doing.
Design with different business needs, cultures, languages, abilities, and environments in mind.
Avoid assuming that all users share the same knowledge, expectations, or context. Experiences should remain understandable, inclusive, and accessible across Brevo's international audience.
Simple
Make complexity clear and manageable.
Simplicity does not mean removing useful functionality.
It means helping users understand what matters, make decisions confidently, and complete their goals with as little unnecessary friction as possible.
Create clear information hierarchies, explain what users need to know, and reveal complexity progressively when appropriate.
Do not oversimplify to the point of removing important context or capability. When complexity is necessary, make it understandable and purposeful.
Use visual design, content, motion, and interaction to reinforce the meaning of key moments in the experience.
Emotion should support usability: celebrate success, provide reassurance, highlight important feedback, and make interactions feel more human without distracting from the user's goal.
How to apply the principles
Use these rules when designing, reviewing, or generating Brevo experiences — whether you are working manually or with AI assistance.
| Principle | Guidance |
|---|---|
| End-to-end | Consider the full user journey, not only the requested screen or feature. Understand what happens before and after the interaction, and make sure the solution fits coherently into the broader experience. Focus on solving the underlying user problem rather than adding functionality by default. |
| Familiar | Prefer existing Naos components, patterns, and established Brevo behaviours whenever they solve the problem well. Keep similar interactions consistent across the product. Introduce new patterns only when there is a clear need and the benefit outweighs the learning cost. |
| Plural | Design for different levels of expertise, business contexts, languages, cultures, and accessibility needs. Do not assume that all users share the same knowledge or expectations. Support beginners without limiting experienced users. |
| Simple | Reduce unnecessary complexity and friction without removing useful capability or context. Use clear hierarchy, concise content, and progressive disclosure where appropriate. When complexity is necessary, make it understandable and intentional. Use emotional cues only when they support the user's goal or reinforce system feedback. |