Human-First Design Principle
Open standardOur design standard — published for any team to adopt.
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A standard, not a slogan
The Human-First Design Principle is the discipline behind every Code From Home engagement — six commitments covering the humans who use, run, and live with software. We publish it as a versioned open standard so any team can adopt it, with or without us.
The canonical, versioned text lives at codefromhome.com/human-first — currently v1.0, licensed CC BY 4.0.
The six commitments
- 🧑💻 Start with the human, not the technology.
- 🤝 Co-create — don't deliver-and-disappear.
- ♿ Accessibility is non-negotiable. WCAG 2.2 AA is the floor.
- 🔒 Privacy and consent are sacred.
- 🛠️ Operability is part of the design. The on-call team is a first-class user.
- 📈 Measure success in human outcomes.
A principle you can lint against
The companion Human-First Toolkit turns the manifesto into enforcement: 102 rules with stable IDs across eight families (human-first, privacy, safety, security, trust & operability, performance & cost, stewardship, UI), TypeScript and Python libraries, a CLI that maps changed files to the rules they must satisfy, browser audits for Playwright/CI, and an MCP server so AI coding agents apply the same standard your humans do. MIT-licensed and public in Preview (pre-1.0 — expect rough edges): browse the toolkit on GitHub.
Use it freely — or with us
The principle text is CC BY 4.0: adapt it into your own handbook with attribution. And if you want help making it stick, we run Human-First design reviews and adoption engagements — tell us about your product.