Development Principles
These four principles guide how One Web Arts projects are designed, developed and maintained.
They apply to product and technical decisions alike: what a project does, how it is built and how it is looked after over time.
Useful
Projects should solve real and understandable problems.
Each project starts with a clear purpose and a practical question: what should it help people do? Its scope stays focused on that purpose.
Features are added when they support the actual purpose of a project, not for their own sake.
Simple
Products and technology should stay clear and uncomplicated.
Interfaces should be intuitive and easy to understand, with a clear structure and no more steps than the task requires.
On the technical side, simple solutions are preferred where they are appropriate. Unnecessary complexity and dependencies are avoided, because every additional layer has to be understood and maintained.
Responsible
Accessibility, security and privacy are considered from the beginning.
Accessibility is part of normal development rather than a later addition. Security measures are chosen to suit each project and its risks.
Implementation is privacy-conscious: user data is collected or processed only where a project needs it to work.
Sustainable
Projects should be reliable, maintainable and built for long-term development.
Code and architecture should remain understandable and maintainable, so that projects can evolve in small, deliberate steps. Performance is taken into account where it matters to the people using a project.
Avoiding unnecessary technical debt helps keep public projects reliable and maintainable over time.