Niagara's Design Principles

A new feature for Niagara Launcher has to be…

• Simple: It is easy to configure and easy to use. As few settings & toggles as possible.
• Impactful:  It is either appealing for many or necessary for some.
• Universal:  It has to work everywhere: in every country, on all phones.
• Independent: It doesn’t add complexity if it’s not being used.

Why is that? It’s tempting to implement all feature requests as fast as possible, but that can mess up an app pretty quickly. You lose control of designing a good user experience. Think of a combination tree: If you add ten settings that can be toggled on or off, for example, the user can choose between 1024 states, depending on which settings they turn on. Niagara Launcher should feel polished regardless of the user’s settings; every switch makes the overall experience harder to maintain. We came up with these four criteria every new feature of Niagara Launcher should meet to counteract this.