Shelfery Product Principles¶
These principles are meant to guide product, design, and content decisions for Shelfery once real product work begins. They are directional commitments about how Shelfery should feel and behave, not a feature list and not a technical specification. Any future feature should be checked against these principles before being considered ready.
Household-friendly language¶
Use plain, everyday household language rather than inventory-management or logistics jargon. A user thinking about "the pasta in the cupboard" should never have to translate that into "SKU" or "unit of measure" to use the product.
Low-friction data entry¶
Recording what food a household has should be fast and forgiving. Any workflow that requires precise, effortful data entry on every item will not match how households actually behave. Favor approximate, quick entry over exhaustive, accurate entry — and make it easy to correct or update entries later rather than demanding perfection up front.
Clear inventory visibility¶
A household should be able to look at Shelfery and quickly understand what it believes they have and where. Visibility should be immediate and scannable, not buried behind reports or filters.
Warm, reassuring experience¶
The product's tone and visual language should feel warm and reassuring —
closer to a well-organized pantry than a warehouse management system. See
docs/strategy/brand-and-positioning.md for the current (provisional)
visual direction. Avoid clinical, sterile, or industrial inventory-tracking
aesthetics.
Reduce waste without shaming¶
Where the product encourages using food before it goes to waste, it should do so supportively. Avoid language, visuals, or mechanics that make users feel judged, surveilled, or scolded for food they didn't use in time. Households come to this kind of tool because they want help, not because they want to be graded.
Make uncertain information visibly uncertain¶
Any information Shelfery presents that is an estimate, guess, or user-supplied approximation should look and read as such. Do not let estimated or approximate data visually resemble confirmed, authoritative information.
Do not present food-safety estimates as guarantees¶
This principle is a product-design restatement of the standard in
docs/domain/trust-safety-and-food-claims.md. Freshness or shelf-life
estimates are estimates. The product must never imply, through copy,
iconography, or interaction design, that an estimate is a safety guarantee.
Design for real household behavior, not perfect data discipline¶
Assume users will forget to log things, log things late, guess quantities, and abandon habits partway through. The product should degrade gracefully under imperfect use rather than assuming a disciplined, complete data trail. Designs that only work if the user is meticulous are not aligned with this principle.