A guideline is a record of an insight that can be used to guide future design efforts (Schneiderman & Plaisant, 2010, p. 75). Guidelines in general tend to be more specific about the implementation of solutions than design patterns.

Some of the most widely known and used guidelines are the iOS and Android's Material Design guideline.

It may be tempting to base your choice of design guideline on assumptions about your users. Headlines like "What kind of user prefers an iPhone?" suggest there might be fundamental differences. However, academic research is inconclusive. There are some studies finding that users vary in personality traits (e.g. Shaw et al., 2016, Ubhi et al., 2017), whereas other studies with large sample sizes found no significant differences (e.g. Götz et al., 2017)

Tips:

• Be precise!
• Make sure to really follow your chosen framework
• Reasonably explain deviations from the framework

There are two ways for you to determine the design language/framework you can use in your app. You can use a predefined styleguide or you can define your own style. Where both approaches have advantages and disadvantages alike, it is your task to make an educated choice and document it properly. The choice of framework/design language strongly influences the interaction patterns your app is going to employ.

While we do not require you to use any framework at all, we strongly suggest you use one. Choice of framework is up to you, however a flexible candidate, that incorporates material design, iOS guidelines as well as customization options is Framework 7.

When choosing to follow a predefined design language, be precise and make sure to really follow it. Deviations from a chosen language have to be explained reasonably and the observance of your chosen style will be considered during grading.