| name | make-it-obvious |
| description | Make a screen self-evident — understood at a glance, no thinking required: clear visual hierarchy, scannable layout, conventional patterns, obvious clickability, ruthless word economy. Use when a screen feels confusing or cluttered, when simplifying copy or layout, reducing cognitive load, or asking "is this clear?"
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Make It Obvious
The user should never have to think about how to use a screen. Every screen answers, at a glance: what is this, and what do I do here. If understanding it needs a tooltip, a manual, or a second look, the design failed — fix the design, not the user.
This is legibility: one screen understood in one glance. Designing the journey across screens is /ux-flows; this makes any single screen land.
Design for how people actually use screens
Not the careful reader who doesn't exist. Three facts, each with the move it forces:
- They scan, they don't read. Eyes jump to whatever's biggest, boldest, first — so visual hierarchy is the meaning: the most important thing must be the most prominent. Break the screen into clear regions; a wall of uniform text reads as nothing.
- They satisfice — the first reasonable option wins. Users pick the first thing that looks close enough, not the best one — so make the good path the obvious one: label it plainly, give it prominence, never bury it under a perfect-but-hidden alternative.
- They muddle through — they guess and keep moving. They don't work out how it works — so meet the guess with the convention they already expect (a cart icon, a back arrow, underlined links). Break a convention only when the new way is clearly better and worth the relearning; novelty is a tax the user pays.
Then strip it down
- Make clickable things look clickable. Buttons look like buttons, links like links; nothing dead looks alive, nothing alive looks dead. A control's appearance is a promise about what it does.
- Omit needless words. Cut half the words, then half of what's left. Kill happy-talk ("Welcome! We're so glad you're here…") and instructions nobody reads. Every word the eye skips is noise hiding the words that matter.
- Quiet the noise. Anything competing for attention without earning it — decoration, redundant labels, busy backgrounds — weakens everything else. Turn down the volume so the signal shows.
The test
Self-evident in five seconds. A stranger glances at the screen for five seconds — can they say what it is and what to do next? A first-timer should get it with no instructions. If they can't, the hierarchy or the labels are wrong — and that's the thing to fix.
Checklist before done
