name	dec-norman-principles
description	Don Norman's principles of interaction design — affordances & signifiers, mapping, feedback, constraints, conceptual model, and the gulfs of execution and evaluation. Use when an interface is confusing, a control's behavior isn't obvious, you're designing how an object signals what it does, or diagnosing why users can't connect intention to action.
tags	["interaction-design","norman","affordances","mental-models","ux","always-on"]

Don Norman — Principles of Interaction

How people understand and operate things. Use to diagnose why a control is unintuitive, not just that it is.

Affordances & Signifiers: What an object can do (affordance) vs the perceptible cue telling the user it can (signifier). Most "discoverability" bugs are missing signifiers.
Mapping: Spatial / logical correspondence between controls and their effects (stove knobs → burners). Natural mapping removes a learning step.
Feedback: Every action gets a visible, immediate response. Silence reads as failure.
Constraints: Physical, logical, semantic, and cultural limits that prevent error before it happens.
Conceptual Model: The user's mental picture must match how the system actually behaves. Mismatch = confusion that no copy can fully patch.
Gulf of Execution / Gulf of Evaluation: The gap between intention → action, and between system-state → understanding. Design must close both: make actions obvious (execution) and results legible (evaluation).

Confusing control? Ask which is missing: affordance, signifier, mapping, or feedback.
Bridge the Gulf of Execution with clear signifiers; bridge the Gulf of Evaluation with clear feedback and status.
When users hold a wrong mental model, fix the model (structure, naming, behavior) before adding help text.

name	dec-norman-principles
description	Don Norman's principles of interaction design — affordances & signifiers, mapping, feedback, constraints, conceptual model, and the gulfs of execution and evaluation. Use when an interface is confusing, a control's behavior isn't obvious, you're designing how an object signals what it does, or diagnosing why users can't connect intention to action.
tags	["interaction-design","norman","affordances","mental-models","ux","always-on"]

How people understand and operate things. Use to diagnose why a control is unintuitive, not just that it is.

Affordances & Signifiers: What an object can do (affordance) vs the perceptible cue telling the user it can (signifier). Most "discoverability" bugs are missing signifiers.
Mapping: Spatial / logical correspondence between controls and their effects (stove knobs → burners). Natural mapping removes a learning step.
Feedback: Every action gets a visible, immediate response. Silence reads as failure.
Constraints: Physical, logical, semantic, and cultural limits that prevent error before it happens.
Conceptual Model: The user's mental picture must match how the system actually behaves. Mismatch = confusion that no copy can fully patch.
Gulf of Execution / Gulf of Evaluation: The gap between intention → action, and between system-state → understanding. Design must close both: make actions obvious (execution) and results legible (evaluation).

Confusing control? Ask which is missing: affordance, signifier, mapping, or feedback.
Bridge the Gulf of Execution with clear signifiers; bridge the Gulf of Evaluation with clear feedback and status.
When users hold a wrong mental model, fix the model (structure, naming, behavior) before adding help text.

dec-norman-principles