| name | nd-environment-scaffold |
| description | Redesign the task environment when a known intention repeatedly fails at the point of action. Use when reminders arrive too early or late, tools or state are hard to find, choices or steps create friction, a system depends on memory, or repeated failure shows that effort alone is not enough. |
Environment Scaffold
Make the intended action easier to see, start, continue, and resume. Change the environment before demanding more willpower.
Procedure
- Name the intended action and its point of performance: the exact place and moment where it must happen.
- Audit friction at that point:
- Is the cue visible when action is possible?
- Are required tools, files, permissions, and state already available?
- Are there too many decisions or steps?
- Does the system rely on remembering something out of sight?
- Is support available at the difficulty level that actually occurs?
- Add the smallest fitting scaffold:
- structure: a default, template, container, launch point, or fixed sequence
- support: a checkpoint, body-double surface, automation, or named helper
- strategy: a concrete method tailored to the observed barrier
- Put the cue and required state at the point of performance.
- Test the scaffold in the real workflow.
- Keep it only if it reduces total effort, including maintenance.
Prefer one visible home for state over duplicate systems. Prefer recognition over recall, defaults over repeated decisions, and an exact re-entry action over a general reminder.
Support Levels
- self-support: one cue, checklist, or default
- collaborative support: a shared checkpoint or working surface
- specialist support: qualified human help when safety or domain expertise requires it
Fade scaffolding when it stops reducing friction. Do not make the user maintain a support system for its own sake.
Guardrails
Do not encode diagnoses, inferred traits, or private biography into task state. Do not add surveillance, coercive reminders, artificial urgency, or a more elaborate system than the task warrants. Preserve user control and easy override.
Source Basis
Synthesize Kolberg and Nadeau's structure-support-strategy framework, visibility and launch-point techniques; Dawson and Guare's task and environment modifications at the point of performance; and NESTL's proactive, flexible, diagnosis-free adjustments.
