Rule 1
01 / 10
Strive for Consistency
Similar situations should require similar actions: identical terminology, layouts, and command sequences across the product. Every inconsistency is a small tax the user pays on every visit.
Rule 2
02 / 10
Seek Universal Usability
Design for the full range of users: novices need guidance and explanations, experts need shortcuts and accelerators, and everyone needs the interface to respect ability, age, language, and technology differences.
Rule 3
03 / 10
Offer Informative Feedback
Every action gets a response scaled to its importance: a subtle state change for a click, a clear confirmation for a purchase. Silence after an action is the interface equivalent of being ignored.
Rule 4
04 / 10
Design Dialogs to Yield Closure
Sequences of actions need a beginning, middle, and end. The confirmation page, the “sent” state, the completed checklist — closure tells users they can stop tracking and move on.
Rule 5
05 / 10
Prevent Errors
The best error message is the one that never appears: disable invalid options, constrain formats at the input, confirm the destructive. When errors happen anyway, offer simple, constructive recovery.
Rule 6
06 / 10
Permit Easy Reversal
Undo is the license to explore. When actions are reversible, anxiety drops and users try things — the product gets discovered instead of studied. Reversal should extend to groups of actions, not just the last one.
Rule 7
07 / 10
Keep Users in Control
Experienced users want to feel the interface responds to their initiative — not that they’re responding to its. Surprises, interruptions, forced tours, and unrequested changes all erode the sense of ownership.
Rule 8
08 / 10
Reduce Short-Term Memory Load
Humans hold a handful of chunks at a time. Keep information visible across steps, prefer recognition to recall, and never ask users to remember something the interface just told them.
✦
The Golden Rules in the Age of AI
Probabilistic interfaces bend every rule — consistency, reversal, and control mean something new when the system improvises.
In the Age of AI
09 / 10
Consistency vs Improvisation
A model can phrase the same answer ten ways — charming in chat, corrosive in an interface. Constrain generated UI and copy to your patterns and vocabulary: the model improvises, the design system holds the line.
In the Age of AI
10 / 10
Reversal for Generated Work
When AI edits your document or your code, rule six becomes existential: every generated change needs an inspectable diff and a one-step undo. Control and reversal are what make delegation safe.