Agent skill · wondelai
design-everyday-things
Apply foundational design principles: affordances, signifiers, constraints, feedback, and conceptual models. Use when the user mentions "why is this confusing", "affordance", "error prevention", "discoverability", "human-centered design", "mental model", "mapping", "seven stages of action", "users keep making mistakes", "this is unintuitive", or "people cant figure out how to use it". Also trigger when reducing product complexity or feature creep. Covers the gulfs of execution and evaluation. For usability scoring, see ux-heuristics. For iOS-specific patterns, see ios-hig-design.
What it needs
About 9k tokens when loaded.
What this skill does
Design of Everyday Things Framework Foundational design principles for creating products that are intuitive, discoverable, and understandable. The "bible of UX" — applicable to physical products, software, and any human-designed system. Core Principle Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible. When something fails, users blame themselves — but the fault is almost always in the design. Great design bridges the gap between what people want to do and what the product allows: it is discoverable (you can figure out what to do) and understandable (you can figure out what happened). Scoring Goal: 10/10. Score 2 points per satisfied row of the Quick Diagnostic (5 rows = discoverability, evaluation, error recovery, mapping, constraints). Bands: 9-10 = users act without instructions, understand every outcome, and recover from any error; 5-6 = one gulf or error path is broken; <=3 = users must consult a manual or routinely blame themselves. Report the current score and the diagnostic rows failing it. The Two Gulfs Every interaction with a product requires bridging two gulfs: Gulf of Execution The gap between what users want to do and what the product lets them do. Users ask: What can I do here? Which control do I use? Bridge with: clear signifiers, natural mappings, constraints, familiar conceptual models. Gulf of Evaluation The gap between what the product did and what users understand happened. Users ask: What happened? Did it work? What state is the system in? Bridge with: immediate visible feedback, clear system-state indicators, meaningful error messages, progress indicators. Design goal: Make both gulfs as narrow as possible — action and understanding should be immediate. See: references/two-gulfs.md for gulf analysis exercises. Seven Fundamental Design Principles 1. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills wondelai/design-everyday-things--54a3a9