Situational Design: Setting Priorities Beyond Predefined Flows
1. Designing to reduce users’ interpretation cost
Situational design uses signals from the current situation to bring the most relevant information and actions forward.
- Even when features are well organized, users still have to decide, “What should I do first right now?”
- The effort of connecting a real-world situation to a product’s menus and features is Interpretation Cost.
- Situational design preserves existing features while prioritizing the actions that matter now.
- An insurance app might bring claims and roadside assistance forward after a customer reports an accident.
2. Changes should be understandable, proportionate, and reversible
Design three principles together, assuming that the system’s interpretation can be wrong.
- Visible: Users should understand what changed and, when necessary, why it changed.
- Show the reason for the change: “You reported an accident. Do you need roadside assistance?”
- Proportional: Consider the strength of the evidence alongside the costs of an incorrect intervention and of doing nothing.
- A weak signal may justify only a question or leaving the screen unchanged.
- Reversible: Users should be able to reject or correct an inference and return to the familiar structure.
- Dismissing an assistance suggestion and canceling a service already requested need separate controls.
3. Changing priorities and taking action require different permissions
Recognizing a situation does not automatically give a system permission to act on the user’s behalf.
- An accident report is a confirmed fact, but the need for roadside assistance requires separate confirmation.
- Bringing assistance options forward is different from ordering a service.
- High confidence in an interpretation cannot replace user consent.
- Specify which signals warrant a question, what should be emphasized, and which actions require confirmation.
4. Adapt only what is needed around a stable core
Preserve the familiar structure and clearly define what may change and when that change should end.
- Stable core: Keep navigation, account information, essential controls, and the underlying information architecture stable.
- Adaptive surface: Make limited adjustments to priority actions, recommendations, warnings, and temporary shortcuts.
- End the emphasis when the user declines the suggestion or the situation is resolved.
- In testing, assess whether users find the relevant action sooner and whether they can dismiss a mistaken recommendation and continue with other tasks.
- The insurance app example and tests in the source are design proposals, not validated results.
