Part Three: The details · Screens
A clean screen with few visible buttons looks calm. People cannot tell what can be pressed, and do not try.
A designer removes the borders from the buttons, then the underlines from the links, then tucks the row actions away until the pointer passes over them. Each step makes the screenshot quieter.
Then someone has to use it. Plain black text sits next to plain black text, and one of them is a link. The edit and delete controls exist only for people who happen to hover in the right place, and on a phone or a keyboard there is no hover at all.
People are willing to try things. They muddle through, pressing whatever looks most promising. But when nothing looks pressable there is nothing to muddle toward. They conclude the thing they wanted cannot be done here.
Making everything shout would be no better. What works is a small, fixed set of signals that is never broken. Things you can press look one way. Things you cannot press never look that way. A control may be quiet. It may not be invisible.
Dense tables are the hard case, because fifty rows with two buttons each is a wall of buttons. There the row itself can be the pressable thing, with a visible menu mark at its end, and extra actions may appear on hover or keyboard focus as a shortcut.
At a clinic's front desk, each patient's name in the list is a link, shown in the same grey as the phone number beside it. The receptionists copy the name and paste it into search to open the record.
Dana Whitfield Tue 9:30
Omar Haddad Tue 9:50
Lucy Tran Tue 10:10
(Edit and remove appear on hover)
Dana Whitfield Tue 9:30···
Omar Haddad Tue 9:50···
Lucy Tran Tue 10:10···
(The menu at the end of each row holds Edit and Remove)
Therefore:
Make everything that can be pressed look pressable, and nothing else, using the same few signals everywhere. Never make hover or a hidden gesture the only way to reach an action.
In practice. Show a screen to someone new for five seconds and ask them to point at everything they could press. What they miss needs a stronger signal. What they point at wrongly needs a weaker one.
Goes with. The signals come from A FEW CHOICES, MADE ONCE (66), and how strong each should be is settled by LOUD, QUIET, SILENT (63). They are worthless unless THE SAME THING WORKS THE SAME WAY (84).