The Field Kit

The Tests

Things to do to a screen

The Strip Test — Why Are All Containers Bordered? Remove every border, fill, shadow and divider. Can you still tell what goes with what and what matters most? If yes, most of the boxes were redundant. If no, don't put them back yet: fix space, alignment and weight until you can, then add back only the lines that still say something.

The Border Count — Why Are All Containers Bordered? Count the borders between the edge of the screen and the smallest piece of content. More than two, ask what each one is for.

The Blur Test — Where Does My Attention Belong? Blur every word and number. Can you still tell what kinds of things you're looking at (people, tasks, dates, money)? Then: can you tell what state they're in (fine, waiting, blocked, needs you)? If everything is identical gray rows, the text was doing all the semantic work.

The Blur Test for forms — What Happens When They Finish? Blur labels and values. Can you tell what's being created, changed or sent? Can you tell what's missing, where attention is needed, why you can't continue, when it's ready?

Two Steps Ahead — Two Steps Ahead Stand on any screen as the person. What are their next two moves? Can they see both without looking? Walk every journey to its end; where does one stop a step early (no delete, no edit, no way to act on the thing)?

The Narrow Test — The Payload Put the row in the narrowest place it will actually live, with real data in it. Is the one thing it exists to show still showing? If anything has to give, it shouldn't be that.

The Spacing Lie Detector — The Gap Is Saying Something Draw the hierarchy you mean as a tree. Cover the labels and look only at the gaps; draw the tree the eye reads. Mark every disagreement. Find any three things in a row with equal gaps and ask if they're really peers.

The Visual Grammar Audit — Every Treatment Is a Promise For any treatment that appears more than once: list every element carrying it; name what they have in common beyond appearance; find the exceptions in both directions; check the weight sits where the hierarchy is high; check it never stands alone with nothing to contrast against; write the sentence this style means: ___.

The URL Paste Test — The URL Is the Honest One Could someone paste this address into a browser on another device and land somewhere that makes sense? If yes, it needs a URL. A filter, a tab, a step in a long form, even a modal can pass. An expanded accordion, a hover, a spinner or a half-typed draft doesn't.

Close the Tab, Reopen the Last URL — The URL Is the Honest One Land where you were, and the URL told the truth. Land anywhere else, and it was lying, along with everything on screen that agreed with it.

The Mobile Collapse — The URL Is the Honest One Fold the sidebar into the top bar. Whatever stays reachable was global; whatever folds was local. A "global" item that vanishes was never global.

The First Hundred Milliseconds — Silence Is a Message For every action: what happens before any processing? If the answer is "nothing yet", that's the triple tap.

The Behavioral Audit — The Second Time You Delete Something List every destructive action; do they share a gate and a sequence? Every form submission; do success and failure look the same across forms? Every deletion; same exit, same undo, regardless of page? Every background operation; is there ambient feedback? Every navigation; consistent in kind and weight? Inconsistencies are symptoms of one missing document, not individual bugs.

What Did It Replace — You're Not Designing a Menu Pick a product you use daily. What process did it replace? Break the old process into its smallest steps; who gave what to whom? Where was the bottleneck? Did the product remove it, and what human judgment went with it? What can the old process still do that the new one can't?

The Spatial Memory Test — When Things Go Wrong Open an app you use every day and, without looking, point to where three common actions live. Then imagine one moved. What else now lives at that coordinate?

Read It Aloud — The System's Voice Read every word on the screen out loud, labels to fine print. How many people are talking? For each error: can the reader tell what to type?

What Emotion Was Designed — The System's Voice Pick a product that made you feel something. Name the feeling. Find the three decisions that produced it. Were they decided, or did they happen?

What's in Your Ideas Folder — 47 Documents Count the documents. Count the shipped products. For the biggest gap between the two: what constraint was missing?