054 Forgiveness
Designs should help people avoid errors, and protect them from harm when they do occur.
• Forgiving design prevents errors through constraints and good affordances.
• Forgiving design warns of potential dangers, and asks for confirmation when choices may cause harm.
• Forgiving design allows actions to be reversible when errors do occur (e.g., undo function).
• Forgiving design provides safety nets to prevent harm resulting from errors or catastrophic failures.
• Make all designs forgiving. Best to prevent errors, then to warn of potential errors, then to reverse errors when they occur, and then when all else fails to have safety nets in place. To err is human, to forgive, design.
See Also Affordance • Confirmation • Constraint • Errors Factor of Safety • Weakest Link
