Summary
When products do not behave the way people expect, they do more than create confusion. They burn energy, raise anxiety, and can make already difficult moments much worse. Good design should reduce effort and uncertainty, not ask people to spend more of themselves just to understand what is happening.
You walk up to a door with a big handle that clearly says pull.
So you pull.
Nothing happens.
Then you notice the tiny sign that says PUSH.
That moment is small, but it stays with you. You hesitate. You feel a little foolish, even though the problem was not you. The design told you one thing, then punished you for believing it.
We create digital versions of that moment all the time.
A button looks disabled, but it works. A page reloads without telling you whether anything was saved. A form highlights an error but does not explain what is wrong. A card looks clickable, but only the little text link inside it works. A workflow changes state, but the person using it cannot tell what happened, what failed, or what to do next. Those are not minor annoyances. They are moments where a product stops helping and starts demanding.
This is where accessibility needs to go deeper than compliance. We need to think about the mental and emotional cost of using what we build.
Affordances, signifiers, and broken expectations
Affordances are the actions something makes possible. A button can be pressed. A text field can accept information. A door can open. In digital design, though, that is only half the story. People still need clues that help them understand what the thing is, what it does, and how it works.
Those clues are signifiers.
A visible label on a form field is a signifier. Underlined text that looks like a link is a signifier. A clear border around an input, a button that looks pressable, or a short message that says other actions are available, all help people understand what they can do next. When affordances and signifiers line up, people move with confidence. When they do not, people pause, guess, and spend extra energy trying to decode the interface.
This is where expectation matters.
People do not come to an interface ready to admire our cleverness. They come to get something done. If the design forces them to stop and reverse-engineer what we meant, we have shifted work from the system to the user. We have made them think like a designer.
That is the wrong direction.
The two gulfs that show where design breaks down
Don Norman’s model gives us language for two of the biggest places this falls apart: the gulf of execution and the gulf of evaluation.
The gulf of execution is the distance between what a person wants to do and how the system expects them to do it. It shows up in questions like: What do I do now? Where do I click? Is this the right field? Do I type here or somewhere else?
The gulf of evaluation comes after the action. It is the effort required to understand what happened and what state the system is now in. Did that work? Did I make a mistake? Why is nothing changing? Should I click again?
These sound like classic UX concepts, and they are. But they are also deeply human concepts. The gulf of execution is not only a task problem. It is often an energy problem. The gulf of evaluation is not only a feedback problem. It is often an anxiety problem.
Every time a user has to guess, their confidence drops a little. Every time they cannot tell what happened, the stress rises a little. When that happens over and over, the product becomes exhausting.
Spoon theory helps explain the real cost
Spoon theory gives us a better way to talk about that exhaustion.
A spoon is a unit of energy. Some people start the day with plenty. Others do not. Some are already using their energy to manage pain, fatigue, ADHD, caregiving, depression, anxiety, long COVID, or just the ordinary overload of trying to get through life while too many things are on fire at once. As designers and builders, we do not control how many spoons someone starts with. But we absolutely control how many our product burns.
- Every confusing error costs spoons.
- Every surprise modal costs spoons.
- Every hidden step, vague label, unexplained state change, and every “Why isn’t this working?” moment costs spoons.
That is why familiar patterns matter. That is why standard controls matter. That is why clear feedback matters. When your brain is tired, boring is beautiful. Predictable systems are not a failure of imagination. They are a form of care.
When bad design leaves someone in pain
This is not theoretical.
Hertz Nazaire has spoken about what happens when a system fails at the exact moment someone needs clarity most. During a sickle cell crisis, he was in severe pain and needed care quickly. But the form and intake process did not capture the right information in a way that supported treatment. The system broke down before the care could even begin.
That kind of failure is easy to describe as paperwork, workflow, or a process issue. But from the patient’s side, it is something else entirely. It is delay. It is uncertainty. It is being left in intense pain while a badly designed system asks for one more correction, one more explanation, one more round of waiting. The person in crisis is forced to spend energy they do not have just to help the system understand what should have already been clear.
This is where cognitive load becomes physical. This is where the gulf of evaluation is not just a usability concept, but a human cost. The patient does not know whether the right information was captured, whether the urgency was understood, or whether relief is actually coming. The design has failed to communicate system state, failed to support the task, and failed to reduce harm.
That is why this work matters. When we design forms, service flows, and intake systems that do not behave the way people expect, we are not just making something less elegant. We may be increasing fear, delaying help, and leaving someone alone inside the consequences of our confusion. Hertz put it plainly: pain leaves a memory, and that memory can carry anxiety and trauma long after the immediate crisis has passed.
Trauma-informed design raises the stakes
Trauma-informed design asks us to start from a simple premise: trauma is not rare, and our job is to do no harm. In practice, that means designing for safety, trust and transparency, choice and control, and clarity. It means recognizing that many people arrive at our products already carrying stress, fear, uncertainty, or a history that changes how ambiguity lands in the body.
- A timer may not feel motivating. It may feel like pressure.
- A vague error may not feel minor. It may feel like failure.
- A hidden option may not feel elegant. It may feel like loss of control.
- A system that gathers more information than it needs, without explaining why, may not feel thorough. It may feel invasive or unsafe.
Trauma-informed design does not ask us to diagnose anyone. It asks us to be more careful about the burden we place on people. It asks us to build systems that are easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to recover from when something goes wrong.
Cognitive dissonance belongs in this conversation too
There is another layer here, and that is cognitive dissonance.
When a product tells people one thing and does another, it creates a small internal conflict. The interface implied this would be easy. The experience feels unstable. The system looked finished. The task is clearly not done. A control looks active. Nothing happens. The person is no longer just trying to complete a task. They are trying to reconcile a contradiction.
That takes energy.
And when someone is already dealing with pain, fatigue, money stress, trauma, or overload, that contradiction can be the point where they stop trusting the system entirely.
This is why cognitive accessibility matters. It is not only about whether people can read the words or tab to the button. It is also about whether they can stay oriented, understand what is happening, recover from mistakes, and move through the experience without burning through energy they may not have to spare.
Design should lower the temperature
The best design often does something simple and generous. It lowers the temperature.
- It makes the next step visible.
- It confirms what happened.
- It explains what is needed.
- It removes surprises.
- It gives people a way back.
- It respects the fact that not everyone shows up calm, fresh, focused, and ready to troubleshoot our product.
When we combine inclusive design, spoon theory, and trauma-informed thinking, the resulting design advice is not exotic. Use standard elements. Make sure signifiers match affordances. Simplify interfaces. Design for recognition instead of recall. Provide help near the point of confusion. Give people control. Be transparent about what is happening and why. None of that is flashy. It is just respectful.
That is also where accessibility starts to feel less like compliance and more like care.
The next time your team reviews a feature, ask a different set of questions.
- What mental energy are we spending here?
- Where might someone hesitate?
- What happens if this person had a terrible morning?
- What is the gentlest version of this feature that still works?
People should not have to think like designers to use what we build.
Design should do more of that work for them.
Download the slides: Don’t make me think: Trauma-Informed Accessible UX Design and Applying Spoon Theory
This post was written with assistance from AI