design-sense

Files (153)

• CARD.yml
• CAULDRON.md
• GLANCE.yml
• README.md
• SKILL.md
• TIES.yml
• CARD.yml · lenses/
• GLANCE.yml · lenses/
• README.md · lenses/
• TIES-CACHE.yml · lenses/
• TIES.yml · lenses/
• angle-at-release.md · lenses/
• calm-not-invisible.md · lenses/
• cli-not-tui.md · lenses/
• comments-as-data.md · lenses/
• direct-manipulation.md · lenses/
• directories-as-advertisements.md · lenses/
• dynamic-queries.md · lenses/
• fitts.TIES.yml · lenses/
• fitts.md · lenses/
• foveation.md · lenses/
• gesture-space-constraints.md · lenses/
• goldilocks-complexity.md · lenses/
• gutter-closure.md · lenses/
• interfaces-to-agency.md · lenses/
• k-line-activation.md · lenses/
• keyboard-is-not-tui.md · lenses/
• lean-into-latent.md · lenses/
• level-band.md · lenses/
• mark-ahead-suppression.md · lenses/
• masking.md · lenses/
• media-equation.md · lenses/
• memorably-differentiate-commands.md · lenses/
• mental-model-compiler.md · lenses/
• no-spurious-velocity.md · lenses/
• p-pyramid-attention.md · lenses/
• put-that-there.md · lenses/
• reasoning-is-not-science.md · lenses/
• saturate-gesture-space.md · lenses/
• self-revealing-gestures.md · lenses/
• semantic-mipmap.md · lenses/
• simulator-effect.md · lenses/
• sniff-depths.md · lenses/
• stage-magic.md · lenses/
• three-axis-accessibility.md · lenses/
• view-state-is-the-users.md · lenses/
• CARD.yml · masters/
• GLANCE.yml · masters/
• README.md · masters/
• adele-goldberg.md · masters/
• alan-kay.md · masters/
• allen-cypher.md · masters/
• arthur-van-hoff.md · masters/
• ben-shneiderman.md · masters/
• bill-atkinson.md · masters/
• bill-budge.md · masters/
• brad-myers.md · masters/
• brenda-laurel.md · masters/
• bret-victor.md · masters/
• brian-eno.md · masters/
• …and 93 more

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Design Sense 👁️

A sense is ambient, involuntary, always sampling. This skill models what a working
designer carries in their head *at all times* — not a checklist consulted at review
time, but constraints that veto and redirect while the work happens.

The founding case: David Ungar critiqued Don Hopkins' Unity3D pie menus. The menus
brought the selected label to the cursor (good — the cheapest target walks over and
stands under your gaze), but animated the *deselected* items retreating (bad —
peripheral motion is a hardware interrupt; a dozen slices collapsing fire a dozen
interrupts, all pointed away from the one thing the user chose). The takeaway wasn't
a fix; it was a permanent resident of the designer's head:

> **Motion is a foveation summons. Only send it where you want the eye.**

That principle needed a place to live. So does Fitts' law. So does Chris Trottier's
design-by-accretion. Rather than a swarm of single-law skills, one socket with
plugin registries — the copy-that shape (kernel + formats/ + house-styles/), the
cursor-mirror growth pattern (one entry point, many organs).

## Scope

User interface, interactivity, game design — simulation games are the native
genre — and software design (Self's power of simplicity, Korz's de-objectification:
design of the invisible). **Not** visual styling. This skill never tells you what
colors to use; a sense is perception and judgment, not palette.

## The registries

All plugins are Markdown — human-readable first, k-lineable names, working links
(relative in-repo, GitHub URLs cross-repo). Each registry carries its own kernel:
GLANCE.yml to scan, CARD.yml with dispatch-table advertisements, README.md for
format and norms.

- **[`lenses/`](lenses/README.md)** — 31 ways of seeing: always-on perceptual and
  attention constraints, active whenever you're looking at (or designing) a
  surface. Fitts: cost grows with distance, shrinks with size. Foveation: motion
  summons the eye. Stage magic: simple view until complex truth.
  [lenses/CARD.yml](lenses/CARD.yml) dispatches by design context.
- **[`methods/`](methods/README.md)** — 32 ways of working: constraints on
  process. Design-by-accretion: layer, accumulate, tune late. Worse-is-better:
  can you remove more? One-page designs: the doc is a poster.
  [methods/CARD.yml](methods/CARD.yml) dispatches by phase of work.
- **[`masters/`](masters/README.md)** — 59 heads to borrow. A master file gives
  you a person's **votes** (positive imperatives, linked to the plugins that cash
  them) and **vetoes** (the lines they won't cross), plus the plugins attributed
  to them. [masters/CARD.yml](masters/CARD.yml) dispatches by problem; load
  several heads for an adversarial committee.
- **[`seeds/`](seeds/README.md)** — the accretion intake. Harvested principles
  land raw in dated batch files with Planted/Todo journal sections; they
  germinate (grounded in a source, named, stated plainly, classified) and
  graduate to the registries. Sinsemilla means *without seed* — the pipeline is
  seeds in, sinsemilla out; a cured registry is seedless by definition.
  (Simsemilla being, canonically, what they smoke in The Sims.)

Two axes, one test: **lenses constrain attention while you look; methods constrain
process while you build.** A candidate that's neither may be a master trait, or
isn't ready to leave seeds.

## Protocol

1. **Designing or critiquing a surface** — load the relevant lenses first, before
   proposing anything. Lenses veto: if a proposal sends motion where you don't want
   the eye, or puts a small target far away, the lens speaks before taste does.
2. **Planning design work** — load methods. Accretion says don't top-down specify;
   tuned emergence says budget the late tuning pass now, because fun arrives last.
3. **Channeling a designer** — load the master file, then the plugins it indexes.
   Borrowing a head means adopting its vetoes, not imitating its output.
4. **Harvesting** — quotable principle found in the wild? PLANT-SEED: append it to
   seeds/ raw with source and attribution. Germination can wait; losing it can't.
5. **Germinating** — name it kebab-case, state it in 1-3 plain sentences, cite sources
   (point, don't copy), classify it, write the registry file. Gate: a seed graduates
   only if a working designer would actually keep it loaded.

## Authoring a plugin

Follow the schema in CARD.yml. Plugins are Markdown files whose anatomy is:
header (name, class, attribution, optional dispatch line pointing at a whole
moollm skill), one bold **statement** (the loadable form — it must work without
the source documents), a body with mechanism and corpus exhibits, **Go deeper**
external links (Wikipedia, founding papers, primary articles), **Sources** into
the corpus with working links, and **See** for kin. Master files replace the
statement with a **Head** paragraph and add **Votes** (do this, bulletized,
linked) and **Vetoes** (never this). The statement or head is what survives
context compression ("motion is a foveation summons"); everything else is there
for the reader who clicked through.

## Part of MOOLLM

This skill is part of [MOOLLM](https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm) — see the
[repo README](https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/README.md) and
[skills/README](https://github.com/SimHacker/moollm/blob/main/skills/README.md).
Deep context: [README.md](README.md). Planning and harvest log:
[CAULDRON.md](CAULDRON.md).

From SimHacker/moollm, MIT.

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