Experience First

When implementation convenience conflicts with user delight, choose delight.

• Every feature, control, and option must be justified
• Ship less, ship better (polished experience with three features beats rough one with ten)
• Prototype before committing (design decisions are cheaper in a throwaway prototype than in production code)
• Get the details right (transitions, alignment, spacing, feedback, error states and messages)
• Tighten the core loop (every feature should serve the central workflow or get out of the way)

The user is whoever consumes the work. For a UI that is the end user. For a library, a CLI, or an internal API it is the colleague who calls it. The engineer who maintains the code next is a user too. Weigh their experience the same way, and explain impact from their perspective.

Foundations should serve the experience. Foundational Thinking governs the sequence of work. This principle governs the target.