The Basement
B · 6 of 6 roomsEverything upstairs shows interaction working. This floor shows it breaking — not to mock, but because a fault traced honestly points back at the exact principle it violated. The basement is the Stairwell’s evidence room.
House rule: no failure ships without the principle it broke and the official record behind it.
The Norman Door
broke: affordanceAffordances are the interface's honest signage: the shape of the thing should announce its use. When users fail predictably, redesign the handle, not the user.
Open the room →Dark Patterns
broke: honesty itselfEvery deceptive pattern is a legitimate principle inverted — friction, defaults, framing, urgency. The building's knowledge is dual-use; this room is where the Institute says so plainly.
Open the room →The Hawaii Alert, 2018
broke: constraint & confirmation-of-consequenceConsequence must be legible in the interface's very geometry: the catastrophic action cannot live one row away from the routine one, dressed identically. Confirmation is not…
Open the room →Mode Error
broke: visibility of system stateModes are sometimes necessary; invisible modes never are. Every mode needs a persistent, glanceable announcement — and the more consequential the divergence, the louder the state must…
Open the room →The Cookie Banner
broke: consent — the asymmetry between yes and noA choice is only a choice when both answers cost the same. Where a law requires consent but says nothing about the geometry of the asking, the interface will make refusal expensive and call…
Open the room →Accidental Commerce
broke: reversibility — friction removed from one direction onlyRemoving a step from a purchase removes it from a mistake as well; the two are the same step. Friction taken out of acquisition has to be matched by friction taken out of reversal, and it…
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