Architecture & Technical Design · master area
UX/Product Ilities
Learnability, clarity, responsiveness, comprehension. Real ilities — first-class targets, named at shaping, verified in QA. Not "polish at the end." Not "subjective." Measurable, with thresholds.
Owners: Designer, PO Phase it lives in: What We Build (Volume III) The corpus principle this enacts: UX/product ilities are first-class requirements.
Where it lives in the chain
- What We Build · Ilities selection — the canon
How to do this
The ilities, named at shaping with measurable thresholds:
| Ility | Question it answers | How to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Learnability | How long until a new user can complete the core task without help? | Time-to-first-success in usability testing; rate of "how do I" tickets after release. |
| Content clarity | Does the language match the user's vocabulary? | Re-read content with the observation note in hand. Count terms the user wouldn't use. |
| Responsiveness | Does the interface feel alive? | Time-to-first-byte, time-to-interactive, transitions under 100ms for the perceived-fast threshold. |
| Comprehension | Does the user understand what just happened? | After every state transition, can the user state in their own words what changed? Test in UX review. |
| Error recovery | When something goes wrong, can the user recover without support? | Self-recovery rate from error states; helpdesk volume per error type. |
| Predictability | Does the system behave the same way for the same input? | Catch surprising behaviour in exploratory testing; flag any "it depends" answer. |
What good practice looks like
The ilities are named in the Feature Brief as targets, not as values. "Gal completes her first grading session without opening the help docs." "All copy uses Gal's vocabulary; zero translations needed for the user." "Submission feedback appears in under 200ms."
They are verified before release:
- UX review reads the brief and tests against each ility.
- Exploratory testing stresses the recovery and predictability ilities.
- The signal reading measures the ilities that need post-release data — like helpdesk volume per error type.
A team that treats UX ilities as polish ships features that are technically correct and experientially exhausting. The bug count is low; the support volume is high; the satisfaction score is flat. The ilities are the chain's name for the gap.
Related crafts
- Ilities Selection — where they're picked alongside technical ilities
- Accessibility Design — a specific ility deserving its own discipline
- Content Design — how clarity ility becomes craft