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cognition-router

Use this skill whenever a design task involves cognition, mental models, learnability, complexity reduction, defaults, memory, scanning, or comprehension — regardless of framework or platform. Trigger when the user is designing forms, settings, onboarding, dashboards with many widgets, complex tables, navigation IA, search experiences, or any flow that has many options or asks the user to learn something new. Trigger when the user mentions "too complex," "too many options," "users keep getting confused," defaults, labels, copy, mental models, progressive disclosure, autocomplete, or ergonomics. Routes the model to the right cognition principle in this plugin.

plugins/HDeibler/universal-design-principles/plugins/cognition-and-learnability-principles/skills/cognition-router/SKILL.md

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Repository last updated
Nov 6, 2026
License
Apache-2.0

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# Cognition & learnability — router

This plugin holds the principles that govern how easily a user can understand, learn, and remember an interface. They are framework-agnostic and apply equally to web apps, mobile apps, desktop software, control panels, in-car displays, and printed forms.

## Principles in this plugin

Each principle has its own skill (with sub-aspect skills where useful). Principles marked **[full]** have reference-grade skill files; the rest are planned and will be added in subsequent passes.

### Complexity reduction

- **`hicks-law`** *[full]* — decision time grows with the log of the number of options.
  - Sub-skills: `hicks-law-menus`, `hicks-law-defaults`, `hicks-law-pricing`.
- **`80-20-rule`** — 80% of usage flows through 20% of features; design the default for the 80%.
- **`chunking`** — group items into ~4±1 chunks so working memory can hold them.