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expectation-effect-priming

Apply expectation priming — deliberately shaping the prior context (brand, marketing, price, social proof, recommendations) that users bring to a product before they ever touch it. Use when planning a launch, choosing positioning copy, deciding pricing tier, designing the marketing surface, or framing a feature for first encounter. Pre-encounter priming is often more powerful than in-product polish, because it sets the lens through which the in-product experience will be interpreted. The skill is calibrating priming honestly enough to outlast the first session.

plugins/HDeibler/universal-design-principles/plugins/interaction-and-control-principles/skills/expectation-effect-priming/SKILL.md

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# Expectation Effect — priming

Pre-encounter priming is everything that happens before the user touches the product. It includes branding, marketing copy, screenshots and demos, price, channel of arrival, social proof, and the user's prior associations with similar products. Priming sets the lens through which the user will perceive every subsequent interaction.

The leverage on perception from priming is often larger than the leverage from in-product polish, because priming operates first and sets the baseline expectations that the product is then measured against.

## What gets primed, and how

Priming happens through several distinct channels.

**Brand and visual identity.** A logotype, a color palette, a typography choice, an aesthetic register. Apple's brand primes "premium, simple, designed-for-humans." Mailchimp's brand primes "small-business friendly, casual, illustrated." Stripe's brand primes "developer-respected, technically credible, clean." These are sustained over years of consistent use and color how every new product or feature is initially read.

**Pricing.** Price is one of the strongest single priming signals. A $200/year tool primes users to expect substantial value, a polished experience, and responsive support. A $5/month tool primes users to expect basic competence and limited support. A free tool primes users to expect ads, limitations, or unstable feature sets. Pricing within a category band signals "this is a premium variant" or "this is a budget variant" with high reliability.