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snr-emphasis-economy

Use this skill when deciding *how* to spend emphasis — color, weight, size, motion — across a design so that each instance lands. Trigger when picking the primary action among many CTAs, when status-color usage has multiplied across the app and lost meaning, when the brand color appears in too many places, or when a designer asks "should this also be highlighted?" and the answer is almost always no. Sub-aspect of `signal-to-noise-ratio`; read that first if you haven't already.

plugins/HDeibler/universal-design-principles/plugins/perception-and-hierarchy-principles/skills/snr-emphasis-economy/SKILL.md

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# Emphasis economy

Emphasis is a finite resource. Every time you use color, bold, size, or motion to call attention to something, you're spending some of the user's *attentional bandwidth*. Spend too freely and the bank empties — emphasis stops registering. Spend deliberately and each instance lands.

## The core idea

Emphasis works through *contrast against a quieter background*. A red badge in a sea of white badges shouts; a red badge among twenty other red badges is invisible. The job of emphasis economy is to keep the background quiet so the emphasized things stand out.

The rough budget per surface:

- **One** primary action per visible region.
- **One or two** instances of the brand-emphasis color (logo, primary CTA).
- **One or two** instances of destructive color (an "overdue" badge, a delete button — never both on the same row).
- **Zero or one** "new!" / highlight callouts.