1. I often think about how designing for *inconvenience* may be more of a challenge than designing to make things easy.

You have to design against the human instinct to find faster ways to do things.

2. Usually people just put up a sign, but signs are suggestions. They're easy to ignore, and our brains ignore things they see many times.

How many warning messages do you click past without even reading anymore?

3. It's something different to think through designing a system that truly reduces risk. It probably involves something interactive, possibly even with another person.

4. There's a big difference between telling people what to do vs. getting them to think. Our brains are lazy - designing to provoke a thought is harder than it sounds.

But so much design is an ignorable nag. A lazy parent. Rarely is there elegance to match the intent.

5. Many designers reference @Atul_Gawande's Checklist Manifesto - but they forget key points: a) the sheer quantity of user testing required to make a good one, and b) how much resistance most experts have for even trying them.

They're often just more signs that get ignored.

6. When it's done right, it often violates many basic usability principles. It's deliberately annoying. It forces extra steps. It slows you down. It requires precision.

7. As opposed to the dumbest common question in all of design. "Are you sure?" It often looks like hundreds of other harmless dialogs. And w/ no context - how much different is this from my last save? Or is it just empty?

For all our "AI" our safety UI is dumb as rocks.

8. Design actually has a rich heritage of research and specialized study including... Warning Design!

Most pro designers don't know about this heritage: the academic/pro gap is unfortunately wide.

But it doesn't have to be! Before you start designing, ask: who did this b4?