aesthetics-and-emotion-principles

Use this skill when the design's perceived quality affects whether users will tolerate friction, give the product a chance, or judge it as well-made — which is most consumer-facing surfaces, marketing, onboarding, first-run, and any moment where an unfamiliar user is forming a quick judgment. Trigger when designing landing pages, sign-up flows, first-time UX, app store screenshots, demo videos, sales decks, or any surface where the user's first impression matters and friction is unavoidable. Also trigger when defending why "polish" matters on a working product, or when the user asks "should we ship the spartan version or invest in design?"

Use this skill whenever a design task involves the felt quality of an interface — beauty, polish, brand voice, persuasion, emotional response, marketing surfaces, hero sections, onboarding tone, empty/celebration states, illustrations, mascots, avatars. Trigger when the user mentions tone, polish, brand, "feels cold/cheap/premium," personality, voice, mascot, hero, "make it more delightful," or asks how a screen should make the user feel. Framework-agnostic. Routes the model to the right aesthetics principle in this plugin.

Use this skill when designing brand voice, marketing positioning, mascot or character design, narrative arcs in product onboarding, or any expressive surface where the design must communicate personality. Trigger when picking how a brand "feels" (rebellious, nurturing, sage-like), when designing storytelling for marketing, or when reviewing why a brand voice feels generic. Archetypes is one of the foundational principles in 'Universal Principles of Design' (Lidwell, Holden, Butler 2003), grounded in Jung's analytical psychology and widely applied in branding, storytelling, and product personality.

Use this skill when picking a brand archetype, propagating it across product and marketing surfaces, or auditing brand-voice consistency. Trigger when designing the voice of microcopy, marketing pages, support tone, or any brand-facing communication. Sub-aspect of `archetypes`; read that first.

Use this skill when designing narrative content — landing pages, case studies, onboarding flows, marketing campaigns, sales decks, ad arcs. Trigger when picking how to frame a customer story, when writing a launch campaign, or when the user mentions "this campaign feels flat" or "we need a better narrative." Sub-aspect of `archetypes`; read that first.

Apply the Exposure Effect (mere-exposure effect) — the well-documented finding that repeated exposure to something tends to increase liking for it. Use when launching new features, planning redesigns, building brand familiarity, or evaluating user resistance to change. Familiarity reads as comfort and trust; novelty reads as risk. The effect explains why redesigns generate disproportionate user backlash, why incremental change beats radical change, and why brand consistency over time builds value beyond any single design choice.

Use the exposure effect deliberately in onboarding and habit formation — getting users to repeated, low-friction encounters with the product so familiarity builds and preference forms. Use when designing onboarding flows, planning feature introductions, building user habits, or evaluating why users churn after first use. The exposure effect operates over time; products that get users to come back early benefit from accumulated familiarity that single-session products don't.

Manage the risks of redesigns when users have built up exposure-based preference for the existing design. Use when planning a major redesign, evaluating user backlash to changes, deciding between incremental and radical change, or recovering from a redesign that generated complaints. Users like what they're used to; redesigns must be planned to manage the transition cost. Even objectively-better redesigns trigger resistance disproportionate to the actual change.

Use this skill when designing the visual or aesthetic layer of a product, deciding between expressive style and functional restraint, evaluating decorative elements, or arguing about whether a feature should ship plain vs. polished. Trigger when stakeholders ask "should we add visual flair to this?", when reviewing a design that "feels too decorated," or when picking between competing visual directions. Form Follows Function is one of the foundational principles in 'Universal Principles of Design' (Lidwell, Holden, Butler 2003) and one of the most-quoted dictums in design — but its meaning depends on which interpretation (descriptive vs. prescriptive) you take.

Use this skill when applying the descriptive form-follows-function interpretation — functional clarity as a source of aesthetic quality. Trigger when designing tools, dashboards, or instrumental surfaces where every element should earn its presence. Sub-aspect of `form-follows-function`; read that first.

Use this skill when the team is in a form-vs-function debate and needs to step back to define what "success" actually means for the design. Trigger when stakeholders disagree about visual treatment, when a design feels off and no one can articulate why, or when reviewing a design against an unclear brief. Sub-aspect of `form-follows-function`; read that first.

Apply the principle of Immersion — designing for sustained focus and engagement, where the user becomes absorbed in the activity and loses awareness of the surrounding environment. Use when designing for creative work, deep reading, gameplay, learning, or any activity that benefits from extended focused attention. Immersion requires removing distractions, providing clear feedback, calibrating challenge to skill, and respecting the user's flow state. Modern attention-driven products often work against immersion in pursuit of engagement metrics; designs that genuinely serve immersion are increasingly distinctive.

Recognize and design against the cost of attention fragmentation — the disproportionate damage that even small interruptions do to focused work. Use when designing notification systems, evaluating whether a feature should interrupt the user, planning feature introductions, or auditing a product for unintended attention costs. The cost of breaking immersion is much higher than designers usually estimate; restraint in interruption is one of the most user-respectful design moves.

Design for flow specifically — calibrate challenge to skill, provide immediate feedback, set clear goals, foreground the activity. Use when designing tools for skilled work (writing, drawing, programming, music), games, learning experiences, or any context where sustained engagement is the goal. Flow is the most-researched aspect of immersion; the conditions for it are specific and the design moves that support it are well-documented.

Apply the principle of Wabi-Sabi — the aesthetic embrace of imperfection, impermanence, and naturalness. Use when designing for warmth and authenticity, creating spaces that feel lived-in rather than sterile, choosing handcrafted-feeling materials over machined perfection, or evaluating whether a design feels too polished and impersonal. Wabi-sabi resists the digital-design tendency toward pixel-perfect uniformity in favor of subtle asymmetry, organic textures, and the visible mark of process. Used appropriately, it produces designs that feel human; used reflexively, it produces fake-looking sloppiness.

Design intentional imperfection that reads as warmth — subtle asymmetry, hand-drawn elements, organic textures, intentional irregularities. Use when adding human warmth to a digital design, distinguishing from competitors with uniform design systems, designing for personal or creative contexts. The skill is making imperfection look intentional and refined rather than sloppy or broken; the line between "designed warmth" and "looks unfinished" is narrow.

Apply wabi-sabi restraint — the discipline of leaving things out, of resisting decoration, of letting empty space and silence do design work. Use when designing reading-focused interfaces, paring back accumulated clutter, choosing between decoration and absence, or evaluating whether each element earns its place. Restraint is the often-overlooked half of wabi-sabi: the imperfection side gets attention, but the principle is equally about modesty and the elegance of what's not there.