/layers-surface

Assumes /layers-intro has been loaded. This skill is a library of techniques, not a script — see "How to use these skills" there.

The surface layer is where everything decided below becomes something a person actually encounters: words, sounds, visuals, physical affordances, motion, feedback. It's the most medium-specific layer, but the decisions that matter most first are universal — they hold whether the surface is a screen, voice interface, physical device, or service touchpoint.

Surface problems are often symptoms of deeper ones. The central discipline here is telling apart issues you can fix at the surface from issues that need a lower layer revisited.

The decisions this layer makes

• Whether the surface honours the vocabulary and objects from the conceptual model
• Whether every affordance from the breadboard is present — and whether any surface element has no model behind it
• Whether the emotional register fits the jobs users are doing
• How the user knows what happened, what's in progress, and what went wrong
• What's most prominent, and whether it should be
• Whether everything is accessible to the users who need it