About Interfacing

interface phenomena laboratory — web edition v0.2

A line is a dot that went for a walk. — Paul Klee, Pedagogical Sketchbook, 1925 (after, more or less)

I. What this is

A laboratory for interface design phenomena. Thirty-six principles you can violate in real time, thirty deviations the renato.design suite commits on purpose, seventy-seven concordance entries, a hundred and thirty-three help cards. The native app is the instrument. This is the reading room.

II. Why the web edition

Because the argument travels. The native Mac app has FidgetUI, the GhostPerformer walkthrough, Nerd Mode, a Konami code we will not spoil. The web edition has the ported content, the interactive labs, and no install. Both are the same book with different bindings.

III. Ground rules

No build step, no framework, no CDN. Plain HTML, plain CSS, vanilla JavaScript. System fonts. Dark mode only because a lab about contrast cannot also be a lab about theme switching. No analytics. No cookies. Nothing watches you read.

IV. Voice

Every principle carries a primary citation in the author's own name. Where the wording could not be verified against a primary source, the line has been paraphrased or removed. Nothing here is fabricated. Nothing is borrowed without transformation. The scholarship is real; the writing is new.

V. Credits

Phil Renato — design, voice, editorial authority.
Claude — code, architecture, the boring parts and some of the interesting ones. The collaboration method is called ILCA: Iterative LLM Co-Authorship.

VI. Fair Use & Originality

Interfacing is free — free to download, free to play, free to inspect. All code is original. All visual references are labelled. No design system is mimicked pixel-for-pixel. No trademark is used as decoration. The principles being taught are in the public-domain canon of cognitive science and human-computer interaction; nobody owns Fitts's law.

VII. Where to go next

Pick a lab from the index. Or read the Deviations wing — the other half of the book. Or open the Concordance for the citations and rationale. Or the Help for every knob explained.