---
name: Feedforward
slug: feedforward
category: interaction
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: What an interface says about the result of an act before it is
  taken, the half of the loop that sits ahead of the action rather than after
  it.
aliases:
  - name: feed forward
    source: community
  - name: action preview
    source: community
tags:
  - perception
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - affordance
    - signifier
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - microinteraction
    - drop-indicator
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "Djajadiningrat, Overbeeke and Wensveen: But how, Donald, tell us how?
      (DIS 2002)"
    url: https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/but-how-donald-tell-us-how-on-the-meaning-of-interaction-design-t
  - title: "Vermeulen, Luyten, van den Hoven and Coninx: Crossing the bridge over
      Norman's gulf of execution (CHI 2013)"
    url: https://research.tue.nl/en/publications/crossing-the-bridge-over-normans-gulf-of-execution-revealing-feed
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: telling someone what will happen before they act
---

The word arrived as a complaint. In 2002 Djajadiningrat, Overbeeke and Wensveen published a
paper whose title asks Donald Norman how, exactly, a person is supposed to know what a
control does, and their answer was that an interface owes two things and the literature
only talked about one. Feedback reports what happened. Feedforward communicates the purpose
of an action before it is performed. Eleven years later Vermeulen, Luyten, van den Hoven
and Coninx pinned it to Norman's own diagram: feedback is the bridge over the gulf of
evaluation, and feedforward is the bridge over the gulf of execution, the gap between
having an intention and knowing which act will satisfy it.

The reason the word is worth learning is that it separates three things a crowded
neighbourhood keeps mashing together. An [affordance](/affordance) is what the thing lets
you do, a property of the relationship between an object and a person. A
[signifier](/signifier) is the mark that tells you where and how to do it, the underline
under a link, the handle on a drawer. Feedforward is neither: it is a statement about the
outcome. "You can press this" is an affordance, "press here" is a signifier, and "pressing
this deletes 14 files and cannot be undone" is feedforward. The test is the tense. If the
sentence the interface is saying uses the future, and names a consequence rather than a
mechanism, it is feedforward.

It pays for itself most obviously where the act is expensive: destructive commands, bulk
operations on a selection, anything irreversible, anything that costs money, anything that
grants a permission. In all of those the general rule is that specificity is the whole value.
"This may affect other items" is worse than nothing, because it teaches the reader that the
warnings here are noise; "removes 14 projects, every build log, and the deploy keys" is a
sentence somebody can actually act on. The same logic explains the pattern's smallest
instances, where feedforward is not text at all: a [drop indicator](/drop-indicator) drawing
the line the row will land on, a [drag preview](/drag-preview) carrying what is being moved,
a price total updating while the option is only hovered. Each of those is a claim about the
result, made before the release.

Two duties come with it. The first is reach: an announcement that only exists on hover does
not exist for a touch screen, for a keyboard, or for a screen reader, so the consequence has
to be stated somewhere durable as well, on focus, in the confirmation step, or in the label
itself. The second is honesty, which is where the pattern meets its abusers. A cost revealed
only after the commit is [drip pricing](/drip-pricing), and a preview that omits the part
somebody would object to is the same lie with better manners. In the four parts of a
[microinteraction](/microinteraction), feedforward is the odd one out: it is not the
trigger, the rules, the feedback or the loop, but the thing said before the trigger is
pulled. That is exactly why it needs its own name, and why so many interfaces have none of
it.