Recognize when you've fallen off the happy path, slow down, and don't panic. For better or worse, much of recent UI design improves the Happy Path at the expen

Recognize when you've fallen off the happy path, slow down, and don't panic. For better or worse, much of recent UI design improves the Happy Path at the expense of tools when you fall off. But if you can get folks to recognize that they've gotten into a bad state, they can at least stop making it worse and ask for help. Quick examples: If it froze after pressing a button, don't continuously press the button, at best it does nothing and at worst it ruins everything (looking at you "transaction processing don't hit refresh" messages in 2022). "I deleted photos from my phone, panic, instantly mash sync to cloud!" - and now they're gone from the cloud too because its a 2 way sync "The internet doesn't work, should I factory reset my phone?" - no, not as step number one. Mostly, non-technical people don't know or care about why something is happening, or even really what is happening, and that's not a bad thing. But at least knowing if whats happening is "Good" or "Bad" can go a long way, though its getting harder now that OSs in general will signal less and less that you've gotten into a bad state.