Don't hide things from people who forget things.

Design · 6 min read

I was designing the medication entry screen for an NDIS life management app. The person using this screen might be taking three different medications at different times on different days. That's a lot of information to enter. The obvious design move is to tuck things away. Use a dropdown for the days. Collapse the time picker. Hide the details behind an accordion.

I almost did that. Then I thought about who'd actually be using it. Someone who might get a phone call halfway through. Someone who might put the phone down, make a cup of tea, and come back five minutes later with no memory of where they were up to. Someone who needs to see what they've already entered while they're still entering more.

Hidden UI isn't clean design for these users. It's a wall.

The problem with hiding things

There's a design principle called "visibility of system status." It's one of Jakob Nielsen's ten usability heuristics, and it's been around since 1994. The idea is simple: the system should always keep users informed about what's going on. What's been entered. What's left to do. Where they are in the process.

Dropdowns violate this. The user selects something, the dropdown closes, and now they have to remember what they picked. Collapsible panels do the same thing. The user enters information, the panel collapses, and the data disappears from view. For someone with strong working memory, that's fine. For someone with cognitive impairment, early-stage dementia, or even just a tendency to get distracted, it's not fine. It's a point of failure.

Research from the Nielsen Norman Group consistently shows that hidden navigation and collapsed content reduce discoverability. Users don't interact with what they can't see. And for users with cognitive disabilities, the problem isn't just discoverability. It's continuity. They need to see where they've been to know where they're going.

What this looks like in practice

The medication screen I was designing needed to handle a real scenario: someone takes a Webster pack at 8am on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. They take a separate single medication at 2pm every day. And they've got a third one that's only on Tuesdays and Thursdays at dinner.

The temptation is to design a form where you enter one medication, save it, go back to a list, then add another. In-out-in-out. Three separate trips through the same flow. For a typical user, that's mildly annoying. For someone who gets distracted between steps, it's a disaster. They add the first one, get interrupted, come back, and have no idea whether they already added the second one or not.

So we kept everything on one screen. As you add a medication, it appears in a list above the form. You can see what you've already entered while you're entering the next one. No collapsing. No hiding. No in-and-out. The screen gets longer, sure. But the user never loses their place.

This isn't just an accessibility thing

Look, I designed this for an NDIS app where the users have genuine cognitive and physical challenges. But the principle applies everywhere. Anyone who's ever filled out a long form and lost their place knows this feeling. Anyone who's ever had to re-enter information because they accidentally navigated away. Anyone who's ever stared at a collapsed section and thought "did I already do that part?"

The WCAG 2.1 guidelines recommend consistent and predictable navigation for all users. But beyond compliance, there's a simpler truth: showing people what they've done gives them confidence to keep going. Hiding it makes them second-guess themselves.

If you're designing for people who struggle with your app, start by looking at what you've hidden. Every dropdown, every collapsed panel, every "show more" button is a place where someone can lose the thread. That doesn't mean you can't use these patterns at all. It means you should use them deliberately, and always ask: what happens if the person using this forgets what's behind that fold?

The rule I use now

If the user needs to remember what they entered in order to enter the next thing, it should be visible. That's it. No exceptions. If medication one affects whether they add medication two, show medication one. If the time they picked for Monday matters when they're picking the time for Tuesday, show Monday's time.

It means longer screens. It means less "minimal" design. But it means people actually finish what they started. And for an app that's supposed to help someone manage their health, that's the only thing that matters.

Sources
10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (Nielsen Norman Group) - Heuristic #1: Visibility of system status.
WCAG 2.1 Understanding Documents (W3C) - Guidelines for consistent and predictable navigation.

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