Discoverability

How easily users can find features, content, or actions within an interface.

stellae.design

Design Principles

Discoverability is the degree to which a user can find functionality without external instruction. A discoverable interface reveals capabilities through clear visual affordances, logical organization, and progressive disclosure. Research shows average users use less than 20% of a product's functionality, often because the rest is undiscoverable.

Why It Matters

Discoverability measures how easily users can find features, content, and actions within an interface — and undiscoverable features are functionally nonexistent to the users who cannot find them, regardless of how well those features are designed or how valuable they could be. Poor discoverability is one of the most insidious usability problems because it generates no error messages, no complaints, and no support tickets — users simply never encounter the capability and never know what they are missing. Improving discoverability directly increases feature adoption, reduces the gap between what a product can do and what users actually use, and ensures that development investment translates into user value.

Real-World Examples

Slack's command palette and slash commands

Slack surfaces its extensive feature set through multiple discovery channels — a persistent sidebar for common actions, slash commands for power users, a search bar that finds channels, people, and messages, and a command palette accessible via keyboard shortcut that indexes every available action. Users at different expertise levels discover features through whichever channel matches their working style, ensuring that capabilities are accessible whether a user prefers visual browsing, keyboard-driven interaction, or text-based search. The layered discovery approach means no feature is accessible through only one path.

Figma's contextual toolbar

Figma surfaces relevant tools and options in a contextual toolbar that changes based on what the user has selected — text tools appear when text is selected, frame options appear for frames, and component controls appear for instances. This context-sensitive discoverability means users encounter features precisely when they are relevant, reducing the need to memorize toolbar locations or search through menus for the right tool. The pattern teaches users about available capabilities organically through their normal workflow.

Counter-example

Feature hidden behind an unlabeled icon

A productivity app's most powerful feature — a natural-language task parser that can create structured tasks from freeform text — is accessible only through a small, unlabeled icon in the corner of the input field that resembles a decorative element rather than an interactive control. User analytics show that only 3 percent of users have ever activated the feature, despite it being the primary differentiator from competing products. The feature is well-built and valuable but effectively invisible, wasting the engineering investment because discoverability was treated as an afterthought.

Role-Specific Guidance

Common Mistakes

• The most common mistake is confusing a clean interface with a discoverable one — removing visual cues, labels, and affordances in pursuit of minimalism makes the interface look elegant but hides functionality behind invisible interactions that only existing users know about. Teams also assume that onboarding tours solve discoverability problems, when in reality most users dismiss tours and forget the content within minutes; persistent, contextual discoverability built into the interface is far more effective than one-time walkthroughs. Another frequent error is relying on documentation or help centers as the primary discovery mechanism, when the overwhelming majority of users will never proactively consult external resources to learn about features they do not know exist.