A complete rethink of the transparency dial mechanics and status panel design.
The Unusual Design Brief
Most interface controls help users do something: submit a form, adjust a setting, navigate to a destination. The transparency dial helps users see something — specifically, how the interface they're currently looking at is being used to influence them. It's a meta-control: a UI element about the UI elements surrounding it.
This creates unusual design constraints. The dial must be prominent enough to find but unobtrusive enough not to dominate the interface it's disclosing. It must communicate clearly without itself becoming a site of psychological manipulation. It must feel like a genuine offer of transparency, not a performance of it.
What Changed
The revamped dial separates the control (the dial itself) from the status panel (the display of current disclosure level and active tactic). Previously these were combined into a single element, creating visual confusion about whether you were interacting with a control or reading information. The separation makes the affordance clear.
The status panel now shows the current active psychological tactic in plain language — "Social Proof active" rather than an icon or abstract indicator. When you know what's operating, you can evaluate whether it's affecting you. Naming the tactic is the core act of transparency.
Design as Honesty Practice
Every iteration of the transparency dial is itself a transparency exercise: we're figuring out how to make disclosure feel like a feature rather than a legal disclaimer. The failed versions — versions that felt obligatory, versions that felt overwhelming, versions that felt like they were making excuses — taught us what genuine transparency looks like in interface form.
This version is not the final version. The dial will continue to evolve as we learn more about how people interact with disclosed manipulation. But it's honest, functional, and deliberately designed — which is more than can be said for most interfaces that exist to influence you.
Experiment Context
- Commit
- 20f5179
- Mutation rationale
- refine(transparency): revamp lens dial and status panel
- Last reviewed
- February 21, 2026