A system's response to a user's action that confirms the action was received and communicates what happened. Feedback can be visual, auditory, or haptic, and is essential for users to understand the results of their interactions and feel in control.
Common contexts
- Button state changes to 'Saving...' then 'Saved' after a user submits a form to confirm the action completed
- A progress indicator communicating that a slow file upload is still running rather than frozen
- Haptic vibration on mobile confirming a swipe-to-delete action was registered before the item disappears
Use when
For every user action that has a consequence — especially destructive actions, slow processes, or interactions with no visible result. The higher the stakes or latency of an action, the more explicit the feedback needs to be.
Avoid when
Don't add feedback animations or notifications for every minor interaction — excessive feedback creates visual noise that trains users to ignore all system responses, including the critical ones.
Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of duplicate submissions, repeated taps, and support tickets — users who aren't sure their action worked will simply try again, often with unintended consequences.
Real-world examples
- Duolingo shows a green 'Correct!' banner with a trophy animation immediately after a right answer — feedback so fast and positive that it functions as a variable-reward reinforcement mechanism sustaining lesson completion.
- Stripe's payment form highlights the exact field that contains an error in red with an inline message ('Card number is too short') rather than a generic page-level error, reducing failed-payment retries by 30%.
- GitHub's pull-request comment system provides feedback at the line level, not the file level, enabling reviewers to give precise, actionable feedback that developers can act on without re-reading entire files.