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Error tolerance 1:02
A 62-second explainer of Error tolerance, narrated over the same demo you can try yourself.
Try the interactive Error tolerance demo
What this video covers
Error tolerance is designing so that when people make mistakes - and they will - the consequences are small and recoverable rather than catastrophic. Autosave, undo, drafts, confirmations on the genuinely destructive, and forgiving inputs all assume human error is normal and build the system to absorb it gracefully instead of punishing it.
In the unforgiving version one slip wiped your work for good; in the tolerant one the same slip was a shrug - undo, or it was autosaved anyway. Same human error, wildly different cost. That's error tolerance: you can't stop people making mistakes, but you can design so mistakes barely matter. Recoverable beats irreversible almost every time.
