An edit and an interface are the same problem: someone else’s attention, held gently, for exactly as long as you’ve earned it.
In the edit bay you learn a brutal truth early: nobody owes you their attention. Every cut is a small contract — keep watching, this is going somewhere. Interfaces run on the same contract, and most of them breach it by the second screen. Pacing is information architecture A documentary doesn’t open with its thesis statement and twelve navigation options. It opens with one image that earns the next one. Good onboarding works identically: one idea per beat, ruthlessly sequenced, everything else deferred. When I design a flow now, I storyboard it like a scene — what does the user feel at each cut? Kill your darlings, product edition Editors cut their favorite shot every week because the story didn’t need it. Product teams ship their favorite feature anyway. The discipline transfers: the feature that tested well in your head but slows the story down is a darling, and darlings die so the cut can live.