I opened a budget app last month to check one number, how much I had left to spend, and I could not find it. The balance was on one screen, the spending was on another, and the budget was a third screen with a tiny progress bar I had to squint at. I knew the data was in there somewhere, the app had it, it just was not showing me. I closed it and did the math in my head instead, which is the exact moment a UI has failed at its job.

I keep coming back to a line from Ben Halpern's post, ask more of your UI . The idea is simple: a UI should act like an instrument panel, showing you what is going on, live, instead of hiding the state behind taps and menus. A car dashboard does not make you open a menu to see your speed. It is just there, all the time, because the whole point of the dashboard is to tell you where you stand.

I built a little budget tracker to try the idea out, nothing fancy, just a panel that shows the four things I actually check.…