Partition the work into contexts — Workspace · optional

Draw the boundaries where attention and responsibility divide. A context also decides who can see what it holds, so usually the permission lines come first and the attention lines follow. Decide the switcher between contexts here too. Where the work forms one context, say so and move on.

Recognise what kind of space each context is

Read the kind from what each context holds and how the actor moves through it: one continuous space, an ordered sequence, one collection, or sections that differ in kind. Take one arm per region, where a region begins wherever the movement rule changes: a file browser and the open file are two regions of one workspace. Recognise again per platform, since the same space is often a hub on a phone and a tree on a desktop. For sections, start from the genre's default in navigation and let the growth steps correct it. A surface whose only navigation is done or cancel is a corridor, decided in the routing choice of making changes.

Pick one:

• Navigate by viewport — Pan and zoom

  One continuous space. Make position and scale nameable, so the addressing steps can give them addresses.

• Prescribe the order — Step by step

  An ordered sequence whose later steps depend on earlier ones. What has been entered has to survive a stop: the addressing steps give each step an address, and keeping the entered state is handed to memory and continuity.

• Offer the sequence, allow jumps — Pyramid

  An ordered sequence without dependencies. The actor expects their progress remembered, which is handed to memory and continuity.

• Dissolve into the collection — Overview and detail

  One collection browsed item by item. There is no topology to choose, and the design continues in composing views.

• File into a hierarchy — Multilevel tree

  Sections that differ in kind, with subsections behind them and a categorisation the actor can learn. Check the hierarchy against how actors categorise, and prefer broad and shallow to deep and narrow.

• Keep one surface — Flat navigation

  Tools that differ in kind but fit on one surface.

• Connect everything to everything — Fully connected

  Sections that differ in kind, with routine journeys between them.

• Route through a hub — Hub and spoke

  Sections that differ in kind and rarely need each other. What the hub reports across the spokes is handed to making sense at scale.

Give every state worth returning to an address — Deep linking

Address each of those states, including the step reached and the position and scale named by the layout arms. Decide which job each value in the address does: identify the thing, narrow the view, or point inside it. Leave out what the actor set once for themselves. Every address issued has to keep resolving, which the growth steps have to honour.

Decide which changes deserve a Back step — Deep linking, its history dimension

Decide over the moves the layout produces: switching context, opening an item, moving within a space. Moves a view makes on its own, such as a filter changed or a panel opened, belong to composing views.

Expose the link — Deep linking, its sharing surface

Add a copy-link control wherever the layout produced a surface with no address bar of its own.

Step up within the family

Take one arm per pain, re-running the recognition over that region alone. Count the actors' relearning as part of the cost, since every arm changes a model they have learned.

Pick one:

• Split the surface into a hub and spokes — Hub and spoke

  A flat surface whose tools outgrow the screen.

• Open direct paths between spokes — Fully connected

  A hub whose cross-spoke journeys have turned routine, so the return through the hub is paid on every trip.

• Push the depth into a tree — Multilevel tree

  Global chrome that no longer fits its sections. On a phone the same pain usually takes the previous arm's shape instead: the tab bar keeps its first few sections and the rest go behind a More tab, a small hub.

• Add sideways paths before changing shape

  A tree whose sideways trips have turned routine. Add links between the related sections first, then a command menu and search that bypass the hierarchy, and change the shape only after those.

Re-partition the regions — Hybrid patterns

When a pain is confined to one part of a region, split the region and give that part its own model, instead of changing the model for the whole.

Keep named states resolving — Deep linking, its contract

Make the reorganised space answer at every address it ever issued.