Mapping
Don Norman identified mapping as a core design principle in The Design of Everyday Things (1988). Mapping is the relationship between controls and their effects. When the relationship is natural — when spatial correspondence makes the connection obvious — no learning is required.
The steering wheel is perfect mapping. Turn left, car goes left. Turn right, car goes right. The control mirrors the effect. No translation needed.
Four burners on a stove, four knobs in a row. Which knob controls which burner? The mapping is arbitrary, requiring labels or memorization. Arrange the knobs in a square matching the burner layout, and the mapping becomes natural. Same function, better design.
Good mapping exploits spatial cognition. The brain understands space intuitively. Controls arranged to mirror the things they control leverage millions of years of navigating physical environments.
Consider light switches. One switch, one light: trivial mapping. Four switches in a row, four lights in a room: which is which? You experiment, you memorize, you label. Now arrange the switches spatially to match the room layout. The mapping becomes obvious.
Aircraft cockpits evolved toward better mapping. Early planes had controls scattered by when they were added, not by logic. Modern cockpits cluster controls near representations of what they affect. The overhead panel mirrors the overhead systems. Mapping reduces errors when errors kill.
Digital interfaces often abandon spatial mapping entirely. The “hamburger menu” hides navigation. The settings icon could mean anything. The three-dot menu is pure convention. Without physical constraints, designers default to hiding rather than showing, requiring learning rather than leveraging intuition.
The principle: if a control affects a thing, place the control where the thing is (or would be). If controls have an order, make their arrangement match. When the map matches the territory, the territory teaches the map.
Related: [[affordances]], [[desire-paths]], [[legibility]]