LENS 02 / CONTEXT LENS

Bandwidth shapes the interface

Design the useful degraded state before assuming continuous connectivity or cloud access.

PREMISE

Connectivity affects more than speed. It changes whether work can be saved, evidence can be reached, retries are safe, and a person can finish the job at all.

FIELD QUESTIONS

What to ask

Which steps require a live connection?
What remains readable and editable while offline?
How does the interface represent queued, stale, or failed work?
Which retry could create a duplicate action?

EVIDENCE SIGNALS

What good evidence looks like

A minimum useful state exists without generation.
Pending and stale states are visible.
Retries are idempotent and recoverable.

FAILURE MODES

What can disappear

A draft disappears during reconnection.
The same action runs twice after a timeout.
Cached evidence appears current when it is not.

FIELD EXERCISE

Run this next

Interrupt each consequential step.
Record what the person can still see and do.
Reconcile queued work after recovery.