Tiebreaker 5: Restraint is the default

When a decision has not been made, ship the plainer thing and surface the question.

An invented accent, a decorative animation, a gradient filling an empty space — each is a decision made by default rather than on purpose. Greyscale plus a stated question is a better deliverable than colour plus an unstated assumption.

Method: design in black and white first. Build the layout, spacing, size and contrast with no colour at all, then introduce colour only where it carries meaning — interactive elements and system states. Starting in greyscale forces hierarchy to work structurally, and whatever colour you then add is doing a job rather than filling a gap. It is also the fastest route to a palette that survives a colour-blind user.

Ceiling: restraint applies to decoration, never to information. Minimal is not the same as simple. A sparse interface that has dropped labels, selected states or visible actions is harder to use than a busier one that keeps them — it just photographs better. Strip styling freely; never strip the answers to *what is this*, *which one is selected*, and *what can I do next* (E-63).