Error Tolerance

Error Tolerance is a design principle that allows users to make mistakes without significantly impacting their experience. Error-tolerant designs include features like undo options, clear error messages, and the ability to recover from mistakes easily. This helps reduce user frustration and ensures smoother interactions even when mistakes occur.

Error-tolerant products feel safe to explore — users don't hesitate to try things because they know mistakes are recoverable. Products with low error tolerance (no undo, permanent deletes without confirmation, forms that lose data on back navigation) train users to be overly cautious, which reduces engagement and feature discovery. For enterprise tools where mistakes can have real consequences, error tolerance is a core trust signal.

Figma automatically saves every change to version history — so you can always roll back to any previous state. This error tolerance is a core reason designers feel comfortable experimenting freely in the tool, which increases engagement and time-in-product.