What design strategy helps prevent user errors by guiding actions before they occur?

• A. Removing extraneous elements to focus on essential content and actions; reduces cognitive load.
• B. Error prevention, such as disabling invalid actions and validating input as needed.
• C. Clear, specific messages with suggested corrective actions and non-jarring tone
• D. Accessible, task-specific help when users need it; not to overwhelm primary interface

Answer: (B)

Preventing user errors by guiding actions before they occur is about building proactive constraints and real-time checks into the interface. By disabling actions that aren’t valid in the current context and validating input as it’s entered, the design steers users toward correct steps and catches mistakes before they can cause problems. For example, keeping a Submit button disabled until all fields are valid prevents bad submissions, and live input validation helps users fix issues on the fly. While other strategies focus on reducing cognitive load, delivering post‑error messages, or offering help when needed, they don’t prevent mistakes during the action itself the way error prevention does.