Step
A step is the user's single act of moving forward in whatever they're pursuing, made in the moment from wherever they currently stand. They look at what's within reach (buttons, tools, things they know how to do), pick one, use it, and land somewhere new; then pick again from there.
Definition
The user's just-in-time advance from now-state at a moment in pursuit.
Selection and action as sequenced events
A step is two sequenced events. The user evaluates available options — reachable affordances and internal capacities — and produces a chosen option; this is the selection phase. The user then acts on that selection; this is the executed action. The two events are distinct moments and can come apart in two ways:
- Selection without action: the user picks an option but never executes it, lost to energy depletion, distraction, or last-moment reconsideration.
- Action with diverged result: the chosen option misfires (broken link, failed tool), underperforms (less effective than expected), or contradicts the signal that drove the selection (see scent-breaking).
Stepping is iterative
A step lands the user in a new now-state, from which they step again. The user selects, acts, lands, selects again. Each step is its own evaluation against current state and current options; the next step isn't pre-committed by the previous one.
Continuation is conditional on each step's success. A step that fails to produce a workable next state ends or detours the user's pursuit-arc rather than allowing skip-ahead continuation — the user can't bypass a broken step to land further along the route. This is the basis for single-elimination stakes: investment in any later step is conditional on every prior step succeeding.
Steps, once executed, write to the actualized route — the cumulative trace of steps taken. The actualized route is what step iteration produces; it's the route the user traveled, distinct from any route the provider planned.
Steps that advance via internal capacity
Hopscotch is the affordance-specific case of step, where the means is moving from one external affordance to another. Not every step is a hopscotch. A user running a stored mental procedure, applying body skill, or recalling a remembered answer is advancing through pursuit without engaging an external affordance.
Step covers user advancement whether or not an external affordance is engaged. Reachability questions operate at this scope: a user without user-side capacity — energy, attention, skill — can't step regardless of what's reachable, independent of the affordance landscape.
Example
A user clicks an ad for ballet slippers and lands on a product page. From there, they need to advance toward purchase. The reachable options include the "Add to cart" button, related-item thumbnails in a sidebar, the site's search bar, and the navigation menu.
Their selection — choosing "Add to cart" over the alternatives — happens in their evaluation of which option best fits their pursuit at this moment. The click is the executed action that follows. If they get distracted and tab away before clicking, selection happened but action didn't. If they click and the button misfires, action happened but the step didn't produce a workable next state. In both cases, the step doesn't continue the pursuit-arc as the selection anticipated.