Feedforward
A preview or cue shown before you act that answers, 'What will this do?' instead of waiting until afterward to explain.
See it
What it is
Feedforward is information shown before an action that predicts its effect. A swatch previews the color on hover, a drop indicator shows where the card will land, and a button labeled 'Delete 12 files' says more than 'Continue'. Feedback answers what happened; feedforward answers what will happen if you proceed. Photoshop has done it since the 1990s by rendering a filter live on the canvas while its dialog is still open, and macOS does it by putting a green plus badge on the cursor to promise that this drag will copy rather than move.
Reach for it when the outcome is costly, unfamiliar, or hard to infer from the control. Preview transformations beside their settings, show the destination before a drop, and put totals, permissions, or affected items immediately before the final commit.
The gotcha is a preview that lies. If the hover state, price estimate, or insertion marker does not match the committed result, it destroys trust faster than no preview. Feedforward also cannot live only on hover: touch and keyboard users need focus, selection, or an explicit Preview control that exposes the same prediction.
Ask AI for it
Add feedforward to this destructive bulk action. Replace the generic submit label with 'Delete N selected files', render the exact file names and storage total in an HTML dialog before commit, and update the summary whenever selection changes. On pointer hover and keyboard focus, preview affected rows with a non-destructive CSS outline; clear the preview on pointerleave, blur, or Escape. Keep the preview derived from the same selectedIds state sent to the delete request so the prediction and committed result cannot drift.