UX Glossary · P
Progressive disclosure
Showing what is needed now and deferring the rest, so complexity is available without being constant.
Progressive disclosure shows the common or essential options first and keeps advanced ones one step away. Jack Carroll’s work on minimalist instruction in the 1980s underpins it, and Nielsen has written about it extensively since.
The point is that it does not remove capability. It sequences it.
Why it beats simply removing things
The usual answer to a crowded interface is to cut features, which trades one group of users for another. Progressive disclosure serves both: novices are not confronted with everything, experts still reach it.
Familiar patterns: an “Advanced settings” section, a form revealing fields only when relevant, a menu with common actions and a “More” item, a report with drill-down.
Where it goes wrong
Hiding the wrong things. If most users need it, it is not advanced, and burying it just adds a step for everyone. What is common should be decided from data, not from an assumption about what a sophisticated user wants.
No signal that more exists. Disclosure only works if the user can tell there is something behind the control. A section that gives no hint of its contents will not be opened.
Too many layers. Three levels of nesting to reach a routine setting is not disclosure, it is a maze.
In practice
The test is whether the deferred item can be found by someone who does not already know it exists. If not, it has been hidden rather than disclosed.