Eligibility or Rights Notice¶

Disclosure artifact — instantiates Latent Affordance Surfacing

Tells a specific eligible person, in plain terms, that a right, benefit, or option applies to them — and what using it means — so an entitlement they don't know they have becomes actionable.

Some latent affordances are not buttons but entitlements — a benefit, a legal right, a support channel, an option a person is qualified for but does not know applies to them. Eligibility or Rights Notice is the targeted disclosure that closes that particular gap. It does two things a generic cue cannot: it determines that this specific person is eligible, and it states the right in plain language along with what exercising it actually entails. Its defining move is the pairing — an eligibility judgment addressed to an individual, plus an honest account of consequences — because an entitlement surfaced without its conditions is a decision made half-blind, and an entitlement surfaced to the wrong person is spam. It converts "having a right" into "knowing you have it, and what it costs to use it."

Example¶

An employer's benefits portal offers new parents extended paid leave and a phased-return option, but many never apply — they assume the standard policy is the whole of it. An Eligibility or Rights Notice fires when the eligibility model flags a qualifying event drawn from HR records (with consent): a plain-language message that says, in effect, "Based on your record you qualify for up to N weeks of paid parental leave and a phased return. Here is what it covers, how it affects your pay and benefits during and after, the deadline to elect it, and how to start."

The entitlement was real and unclaimed only because no surface the employee sampled told them, at a moment that mattered, that it applied to them. The notice supplies both halves: the eligibility match ("you qualify") and the consequence disclosure (pay, benefits, deadline) that lets them choose with eyes open — then links straight to the action. Nothing about the benefit changed; its availability simply became legible to the one person entitled to it.^[1]

How it works¶

Determine eligibility for a person, not a population. Apply the rules or data that decide whether this individual qualifies, so the notice can assert applicability rather than broadcast a maybe.
Disclose the right and its consequences in plain terms. State what the entitlement is, what using it costs or obligates, and any deadline — the material facts a real decision needs, not just the upside.
Connect to the act. Route directly to the step that exercises the right, so knowing and doing are one motion rather than two.

The notice is distinguished by being a communicative act addressed to an eligible person about an entitlement — a judgment plus a disclosure, not a passive marker on a control.

Tuning parameters¶

Eligibility precision — "you may qualify" versus "you qualify." Precise assertions drive action but demand accurate data; hedged ones are safer but easy to ignore.
Disclosure depth — headline right only, or the full consequence set and obligations. Deeper protects the decision but risks burying it in detail.
Timing and channel — fired at the triggering life-event versus a standing annual notice. Event-timed reaches people when it matters; periodic notices reach those the trigger missed.
Tone — rights-affirming ("you are entitled to…") versus neutral-informational. Tone shifts uptake and how coercive or bureaucratic the notice feels.
Proof burden — auto-asserted from data versus "check whether you're eligible." Asserting is frictionless but stakes accuracy; self-check shifts effort and error onto the user.

When it helps, and when it misleads¶

Its strength is turning dormant entitlements into exercised ones, and — done honestly — the consequence disclosure is what makes the choice free rather than merely available. For rights that matter, being told plainly that they apply to you is often the entire difference between use and non-use.

Its failure modes sit on two opposite edges. Over-broad "you may be eligible" blasts erode trust the moment they're wrong; false positives read as bait and teach people to ignore the next notice. Under-disclosure is worse in the other direction — surfacing only the upside and burying the cost manufactures a decision the person will regret, which is the classic misuse: a consent-shaped dark pattern that drives uptake by hiding obligations. The mirror-image misuse is drowning the right in legalese so that it is technically disclosed and practically invisible. The discipline that keeps it honest is accurate, person-level eligibility paired with plain, complete consequence disclosure — the same notice a well-informed friend would give.

How it implements the components¶

Eligibility or Rights Notice realizes the entitlement-disclosure side of the archetype — the components that decide who qualifies and tell them honestly:

intended_user_and_eligibility_model — it determines that a specific person is eligible, so the surfacing is targeted to those the right actually applies to.
rights_and_consequence_disclosure — it states the entitlement and what exercising it entails — costs, obligations, deadlines — in terms a real decision can use.

The always-on control-level marker, the capability inventory, and placement testing — permission_and_role_badging, latent_capability_inventory, surface_placement_and_timing_rule — belong to the Permission Badge or Available-Action Chip sibling, Affordance Visibility Audit, and Call-to-Action Placement Test; this notice is a communicative act to a person, not a property of a control.

Instantiates: Latent Affordance Surfacing — it surfaces entitlements a qualified person doesn't know apply to them.
Sibling mechanisms: Permission Badge or Available-Action Chip · Guided Walkthrough or Onboarding Step · Signage and Wayfinding Revision · Empty-State Prompt

Notes¶

The notice is the communicative cousin of a Permission Badge or Available-Action Chip: the badge is a passive property of a control ("you can click this"), while the notice is an addressed message about an entitlement ("you are entitled to this, and here is what it means"). The two compose well — the badge marks the control on the surface, the notice explains and justifies the right — but they are not substitutes, and using a mute badge where a right needs disclosure leaves the consequences unspoken.

References¶

[1] In public economics, non-take-up is the well-studied phenomenon of people who are eligible for a benefit failing to claim it — often because they do not know it applies to them or find the terms opaque. An eligibility notice targets exactly that gap: not the existence of the right, but the eligible person's awareness that it is theirs. ↩