While held below threshold, the cursor should show no drag feedback

What it is

While a button is held but displacement has not crossed threshold, the system remains a click candidate, so cursor and object should show no drag feedback. An early grab hand, translucent preview, object following, or insertion marker makes people believe dragging began; releasing then clicks instead, creating an outcome mismatch.

Why it happens

Drag recognition is a state machine: after press it waits for displacement, entering dragging only on crossing. Feedback that leaks the next state before transition gives false feedforward. What makes this worse than a mere visual glitch is what happens once someone sees the leaked preview and acts on it — seeing the object already "following" the pointer, they carry it to a new spot and only then release — while the system internally never actually crossed the threshold and never entered the dragging state. What the person believes happened and what the system actually recorded have now diverged completely: the person believes they moved something, the system logged only a click, and afterward there is no log or state that explains where the discrepancy came from, because the leaked preview was never treated as real state by the system in the first place.

Where it stops holding

No drag feedback does not mean no press feedback. A pressed button, selection, or draggable handle can remain visible as long as it does not imply movement. Some direct-manipulation contexts may have an explicit hold mode, but its rule and outcome must agree. A long-press context menu is a non-conflicting exception: it is judged by dwell time rather than displacement, and as long as its own feedback does not imply the object is being moved, it does not contradict the rule that below-threshold interaction shows no drag feedback.

Applying it

• Place object movement, drag ghosts, drop indicators, and drag cursors strictly after threshold crossing; internal state and on-screen presentation must stay in agreement before the threshold decision is made.
• Use a lighter, visually distinct cue for the press candidate — such as only deepening a button's pressed appearance — with nothing that implies its position is about to change.
• How to check: have participants perform a series of tiny moves followed by an immediate release, ask what they expect to happen after each one, and tabulate the mismatch rate between expectation and actual outcome — a high rate means visual feedback is leaking state before the threshold decision completes.

Related

• Same group: C1.22.1 A threshold that is too small misclassifies natural hand tremor as drag intent · C1.22.2 A threshold that is too large discards real short drags as clicks · C1.22.3 Drag thresholds must scale with input precision and display density, not fixed pixels · C1.22.5 A directional threshold can distinguish horizontal dragging from vertical scrolling at gesture start
• Nearby: D1 Output and feedback channels · E1 Interface elements and controls
• Search terms: drag feedback · state machine · feedforward