Stop hiding features users don't have access to

I am going to spell this one out for folks: in your designs, when a user doesn't have access to a feature, don't hide it. Show that they don't have access to it.

I have forgotten the amount of times I've lost my reason looking for a feature that I'm sure exists, but I don't have access to in this particular instance. For example, today an account manager asked me to make my project available in GitHub to another contributor. So off I waddle over into GitHub looking for contributor access. In fact, I thought, you know what, I don't need it to be private; I'll make it public within the organisation, now that it's in the organisation and that organisation has its own permissions not to be public to the wider world. Couldn't find that.

Okay, so I can't find the broader permissions to make it public. I'll go back and add this user as a contributor. No. Looking around blindly: have they changed it? Have they moved it? I clicked on every single link from that project that was available to me. Not one of them directed me to adding the contributor.

It is not just me. If it was just me, then I'd be the problem. But it's more than me; I know it is because I've done research, and I've heard this feedback from customers and end users. They get frustrated looking around for something they don't have access to, and then either assume that feature doesn't exist, or have to reach out manually to their administrators asking where access is, only to get an email back (wasting the administrators' time as well): 'Oh, you don't have access to that.'

Stop doing it. Show that they don't have access to it:
• Put it behind a wall.
• Tell them what they can do to get access to it.
• Tell them who they need to speak to.
• Explain what permission they need enabled so they can have that conversation.
• Heck, even facilitate the conversation within the platform.

Especially now that AI can basically help you deliver features at a rate of knots, it wouldn't hurt. But stop hiding it. Rant over.