Most designers who have spent any time in technology are familiar with tech debt. Fewer are familiar with design debt and the causes and prevention. Anna Kaley of Nielsen Norman Group identifies design debt (they chose “UX debt”) this way:

"UX debt is similar to … technical (or tech) debt. Originally devised by Ward Cunningham in 1992, tech debt refers to the additional time and effort costs that result from launching faster or easier technical solutions, instead of releasing the best approach. … the cost of having to go back and fix problems after launch is always higher than launching ideal solutions in the first place (i.e., the debt is repaid with usurious interest)." (Kaley, 2018)

Writers list many reasons companies incur design debt. My experience is straightforward. Design debt stems from the naive prioritization of speed over quality design. As you may guess, this means the decision makers don’t understand the value and power of design. Otherwise the tradeoffs would be more rare.

Kaley has a great lists of the terrible costs of design debt:

Launching a suboptimal design impacts long-term market share , because many customers will give you one try and then give up when the design is too difficult or doesn’t satisfy their needs. …

, because many customers will give you one try and then give up when the design is too difficult or doesn’t satisfy their needs. … Users will become accustomed to the bad design. Then, after you change the design, people will be forced to change their habits and hate you for that.

for that. Changing the design back and forth for any particular component of the overall UX will degrade the feelings of consistency and coherency .

. Your failures will live forever on the internet. Since learning is social, users will continue to be “informed” for years of your missteps by blogs, message boards, video channels, and other sources that discuss the old version. … (Kaley, 2018)

Writing in UX Collective, Mazur hits the more insidious point: “People project the quality of the interface of the website onto the brand or its products.” (Mazur, 2018)

People project the quality of the interface of the website onto the brand or its products. (Mazur, 2018)

Austin Knight demonstrates that design debt adds up for our customers. “As Design Debt builds, it accrues interest that compounds on itself over time. The more new elements that we introduce into the design, the less elements were created within the context of each other, and the more disjointed the design becomes …” (Knight)

Many of the articles I surveyed talked about the reasons design debt occurs. Many also discuss the ways to fix design debt—the equivalent of refactoring for tech debt. Jordan Koschei says, “There’s no shame in a project having design debt.” (Koschei, 2017) This may be because he associates design debt with “natural decay.” I disagree. I believe:

We must recognize the high cost of design debt to our customers and our companies. We need to strive passionately to prevent design debt.

What are the ways to do that? Knight suggests two:

The Boy Scout Rule. In Boy Scouts, they have a rule that says “always leave the campground cleaner than you found it.” When applied to design, we should always be striving to leave the design in better shape than it was originally. This increases the longevity of a design and maintains a higher standard of quality throughout its lifetime. Matt Rheault, one of my co-hosts on the UX and Growth podcast, discussed this concept in-depth during our episode on Technical Debt and Design Debt.

Strong design leadership. Debt is most easily incurred when there isn’t a clear vision for the design and key goals (or “north stars”) change regularly. Design leaders should know where the design is going, what is being tested (and why), what standard of quality needs to be upheld, and when refactoring needs to occur. In order to do this, they need to be provided with enough authority to fundamentally drive the direction of the design, while still affording a deal of autonomy to the designers that work for them. (Knight)

Here are my ideas for preventing design debt:

Plan and design holistically

This idea is unpopular. We face intense pressure from stakeholders to deliver more quickly. But if we take the time to plan a product holistically, we can then build in iterations that make logical sense and meet customers’ needs. We need to get much better at helping internal stakeholders understand tradeoffs so that quality and better experiences win over speed. Ironically, planning holistically actually enables you to speed up delivery over releases. Remember, your brand depends upon a quality user experience.

Remember, your brand depends upon a quality user experience.

Acknowledge the need for user research

If you are designing without user research, you are implementing internal stakeholders’ ideas. Please google “you are not the user.” And flying blind isn’t necessary. User Research can be inexpensive and fast.

So prevent design debt at all costs. (If you maintain a legacy product that has design debt, see “Read more about this topic” for great suggestions of how to “pay down” the debt.) Remember if you can avoid design debt, you’ll have happier customers and a stronger brand.

Read more about this topic

UX Debt: How to Identify, Prioritize, and Resolve by Anna Kaley

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-debt/





What is design debt and why you should treat it seriously by Michal Mazur

https://uxdesign.cc/what-is-design-debt-and-why-you-should-treat-it-seriously-4366d33d3c89





Design Debt by Austin Knight

https://austinknight.com/writing/design-debt





How to tackle design debt by Jordan Koschei, 2017

https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/tackle-design-debt/