Design debt: Why ignoring it can be costly

You’re a product owner who’s very happy about the newly launched product and its positive reviews coming in. You look into the analytics, and potential points of improvement, and understand areas to add some new features to the app. Just then you realize, to implement the new features you’ll have to re-validate the flows & understand where it fits. But due to the time crunch, you ask the designer to fit it wherever it fits right and squeeze in the feature to the existing design. The designer does it for you, and it is pushed to development. You look at it like a problem solved easily. Little you did know that you were creating ‘Design debt’ unconsciously & you may have to pay for it later. Wait, what? What’s design debt? Well, in simple terms you can call it a lesser-known cousin of ‘Technical Debt’.

If you’ve been in the software industry for any period of time, chances are you’ve heard the term technical debt.

‘Technical debt describes the consequences of software development actions that intentionally or unintentionally prioritize client value and/or project constraints such as delivery deadlines, over more technical implementation’.

While technical debt impacts the integrity of your product’s codebase, design debt impacts the integrity of your user experience.

Similarly, so is the case with design debt. You keep adding things to the initially created designs, without re-fabricating the flows and creating clutter in the overall design, user journey, and overall experience of the platform. Let’s understand it in detail with the help of an example.

Imagine you are building a treehouse. You start with a basic design that works really well, but as you keep adding more and more features, like secret compartments, ropes, and ladders, without planning for it initially, the treehouse starts to get really complicated and hard to use.

You might notice that some of the ropes are tangled up or that the ladder is wobbly or it no longer has the strength to handle so much weight because it wasn’t planned to carry this much initially. It needs to be rearchitected because these problems make it harder to enjoy the treehouse and might even make it dangerous to play in.

Now, to summarize the example mentioned above in definitive words- Design debt refers to all the imperfections in your product UX and design processes that accumulate over time as a result of development, innovation, and the lack of design refactoring.

Ward Cunningham, a pioneer in agile methodology, coined the term by defining it this way:

Design debt is all the good design concepts of solutions that you skipped in order to reach short-term goals. It’s all the corners you cut during or after the design stage, the moments when somebody said: ‘Forget it, let’s do it the simpler way, the users will make do’.

The above definition is trying to imply that it’s an informed choice to go a simpler way but that’s not always the case. Sometimes, you have to take a decision because of various influencing factors affecting the overall product deadlines. Whatever the case is, avoiding or squeezing changes in the existing design may benefit you in the short term, but it’s definitely going to harm you in the long run. It’s a bit like borrowing money that you have to pay back with interest later.

Now, the question is, How does it impact the product?

The way technical debt makes development slow, design debt may make the adoption of new features slow or difficult to engage with and make the product’s growth sluggish. Other than that, there are certain areas mentioned to know its overall impact.

• User experience: Not adding the features in the right heuristics can take a toll on the user experience, making it difficult or frustrating for users to use the product effectively. This can result in low user engagement, decreased user retention, negative reviews, customer dissatisfaction, and potentially damage the reputation of the product or the company that created it.
• Brand reputation: A product that suffers from design debt can damage the overall brand reputation. Users may associate the suboptimal design with poor quality or lack of care from the company, resulting in a negative impact on the brand’s image.
• Development costs: The longer design debt goes unaddressed, the more complex it can become. This can lead to higher development timelines & costs, as designers and developers need to work around or refactor the existing design to address issues.
• Technical debt: Design debt directly or indirectly creates technical debt as well, overly complex or inconsistent design can force designers to work around it, leading to slow development and increased risks of errors and bugs. As a consequence, developers are required to use band-aid solutions or workarounds to resolve issues. This can result in a codebase that is challenging to maintain and update in the future.
• Competitive advantage: A well-designed product can provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace. On the other hand, a product with design debt can put the company at a disadvantage compared to competitors with more user-friendly products.
• Project timeline: As design debt builds, designers may start to sandbag. Worried that they’ll never get a chance to come back and “do it right,” designers will be tempted to overestimate timelines and insist on many more revisions to the work than anyone else wants, resulting in increased timeline estimates impacting the overall project delivery.

However, it is okay. Design debt is natural & comes to every product & company. How you manage to overcome is what really makes a difference. Consider the mentioned four ways to fix it.

Keep a design debt backlog

The first thing to do is to figure out why it happened in the first place. Keep a track record of how, why, and when it happened & set a deadline for you to solve it before it is too late.

Prioritize on the basis of impact

We all understand that not all design issues have the same level of impact, some of them can actually be solved there without creating any consequences. But how do you understand what decisions are gonna impact you highly or which ones can be kept aside & not focused on? In this case, figuring through the impact effort matrix can be an effective solution. Choose to work on the features or problems that have a larger impact first & prioritize accordingly. See the image attached below to understand more.

Allocate time for design debts cleanups

If you feel that a pool of time, effort & resources will be invested to clean up the debt, then hold on, and try working it out with the Pareto principle. Also known as the 80–20 rule, states that roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of efforts. Using this rule as a starting point, teams can start by allocating 20% of resources to address usability issues and adjust accordingly depending on circumstances.

Plan timely design reviews

Timely design reviews & UX audits do more good than you think it does. It can save a lot of time & provide insights to review for important new features at least and can help to bring designers and engineers closer so that they both understand the complexities of each discipline & work collaboratively to solve the issue.

No matter how much effort you put in, design debt will always be a part of your business. Hence, it is crucial to make informed decisions to offer your audience a quality product or service. There are numerous ways to achieve this goal without compromising on the user experience. You can devise your own ways of repaying the debt that suits your company’s needs. The approach can be as simple or as complex as you want, but it is essential to keep providing your users with the necessary elements that keep them coming back.