Design debt can be a real issue. When you try to meet customer expectations by equipping your product with many useful features, you need to be careful not to overdo it. The accumulation of unnecessary product components or processes can lower the product’s quality and efficiency. What exactly is design debt? How can you measure and minimize it? What about paying it back? Find the answers in this article.
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What is design debt?
At its core, design debt can refer to the product backlog, discarded areas of your product, UI bugs, and anything that has little relevance to the initial product goals. It can also include any corners that were cut during the design phase that allowed short-term goals to be reached without long-term functionality or user experience in mind. Sometimes you just don’t have the skills, budget, or time to get everything as you’d like it before the launch. Design debt can also accumulate over time, typically when the original design is unable to accommodate newer features.
The bad news is that even the smallest design flaw can have a huge impact on how users interact with your product, and how they feel about your brand. Even something as seemingly insignificant as an outdated pop-up is considered design debt. Every designer faces these issues. While it’s not realistic to reduce it to nothing, you can minimize design debt.
Differences between design debt, UX debt and technical debt
You have probably heard of technical debt, or UX debt. These are different to design debt, but there are similarities also, so it’s important to understand how they vary from one another. Technical debt involves the speed at which a product is developed, without a focus on quality; UX debt is the same, but applies to the functionality of the product for users. All three can pose issues if not addressed, so it can be worthwhile to take a look at them and see what you can do to minimize any negative impacts.
The risks associated with design debt
If your product has too much design debt, it won’t be long until you’ll see a slump in growth. This may tempt you to add more features (more features = growth) but this could result in even more design debt piling up.
Here are two common examples of how design debt can accrue:
- You or your team are hyper-focused on building a feature that could generate a new revenue stream, but you overlook how the feature fits into your overall product and your original aims.
- You decide to launch a new feature and place it where traffic is at its highest, without considering its relevance to the user.
When users face disruptions to the usual design, they can get frustrated. If they find it difficult to learn (or re-learn) how to use your product and navigate its features, they may disengage. When this happens, you’re allowing your competition to gain a foothold with your audience.
How to tackle design debt: measuring and minimizing unwanted features
You may be wondering how to reduce design debt. Well, it is important to calculate the level of debt that has accrued, define how it built up (and how long it took to get to this stage) and what processes are necessary to minimize its effects.
How to measure design debt
Once you understand what impacts design debt, you’ll be able to address the issues in the right way (each product will have different needs). Begin by gathering data, reading signals and analyzing the results to determine areas that are broken or lacking. This may take some time and experimentation. It will need to be an ongoing endeavor to afford any real advantages. But don’t worry - your efforts will be worth it in the long run.
First, you will need to determine the following:
- How much design debt you have
- How and where it is causing issues
- Which problems need addressing first
- How you will track your progress
Once you have a clearer idea of the above factors, you’ll need to consider how much design debt you can handle without things getting out of control. No digital designer or business will ever be completely debt-free. Anything that doesn’t directly impact your users, your delivery times, or your product in general can probably be left as it is for the time being.
How to minimize design debt
One of the best practices to implement is to pay down design debt wherever possible. Here are some useful tips how to do that:
- Invest extra time in the initial stages of product design and development.
- Set expectations up front.
- Implement daily practices that prevent the growth of design debt (i.e. create a design system).
- Have a clear intention for your design and use a design checklist for decision making.
- If you have (or work with) a team, document all design decisions in written format as they’re made.
- Implement user testing.
When there is existing debt, it can be worthwhile to work on ‘refactoring’ to get things under control. Refactoring is a larger-scale process that can begin when the results of measuring design debt are in. Using your findings, you can create a worthwhile plan to address the most substantial issues and reorganize the design process so that everything is taken care of. Remember that refactoring may need to be undertaken every few months or so, depending on the needs of your design.
Combining the small fixes with refactoring
When you use the smaller fixes mentioned above to tackle design debt, you may end up creating more flaws in the wider design system. At the same time, overlooking these in favour of refactoring could lead to inconsistencies in the overall user experience. This means that combining the two can reduce ongoing design debt.
Is it worth paying down design debt?
Design debt is always going to be part of your business, so making the right decisions will be imperative to bringing a quality product (or products) to your audience. Some companies will accrue more design debt than others and needs will vary. Define your own methods of paying down your debt that are unique to you. The process can be as simple or as involved as you need, but there are plenty of ways to keep reaching your users without skimping on the elements that will keep them coming back.
If you are still unsure of where to start when creating a digital product or piece of software, or about paying down design debt, it can be worthwhile to do your research and use websites that offer insight. Here at Boldare, our design services could be the perfect solution, as we’re here to share knowledge and bring a better level of understanding to designers everywhere.
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