Signs and symptoms: Spotting and tackling design debt

“Debt” is a word that no one likes to hear regardless of the context. Technical debt is often talked about, but it has a less-discussed cousin that’s equally as worrisome: design debt. On this episode of Catalyst, Clinton is joined by NTT DATA design experts Mohit SantRam and Kevin McGrath as they share the tell-tale signs of design debt and how to reduce it.

Defining design debt

Design debt is the culmination of decisions that were made to circumvent specific areas of user experience, research, and design work. Just like technical – and financial – debt, design debt compounds over time if not addressed. With every fix you attempt to make or new feature you want to develop, it gets harder and more expensive to overcome. And if this compounding debt gets really bad, things can become so slowed down and expensive that all momentum is lost and your product is potentially killed. So if you’re not already concerned, you should be.

The quick fix conundrum

Design debt is often caused by quick shifting business decisions, development or product shortcuts, time/budget/team constraints, or a desire to optimize short term gains versus long term goals.

Businesses are under a lot of pressure to continuously deliver new features and products. But by opting for quick wins without ever taking the time to circle back for future vision planning and scalability, you're saving money in the short term but snowballing new debt with every new feature and course correction you opt for from there.

Spotting the signs

Your organization’s design debt may not be immediately apparent, but there are a few signs that it may exist. One such sign is a lack of a true advocate for the user perspective. This is often accompanied by another telltale sign: user complaints. If you’re hearing the same UX complaints, receiving low customer satisfaction scores, seeing low feature adoption metrics, or experiencing other brand degradation issues, that's often a sign of high maintenance costs. Another sign of design debt is slow releases. Haste may make waste, but excessively lengthy release processes are often the result of a lack of a strong foundation. In the same vein, if you have too much inconsistency, that is often indicative of too many shortcuts.

But often, the most telling sign of design debt is team frustration. Having designers and developers who are frustrated over the complexity of their day-to-day work, or in more extreme situations, high team turnover and difficulty hiring or retaining staff is often a clear indication that something is wrong in your design process. If the satisfaction of the people behind your design starts to go down or the quality of their work declines, that's definitely a sign that there is not enough attention being given to the design debt that accumulated over time.

Downsizing the debt

Once you know the signs, it’s time to identify the root of the problem within your own organization. It's up to designers to act as advocates, identify the symptoms, and find solutions. If the root of the issue is from within the decision making process, do you have the right people at the right levels deciding which are the most important areas to maximize impact?  If the problem is an out-of-date design system, will updating processes help prioritize and reduce bottlenecks? Recognize what the symptoms of the problems are, what the effects of those problems might be, and then also how to avoid those in the first place.

There are some quick wins you could attempt to secure. You can introduce a design system if you lack one, overhaul the one that you're using, or try a front end framework. You could add a design ops function to your team by hiring a new role or making that a managerial function. Or, you can up-level a design leader to have more strategic visibility and a larger say in leadership. You could also choose to slow down to give the team more bandwidth to build a scalable solution. Correcting design debt is an arduous process, but an important one. It will take time to get it right, so be patient and stay vigilant.

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