Good UX is Good for Everyone

Armchair Philosophy, Web Works

"User Experience" is a term that evolved out of tech and web and product design.
If you are not familiar with this term, welcome – because even if you do not work those industries, this is still relevant to you.

What is referred to in the tech world as "UX" is understood as a discipline focused on improving a person’s interaction and experience with a product, system or service. But in reality, "bad UX" shows up across almost every domain. Every system has users. Every system produces experiences, and therefore every system has UX.

And I am here to say that even if there is no tech, web, or product involved at all:

Good UX is good for everyone.

And I will explain why.

In a sense, "good UX" is the practice of designing systems that allow human intention to become human outcomes (i.e. create success), while preserving – or even increasing – the capacity of everyone involved to do so again.

What is Bad UX?

Bad UX takes a lot of forms, but is rooted in a few simple things. In the digital realm, it can manifest as anything that "enshittifies" a product or service. More broadly, "bad UX" is the introduction of unnecessary friction between a person's intention and the outcome they're trying to achieve:

Some friction is real, some is not. Necessary friction is necessary, but unnecessary frictions make life not nice for no good reason. So why not design systems in such a way that we eliminate these frictions, and ideally, even make meeting whatever ends we seek to meet an easy, enjoyable process? (If you don't believe that's possible, valuable, or worthwhile, please just stop reading here 😂)

Most unnecessary friction, aka inefficiency, exists because organizations are optimizing for something other than the user's experience, and these tradeoffs usually stem from just a few underlying forces. While it may seem like whatever bad UX you have in place is helping you meet your objective, ultimately, it is not, because one of these core bottlenecks are acting as a driving force:

In whatever ways these elements introduce unnecessary friction into a system, they ultimately limit the system's potential success, whether it's now or later.

Good UX leads to real, lasting success

The practice of "optimizing for a good user experience" is actually the systematic removal of unnecessary friction between human intention and human outcomes. And in removing barriers between the two, we achieve real, lasting success.

To be clear, the question isn't "how do we eliminate friction?" because there is no way to entirely eliminate friction forever – in fact, friction is quite a beautiful creative unfolding, a natural evolution. How friction expresses itself in any system will inevitably grow and change over time, whether or not humans approach "systems design" with the intention to create, or just to survive. That's just how it works.

Therefore, the question then becomes: which friction is inevitable, and how does this friction serve the system?

In any given context, when we approach systems design with the desire to create real, lasting success, we will notice that successful systems must run efficiently.

Sustainable success is built on efficiency

Now, human intention producing human outcomes is interesting – but is this success really "real" unless it stands the test of time? To be truly successful, a system must continue to achieve outcomes, and this requires not degrading the conditions that make those outcomes possible.

When I say efficiency, I am referring to the concept of minimizing wasted energy while achieving the same outcome (aka reducing unnecessary friction). "Efficiency" also becomes a much richer concept when we consider what is actually being conserved or amplified. More than money, it's about time, attention, trust, motivation, cognitive load, emotional energy, organizational capacity, social capital. These are priceless, yet finite resources. And what becomes possible when we have more of them to go around?

Sure, it's possible to make money, take action, or meet some other specific end with unnecessary friction. But can you do it in the long-term – without needing to chase down new ways to achieve said end, in order to keep sustaining it?

Efficiency is actually a long game

Bad UX often maximizes short-term efficiency, while good UX maximizes long-term efficiency. For example: a business makes customers call three times before cancelling a subscription. This is very efficient success in the short term: it reduces churn and increases quarterly revenue. But over time, it damages trust, generates support costs, and burns employee morale.

This business can keep finding ways to create that type of immediate success, and it might look efficient up close. But because these tactics ultimately erode the resources necessary for success in the long term, they need to be constantly shifting. Any "success" gained from this kind of approach will always be short-lived. Eventually, the business is going to need a complete systems overhaul, or their competitors win.

Evolution is inevitable – the course of time can smooth away friction like a river does a rock... but in practical, time-bound terms: do the changes we make in our human systems feel easeful, or like an emergency? Change can be innovation, but it can also be manufactured unrest. And is that user experience necessary, or is it malleable?

Sustainable success boils down a question of context: how do we work efficiently in relationship with that which is non-negotiable, and that which is flexible?

Efficiency is ultimately ecological

Forests survive because the energy flowing through them is continually regenerated. The same is true of human systems. If too many employees burn out, too many customers feel manipulated, too many volunteers stop showing up, or too many citizens distrust the institution... then what happens?

The system may still achieve today's objective, but when it consumes the very resources that tomorrow depends on – that is an ecological inefficiency. Botanist, ecologist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer famously wrote:

All flourishing is mutual.

Every human system is ultimately an energy system. Energy takes many forms: attention, trust, time, effort, goodwill, creativity, money, information. Ecology studies energy flows in natural systems. Economics studies resource flows in market systems. UX studies interaction flows in digital systems. Management studies work flows in project systems. They're all looking at the same phenomenon from different angles.

Healthy systems, whether in the "natural" or "human" world – and I am not even convinced it's worth differentiating between the two – don't create "value" (i.e. succeed) by extracting from one component until it's exhausted. They succeed by increasing the health of their components, which relies on health of the relationships between those components. Health is a matter of vitality and resilience, of energy.

Inefficient systems waste energy with unnecessary friction, which is the opposite of healthy energy flow and ultimately resilience. Efficient systems channel energy, including friction, regenerating energy resiliently over time. The quality of any experience within a system reveals what energy is being lost and what energy is being transformed into meaningful outcomes.

In that sense, "UX" is a lot more than a design specialty in the tech sector. It's a basis for understanding why some systems endure while others gradually consume the very conditions they need to survive. It's a gateway into sustainable success: regeneration, resilience, and the possibility for all to flourish – mutually.

Published July 9, 2026