The Unbearable Cheapness of UX (2)

AI summary focused on the core points of the original article.

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1. If you treat UX as a cost, it comes back as a bigger cost

The UX concerns removed early on do not disappear; they get pushed onto other teams and users.

How the cost shifts
- It is passed on as user time, customer service labor, complaint handling, and manual work by operational teams.
- A few years later, it is billed again as next-generation rebuild or redevelopment budget.
Especially in AX
- If AI is added without context and fails to solve the user’s task, it only increases the labor needed for review and correction.

2. Failure already starts at the procurement stage

Functional requirements are usually concrete, but experience requirements often remain vague sentences.

Warning signs
- Phrases like “intuitive UI” or “user-friendly” are used without any success criteria.
- There is no definition of which user should complete which task, and how easily.
When UX criteria are missing
- You end up with a system that has many features but is hard to use in practice.
- Users turn to customer service, while employees fall back on Excel and workaround processes.

3. Feature completion and user success are not the same

A button working and data saving do not mean the experience is complete.

Questions of user success
- Can users find the feature?
- Can they recover on their own when an error occurs?
- Can they complete the task without customer service?
When organizational convenience conflicts with user flow
- If DB structures, department structures, or security procedures are exposed directly on the screen, users are forced to absorb the provider’s complexity.

4. A UX PM’s role is to pull complexity back into the organization

The larger the DX/AX initiative, the more it needs someone responsible not just for producing screens, but for the quality of the experience.

What a UX PM should look at
- Core tasks, failure points, reasons for operational workarounds, and the real nature of customer service inquiries
- Screen experiences that can build trust in AI outputs and help users recover
The standard ahead
- As AI increases the speed of output production, the standards used to judge experience quality become even more important.

XPLORED View

Cheap UX is not cost saving; it is a way of shifting complexity onto users and employees.

Good timing to read this
- When reviewing RFPs, feature lists, and screen design criteria for DX/AX projects
- When you need to explain the causes of customer service inquiries, operational Excel workarounds, and repeated redevelopment from a UX perspective
- When you need to judge whether AI adoption will actually lead to productivity gains

This article reframes UX not as “making things look nice,” but as a decision that reduces organizational cost. Especially when reviewing RFPs or AX proposals, simply checking whether user tasks and failure-recovery criteria appear alongside the feature list can meaningfully change the direction of a project.

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This article is summarized and interpreted by XPLORED based on publicly available original sources and related materials. Rights to the original source and materials included in it belong to their respective rights holders. If a rights holder requests a correction or removal, we will review and respond promptly.

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