{"id":2443,"date":"2026-07-09T22:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/?p=2443"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:43:02","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:43:02","slug":"ux-debt-has-to-be-paid-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/ux-debt-has-to-be-paid-back\/","title":{"rendered":"UX debt has to be paid back"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/ux-debt-has-to-be-paid-back-35707bac8b1e\">UX debt has to be paid back<\/a> was originally published in <a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\">UX Collective<\/a> on Medium.<\/p>\n<p>This article from 2022 feels pretty relevant for today. I often refer to the types of debt we accumulate as instructional design teams \/ units, mostly referring to technical debt, but I like the framing here of UX Debt that shares some of the same spirit.<\/p>\n<div class=\"su-quote su-quote-style-default su-quote-has-cite\"><div class=\"su-quote-inner su-u-clearfix su-u-trim\">UX debt is like technical debt or any kind of debt, it could be from the actual or past team not putting as much effort on a subject that requires it because, time, people, priorities, stuff\u2026etc., whatever the reasons really, it\u2019s not the point. The point is, you borrowed\u00a0time.<span class=\"su-quote-cite\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uxdesign.cc\/ux-debt-has-to-be-paid-back-35707bac8b1e\" target=\"_blank\">Alice Habay<\/a><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<p>Not all the debt is intentional, but right now is a great time to think about what instructional design debt might look like (leers at elearning influences promoting vibe coding for everything). I will be the first to refer to popular elearning authoring tools as industry albatrosses, but that&#8217;s not a problem we are going to vibe code our way out of.<\/p>\n<p>Translating this idea of UX Debt to ID could mean the distance between the current learning experience and what it should be. Consider outdated content, inconsistent interactions, accessibility gaps, misaligned or missing assessments, or legacy modules built under old constraints that everyone just works around. That last one usually creeps up after changing your LMS or people platform.<\/p>\n<p>I quite liked the approach the author presents to get started in addressing UX Debt. For instructional design, depending on your context, it might look like auditing against,<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>accessibility standards,<\/li>\n<li>learner feedback,<\/li>\n<li>completion data, or<\/li>\n<li>alignment with current learning objectives (imagine that).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can&#8217;t usually address all of the debt all at once, even in a brand new development. Even then you&#8217;re going to either inherit some debt or create new debt. That sounds scary, but it&#8217;s important to acknowledge what kind(s) of debt you&#8217;re willing to take on. Once you have an idea of what the situation is, you could plot items on a matrix to decide how you&#8217;re going to deal with them.<\/p>\n<div style=\"max-width: 720px; margin: 0 auto; font-family: -apple-system,BlinkMacSystemFont,'Segoe UI',Roboto,sans-serif; color: #2c2c2a;\">\n<div style=\"display: flex; align-items: stretch; gap: 0;\">\n<div style=\"writing-mode: vertical-lr; transform: rotate(180deg); text-align: center; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; color: #5f5e5a; padding: 0 10px 0 0; letter-spacing: 0.02em;\">Impact on learner experience<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1;\">\n<div style=\"display: flex; gap: 16px; margin-bottom: 6px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888; width: 32px; text-align: right; padding-top: 8px;\">High<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; background: #fafafa; border: 1px solid #e0e0e0; border-left: 5px solid #F0A023; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 500; margin-bottom: 8px; color: #2c2c2a;\">Do first<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Quick wins with visible payoff.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Are learners hitting this issue repeatedly?<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">e.g. Broken links, outdated screenshots, misaligned assessment questions<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; background: #fafafa; border: 1px solid #e0e0e0; border-left: 5px solid #1A7CC8; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 500; margin-bottom: 8px; color: #2c2c2a;\">Plan and bundle<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Tie to upcoming milestones.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Does this connect to a course refresh already on the roadmap?<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">e.g. LMS migration, full accessibility overhaul, interaction model redesign<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"display: flex; gap: 16px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888; width: 32px; text-align: right; align-self: flex-end; padding-bottom: 8px;\">Low<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; background: #fafafa; border: 1px solid #e0e0e0; border-left: 5px solid #D94535; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 500; margin-bottom: 8px; color: #2c2c2a;\">Batch in passing<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Fix when you&#8217;re already working in that module.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Do several of these share a template or pattern?<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">e.g. Inconsistent button labels, minor copy edits, old branding in footers<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; background: #fafafa; border: 1px solid #e0e0e0; border-left: 5px solid #888888; border-radius: 8px; padding: 20px;\">\n<div style=\"font-size: 16px; font-weight: 500; margin-bottom: 8px; color: #2c2c2a;\">Park or accept<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Not worth the cost right now.<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 13px; color: #5f5e5a; font-style: italic; margin-bottom: 12px;\">Would rebuilding this break dependencies across other active courses?<\/div>\n<div style=\"font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">e.g. Legacy module in a deprecated tool, rarely accessed archived courses<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"display: flex; gap: 16px; margin-top: 10px;\">\n<div style=\"width: 32px;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; text-align: center; font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">Low<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex: 1; text-align: center; font-size: 12px; color: #888;\">High<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"text-align: center; font-size: 13px; font-weight: 500; color: #5f5e5a; margin-top: 2px; letter-spacing: 0.02em;\">Effort to resolve<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>One thing I think is skipped a lot, and that I see all the time is in project planning for instructional design teams. Especially in the case of elearning \/ online learning, teams fill up on new projects. These might be F2F to online conversions, blended learning, new developments etc. Very rarely is a portion of work dedicated specifically for maintenance (or ever greening, or whatever you want to call it&#8230;debt payments). This kind of thing might be stuffed into &#8220;review cycles&#8221; but usually by the time things come back they&#8217;re in pretty rough shape. It would be similar to scheduling things like oil changes and fluid top ups for your vehicle on the same schedule as inspecting and replacing the timing belt.<\/p>\n<p>If you&#8217;re in a design unit, how does your team manage UX \/ ID Debt?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Photo by <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/@dylanhendricks?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\">Dylann Hendricks | \ub51c\ub780<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/unsplash.com\/photos\/gray-concrete-brick-lot-ZGKskuCq68w?utm_source=unsplash&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_content=creditCopyText\">Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>UX debt has to be paid back was originally published in UX Collective on Medium. This article from 2022 feels pretty relevant for today. I often refer to the types of debt we accumulate as instructional design teams \/ units, mostly referring to technical debt, but I like the framing here of UX Debt that [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,105],"tags":[62],"class_list":["post-2443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-quick-reflections-and-webmentions","category-shelved-found","tag-feedly"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/files\/2026\/07\/dylann-hendricks-ZGKskuCq68w-unsplash.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4251,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions\/4251"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrdingwall.ca\/blogwall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}