I just wanted to cancel a subscription. That’s it. But somehow, what should have taken 30 seconds turned into 15 minutes of scavenger hunt clicks, misleading buttons, and grayed out options pretending to be disabled. Every step felt like a test I wasn’t supposed to pass.
When I finally found the tiny “Cancel” link, buried in a wall of cheerful upgrade offers, I wasn’t just annoyed. I was tired. Not physically, but mentally. That kind of tired you feel when your brain’s been nudged, pulled, and second guessed into exhaustion.
That’s the hidden cost of bad design. It doesn’t just waste time, it spends your attention like it’s free.
When we talk about design, we often picture aesthetics: colors, fonts, layout. But design isn’t about how things look. It’s about how things work or don’t.
Bad design isn’t always obvious. It might be a confusing checkout flow, a settings menu that goes nowhere, or a button that doesn’t do what it promises. Sometimes it’s just too many choices crammed into too little space, leaving you paralyzed and unsure.
And sometimes, it’s intentional.
There’s a whole category of design that’s not just careless, it’s manipulative. These are called dark patterns: design choices made to trick you into doing something you didn’t intend to do.
These patterns exploit habits and assumptions. And while they might win short term clicks, they cost something much more valuable: trust.
Every time you spend five extra minutes figuring out how to download a file or locate a setting, that’s attention you’re not getting back. Over a week, over a year, it adds up.
But the cost isn’t just in minutes:
Sometimes we don’t even realize how much attention we’re bleeding, because we’ve gotten used to the slow drip.
Here’s the thing: good design doesn’t call attention to itself. It clears the path. It makes actions feel intuitive. It doesn’t hide the exit, it lights it.
Great interfaces often feel invisible. They make doing the right thing feel easy, and the wrong thing feel unlikely. You don’t need a tutorial. You don’t need three tries.
Whether it’s a clean app layout, a website with clear navigation, or a simple opt out flow, good design saves your attention instead of burning it.
And that’s not just nice, it’s powerful.
The more we put up with bad design, the more it becomes the standard. Confusing menus, auto playing ads, hidden cancel buttons, we treat them like digital weather. Annoying, but inevitable.
But they’re not.
Design is a choice. And every time we notice and call out poor design that costs us time, energy, or clarity, we make room for something better.
We start expecting clarity over cleverness. Consent over tricks. Simplicity over manipulation.
At the end of the day, attention is finite. Once it’s spent, it’s gone. And most of us are already spread thin, between tabs, tasks, and to do lists.
So when a product, platform, or page respects your attention, when it gives you what you need without asking for more than it should, that’s not just good UX. That’s respect.
And when it doesn’t? That’s a cost worth noticing.
Because attention isn’t free.
And neither is bad design.