Cory Doctorow has a word for what happens to platforms over time: enshittification. First they’re good to their users, then they abuse their users to serve their business customers, then they abuse those business customers to claw back value for themselves. It’s a pattern you can trace across almost every major platform of the last decade.
I’ve been thinking about where designers fit in that story. Not as victims, but as participants. Because we’ve been there the whole time, and I’m not sure we’ve done a great job of pushing back.
The disconnect between design discourse and reality
There’s a thread on Reddit that captures something I’ve felt for a while: design conversations, especially on LinkedIn, have become disconnected from what actually matters. The discourse is dominated by tool debates, trend chasing, and framework worship, while the platforms we work on are actively getting worse for the people who use them.
That gap between what we talk about and what we build bothers me. We spend energy arguing about Figma plugins while the products we ship are optimized for engagement metrics that don’t serve users.
How we got here
I think designers have contributed to enshittification in ways we don’t like to admit:
We prioritized aesthetics over function. Not always, but often enough. Polished interfaces that look great in portfolio pieces but nudge users toward behaviors that benefit the business, not them. Dark patterns dressed up in clean typography.
We stayed out of strategy. Too many designers treat business decisions as someone else’s problem. When you’re not at the table when incentive structures are designed, you end up executing decisions that compromise user experience without having had a chance to challenge them.
We compromised on ethics quietly. Most designers I know haven’t pushed back hard enough on features they knew were manipulative. Not because they don’t care, but because the pressure to ship and the fear of being seen as difficult make it easier to go along. I’ve done it too.
We didn’t fight hard enough for the user. When a feature compromises privacy, or uses psychological tricks to boost engagement, or buries the unsubscribe button three levels deep, someone designed that. And often, the designer knew it wasn’t right but shipped it anyway.
Designing better incentives
Charlie Munger had it right: “Show me the incentives and I’ll show you the outcomes.” Most of the problems with digital platforms aren’t design problems in the visual sense. They’re incentive problems. The platform rewards behaviors that are bad for users, and the design faithfully executes that reward structure.
The most impactful thing designers can do isn’t redesigning a screen. It’s questioning the incentive model behind the screen. That means understanding how users, advertisers, and the platform itself are motivated, finding where those incentives conflict with user wellbeing, and proposing alternatives.
This isn’t something you can do alone. Incentive design sits at the intersection of business strategy, behavioral psychology, and ethics. It requires collaboration with people outside the design team, which means designers need to understand enough about business to be taken seriously in those conversations.
A few practical approaches that I’ve seen work:
Map the incentive structure before designing. Before you open Figma, understand who benefits from each feature and how. If the primary beneficiary isn’t the user, that’s worth flagging.
Prototype incentive models, not just interfaces. When proposing changes to how a platform works, test different reward structures with real users. See what happens when you reward quality content instead of engagement, or when you make privacy the default instead of the opt-in.
Use your communication skills strategically. Designers are often the best communicators on a product team. Use that to make the case for ethical incentives in terms decision-makers care about: retention, trust, long-term growth. Frame user-centric design as a business advantage, not a moral stance.
Platforms that got it right
Not every platform follows the enshittification playbook. A few have managed to align business sustainability with genuine user value, and their design choices reflect that:
Duolingo turned language learning into a game, and the gamification actually serves the user. The design drives engagement in a way that also drives learning outcomes. Their business model works because users who learn effectively stick around, not because they’re being manipulated into staying.
Signal built its entire product around the idea that privacy is a right, not a premium feature. The interface is deliberately simple, making encrypted communication accessible to people who aren’t technical. Their non-profit model means they never had to compromise on that core principle, and their growth proves there’s demand for products that respect users.
Firefox has consistently positioned itself as a browser that works for users, not for advertisers. Mozilla’s open-source approach and transparent business practices have helped Firefox maintain relevance in a market dominated by Google’s Chrome, showing that aligning design with user interests can sustain a product long-term.
Basecamp resisted the complexity creep that defines most productivity tools. Their flat pricing model (instead of per-seat) reflects a design philosophy that values simplicity for the team over revenue optimization per user. The product stays focused because the business model doesn’t incentivize bloat.
Where this leaves us
Designers can’t fix enshittification alone. The forces driving it are structural: venture capital, growth-at-all-costs culture, advertising-based business models. But we’re not powerless either.
The designers who will matter most in the next decade are the ones who understand incentives as well as interfaces, who can sit in a strategy meeting and articulate why a feature that boosts short-term engagement will erode long-term trust, and who are willing to fight for the user even when it’s uncomfortable.
That’s the kind of design work worth doing.