Every product accumulates UX/UI debt — cluttered flows, unloved screens, ghost features no one uses but everyone’s scared to remove. But here’s the catch: fixing everything at once isn’t just unrealistic, it’s usually a massive waste of time.
You don’t need a redesign. You need a triage plan.
We once audited a SaaS dashboard so overloaded with icons, tooltips, and leftover design system fragments, it looked like someone had sneezed components all over the canvas. A mess, sure. But guess what? None of it was what users were complaining about.
So we left it alone — for now.
The Real Cost of UX/UI Debt
UX/UI debt isn’t about things looking a bit off. It’s about pain:
- Broken flows that lead to customer support tickets
- Bad onboarding that quietly kills conversion
- Inaccessible UIs that open legal doors you don’t want opened
- Unclear CTAs that lose you revenue every single day
Some of this is annoying. Some of it is lethal.
Here’s a quick sniff test. UX/UI debt is expensive when it:
- Confuses first-time users
- Forces internal workarounds
- Breaks across devices
- Creates friction in core money-making flows
- Gets reported more than once a week
Everything else? It can probably wait.
A Brutally Simple Prioritization Framework
Let’s stop pretending all UX problems are equal. Here’s a framework I use with clients to figure out what’s actually worth fixing — now vs. later.
Tier 1: Survival-Level Problems
The stuff that hurts your product today.
- Users get stuck or abandon core flows
- Conversions are tanking because of UX friction
- Something’s broken, confusing, or misleading
- Support keeps getting the same question
This is where the bleeding happens. You fix this, or you keep mopping up the blood every week.
Tier 2: Strategic Momentum Builders
Fixes that unlock performance and scale.
- Navigation is usable, but not intuitive
- There’s friction in key user paths
- Layouts are inconsistent across screen sizes
- Microcopy makes people pause instead of click
Most teams love to live here. It feels like progress without the panic. But it only works if Tier 1 is already stable.
Tier 3: Cosmetic Polish (Defer or Bundle)
The visual clutter you hate more than your users do.
- Misaligned icons
- Inconsistent paddings
- Sloppy type styles
- Animations that don’t do anything meaningful
Tier 3 is important — but not urgent. Treat it like cleanup, not surgery.
Story Time: When We Didn’t Fix the Ugly Stuff
We worked with a healthtech startup who couldn’t stand their dashboard. “It’s ugly,” they told us. “We’re embarrassed.”
We ignored it.
Why? Because the actual issue was a broken onboarding flow — users were dropping off before they ever saw the dashboard. We fixed that first. Then cleaned up the layout later. Founders often confuse the embarrassing parts with the damaging ones. They’re not always the same.
One founder insisted we start with icons. The team hadn’t touched the onboarding copy in 3 years. Guess what moved the needle? Not the icons.
The Prioritisation Mistakes We See Over and Over
Some common traps:
- Spending weeks on a visual refresh while the navigation is still broken
- Fixing marketing pages while core product screens rot
- Pixel-pushing buttons when copy is the actual issue
- Investing in design debt without touching UX debt
A reminder: if users can’t find the button, it doesn’t matter how nice it looks.
How We Help Startups Fix the Right Stuff First
Our process isn’t magic. Just methodical:
- Audit your product with a harsh but loving eye
- Score issues based on user pain + business impact
- Rank fixes into tiers
- Roadmap realistically — including deferrals
Sometimes that means skipping the sexy stuff. Often, it means rewriting the microcopy on one flow instead of redesigning ten.
And always, always, we work with your developers — so what we fix actually ships. We don’t make decks. We make decisions.
Not all UX/UI debt is urgent. But some of it is fatal. The job isn’t to clean everything. It’s to find the rotting beam holding up the house — and replace it before you worry about which curtains to hang.
Good design isn’t just pretty. It’s prioritised.