Reclaiming Thought

For years, “Don’t Make Me Think” was the golden rule of user experience design. Steve Krug’s amazing book gave designers and technologists a guiding star… simplicity, clarity, ease. And it made total sense. In a chaotic, information-dense digital world, making things intuitive felt like a kindness. Why force people to think unnecessarily? But I wonder whether we’ve taken it too far.

We’ve built a world that rarely makes us think. Everything is curated, optimised, streamlined. Swipe for this, tap for that, let the algorithm finish your sentence… or even your thought. Design has become so good at removing friction that it’s begun removing reflection altogether.

And this ease comes at a real cost. When the world becomes too easy to navigate, we stop navigating. We begin coasting. We stop asking why a headline was written that particular way. We stop checking whether a source is credible. We stop wondering whether a piece of news might be designed to manipulate our anger, or whether our feeds only reflect people who think just like us.

In other words… we stop thinking.

I don’t think this is just a UX problem, it’s a cultural one. Governance, tech, media… they all benefit when people stop pausing, questioning, doubting. Thoughtfulness has been designed out of our daily lives, yet without it, we lose something really important. Our critical thinking becomes dull. Our judgement erodes. And perhaps most worryingly, our compassion begins to disappear.

Because real, honest thinking is hard work. It involves discomfort. It requires that we sit with contradiction, that we listen a little longer, ask better questions, learn to tolerate uncertainty. And yet, it’s precisely that effort which cultivates empathy. It’s what keeps us fundamentally human.

So yes, good design should absolutely be clear. But perhaps it shouldn’t always be effortless. Perhaps the point isn’t to remove all friction, but to leave just enough to make us pause. Just enough to make us ask one question before we accept an answer.

In a world optimised for convenience, choosing to think might just be the most radical act we have left.