Design Debt Is Just Tech Debt With a Pretty Face

Added: 2026-05-21

[00:00:00]Like, technical debt, I think, is the most familiar thing, and that's where the term design debt is borrowed. Like, a call I literally like just had this week was about untangling technology decisions that were made four years ago by a research team, and issues and incorrect calculations got carried through all of the methodology and the documentation up to the point that the project was developed once by another team, and then redeveloped by our team, handed off, and the debt is still there.

[00:00:30]So, we've now sat on five different calls as a team trying to untangle where the issues even are. And design debt is no different from that. It's like you're going to be rooting and hunting through all of these different artifacts and design outputs that like where do you even find the consistency if no one's written it down, if no one's built a system? So, it's it can be really frustrating even for the vendor, and it can increase costs.

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