Cognitive debt accumulates when products repeatedly ask users to think harder than necessary: to interpret unclear labels, navigate inconsistent flows, recover from preventable errors, or remember information the system could handle for them. Individually, these issues seem minor. Over time, they compound into measurable costs: increased support tickets, longer onboarding, training overhead, higher error rates, lower adoption, and hidden operational inefficiencies.
This talk reframes UX not as visual polish, but as risk and cost management. Through concrete examples from real-world products, we will examine how small design shortcuts translate into long-term organizational friction and how to identify cognitive debt early before it becomes embedded in the system.