The most important person in the system nobody built for you.
Dear User,
You are the most valuable thing in the digital economy.
Every company needs you. Every platform was built because of you. Every app, every subscription, every buy now pay later scheme, every seamless checkout, every personalised recommendation — none of it exists without you.
You are the reason.
And yet.
Nobody in the system is working for you.
The UX designer who built your experience?
Employed by the company. Measured by conversion rates, retention metrics, daily active users. Their success is defined by how well they move you toward the company’s goal — not yours.
They might care about you genuinely. Many do.
But caring about you and working for you are two different things.
When the brief says increase checkout completion — the designer increases checkout completion. When the data shows people pause before entering their card details — the designer removes the pause.
The pause was your moment of decision.
It was removed on purpose.
Not to help you. To help the metric.
The marketer who personalised your feed?
They have more data about your behaviour than you have about yourself.
They know when you shop impulsively. They know what triggers your optimism about the future. They know that people who believe they will earn more tomorrow are willing to spend more today.
They didn’t discover this to help you plan better.
They discovered it to reach you at exactly the right moment — when your defences are lowest and your belief in your future self is highest.
That’s not personalisation. That’s precision targeting of your most vulnerable moment.
The Buy Now Pay Later app that gave you RM15,000?
You started with RM5,000. You paid consistently. They increased your limit.
Not because your income increased. Because your payment behaviour gave them confidence you would keep paying.
The limit grew to match their risk model. Not your actual financial capacity.
You felt entitled to RM15,000 because the system gave it to you.
The system gave it to you because you were profitable at RM5,000 and would be more profitable at RM15,000.
It was never about what you could afford.
It was always about what you could be extended toward.
The digital bank that made everything seamless?
The onboarding was frictionless. The interface was clean. The experience was designed — carefully, expensively — to feel effortless.
But effortless for whom?
Effortless for your journey into their ecosystem. Effortless for their user acquisition metric. Effortless for the DAU report they present to investors every quarter.
Your financial health — your actual relationship with money, your saving instinct, your financial identity built over decades — that was never in the brief.
The brief said — get them in. Keep them engaged. Grow the numbers.
The structural truth nobody says clearly:
This is not about bad companies. Or malicious designers. Or exploitative marketers.
Some are. Most aren’t.
This is about structure.
The user pays. But the user doesn’t commission.
The company commissions the designer. The company commissions the marketer. The company commissions the data analyst. The company defines success. The company measures the outcome.
Even the most ethical UX designer — working with genuine care, refusing dark patterns, fighting for the user in every meeting — is still employed by the company. Still measured by the company’s metrics. Still optimising for the company’s goals.
The good intention doesn’t change the structural reality.
You are the subject of the design. Never the client.
The exceptions are rare. And worth noting.
Patagonia told you not to buy their jacket. On Black Friday. In a full page ad.
Not because it was good marketing. Because they genuinely asked — what is our responsibility to this product and the person who owns it — for as long as it exists?
MUJI designed a table to live in your home for twenty years. Not to be replaced next season.
The investment app told you not to open it every day. Because your financial health doesn’t require daily engagement — and they knew it.
These are the rare cases where the company’s philosophy extended beyond the transaction. Where Post-UX thinking — what happens to the user after checkout — was built into the product from the beginning.
They’re rare because the economic model doesn’t reward them.
Short-term engagement pays. Long-term responsibility doesn’t show up in the quarterly report.
What this letter is not:
This is not an argument against capitalism. Not a manifesto for regulation. Not a call to delete your apps and live off the grid.
This is just — an honest observation from someone who spent years on the other side of the screen.
Designing experiences. Removing friction. Making things seamless.
And finally asking the question I should have asked earlier:
Seamless for whom?
What you can do with this:
Not much, honestly. The structure is the structure.
But you can notice the pause before the checkout. The moment before you re-enter your card details. The hesitation before you tap Buy Now.
That pause is yours. It was always yours.
The system spent billions trying to remove it.
You don’t have to let it.
And if you are building something:
Ask the question Patagonia asked. Ask the question MUJI asks. Ask the question the investment app asks.
What is this — in someone’s life — after the transaction ends?
Not what does it convert. Not what does it retain. Not what does it engage.
What does it become?
In the life of the person who trusted you enough to buy it.
That’s the only design question that was ever worth asking.
And almost nobody is asking it.
You are the most valuable thing in the system.
Build like you believe that about the people you serve.
— Lokman S., Majalah BIKIN