What Good Design Can Teach Us About Bad Processes - With Jon Yablonski

We don't often think about UX design and workplace process in the same breath. But after sitting down with Jon Yablonski creator of Laws of UX and a designer who's worked everywhere from automotive interiors to aerospace to SaaS — it's hard to think about them any other way.

Jon has seen design from just about every angle. He's built websites, 3D installations, in-vehicle experiences, and data products. The throughline? Every single one of them involves a human being trying to figure out how to interact with something someone else built. Sound familiar?

The Problem With Pretty

One of the first things Jon dropped on us was the aesthetic usability effect — the idea that we often judge things as more usable simply because they look good. That means a gorgeous slide deck, a slick dashboard, or a beautifully designed interface can actually mask real problems. We're too distracted by the shine to notice what's broken underneath.

If you've ever sat through a presentation that looked incredible but left you with zero actionable information, congrats — you've experienced the aesthetic usability effect firsthand.

The flip side of that is Tesler's Law, which says that every system has an irreducible amount of complexity. You can't design it away. You can either absorb that complexity into the design itself, or you dump it on the user. Spoiler: most processes dump it on the user.

Nobody Reads the Manual

Jon shared a concept from one of his favorite managers — the paradox of the active user. The short version: people don't read instructions. They just start doing the thing. And rather than fighting that instinct, the best-designed software leans into it.

He used Slack's original onboarding as a great example. When you first logged in, the only thing you could do was message Slackbot. That's it. No tooltip tour, no 12-step walkthrough. Just one action the most important one in a safe environment where you couldn't break anything. Once you did that, more features unlocked.

That's learning by doing, and it maps directly to how we actually absorb new things. You don't learn chess by memorizing every piece at once. You start with one, then another, then another.

For anyone who does software implementations or process rollouts — this is the part worth writing down. All the training in the world doesn't click until someone gets their hands on the keyboard.

There's No Such Thing as the Ideal User

Jon's parting shot might be the most useful thing for anyone building or rolling out a process: stop designing for an idealized version of your user.

We all do this. We imagine a focused, patient person with time to read every field, click every button deliberately, and follow every step in order. That person does not exist. Real users are distracted, rushed, and occasionally operating in low-visibility environments — literally or figuratively.

Jon's recommendation? Design for the most disadvantaged user first. If the experience works for them, it works for everyone. And more often than not, those edge-case users are the ones living in the future — showing you where your process needs to go before the rest of your user base gets there.

The Constraint Advantage

One thread ran through the whole conversation: constraints make things better. Jon's most innovative work at GM came not despite limitations, but because of them. When the touchscreen was too far away for safe interaction, they had to rethink the whole interface around a physical knob. The result was something genuinely better than what they would've built with unlimited options.

Knowledge work rarely imposes those constraints on us — and we pay for it. Overflowing inboxes, competing tools, unclear processes, and seventeen versions of the same slide deck are what you get when nobody draws a line.

The best design, like the best process, isn't about adding more. It's about deciding what doesn't belong.

Jon Yablonski is the creator of lawsofux.com and johnyablonski.com.