There's a rule someone dropped in a product design session that has lived rent-free in my head ever since:
"Anything digital shouldn't have more than 7 steps."
Seven. That's it. Seven steps to register, seven steps to checkout, seven steps to do the thing your app was built to do.
You're probably reading that and thinking: easy, we only have six steps. And then you count them. And then you remember the email verification. And the "just one more thing" screen. And the tooltip that said, "watch this quick tutorial first." And the confirmation modal. And suddenly you have fourteen steps.
This is a UX problem. This is the UX problem.
What Even Is UX?
UX stands for User Experience. But let's be real about what it actually means in practice:
Good UX is when you open an app, do the thing, and close it. You didn't think about the app. You thought about the thing you wanted to do. The app was just... there. Invisible. Like a good waiter.
Bad UX is when you open an app, spend four minutes looking for the button, accidentally tap the wrong thing, get sent to a page you didn't ask for, hit back, lose your progress, give up, and go tell two people about how bad the app is.
The goal of UX design is to get from bad to good. Simple to say. Apparently very hard to do, given the state of most apps.
The 7-Step Rule and Why It Exists
Your brain has a working memory. It can hold roughly 7 things at once, give or take two, depending on the research you read and how much coffee you've had.
This is called Miller's Law, named after psychologist George Miller, who noticed this in 1956. Every step in a digital process is a thing your brain has to hold. Every decision you make me take is cognitive load I'm burning. And the moment I run out of mental space, I don't just struggle — I quit.
This is why:
- Phone numbers are broken into chunks (
+263 77 123 4567, not+2637712345677) - Good forms group related fields together
- Navigation menus cap out at 7 items
- Checkout processes that take more than 5 minutes lose half their users
The seven-step rule isn't about being lazy. It's about respecting how human beings actually work.
The Principles That Separate Good UX from Digital Suffering
1. The User is Never Wrong
This is the hardest one for builders to accept.
When a user can't find a button, the instinct is to think they're not looking hard enough. When they get confused by a flow, the instinct is to think they need better instructions. When they quit, the instinct is to think they just didn't care.
No.
If your users can't find the button, the button is in the wrong place. If they get confused, the flow is confusing. If they quit, something in the experience broke the deal.
The user is not your QA team. They are not your beta tester. They are someone who showed up with a problem they wanted solved, and your job is to solve it before they close the tab.
Good UX assumes the user will do the unexpected — and designs for it anyway.
2. Friction Is a Tax
Every extra click costs something. Every unnecessary form field costs something. Every "are you sure?" confirmation dialog costs something.
Sometimes that cost is worth it; a confirmation before deleting data is a good friction. But most friction is accidental. It's friction because nobody sat down and asked: "Do we actually need this step?"
Here's a brutal test for any feature you're building: If you removed this step, what would break?
If the answer is "nothing," remove the step.
Amazon built an entire empire on the 1-Click Purchase button. They patented it. It sounds silly, saving one click. But that one click was the moment people paused and thought, "Do I actually want this?" And some percentage of them said no. Remove the pause. Remove the doubt. Watch sales go up. That's friction as a tax, in dollar terms.
3. Show, Don't Tell
If your app needs a tutorial before someone can use it, your app needs a redesign.
The best interfaces are self-explanatory. The icon looks like what it does. The button says what happens when you press it. The flow feels like the next obvious step.
When you have to explain how to use a thing, you're admitting the thing doesn't explain itself. Which is fine; sometimes complexity is unavoidable. But the explanation should be context, not prerequisite.
Good: A tooltip that appears when you hover over a feature you've never used before.
Bad: A 5-minute onboarding video before you can access anything.
WhatsApp didn't make you watch a tutorial before chatting to someone. The flows were obvious enough that you just... did it.
4. Consistency Is a Kindness
Users learn your app. They build a mental model of how things work. And every time you break that model- different buttons in different places, different words for the same action, a back button that sometimes goes back and sometimes doesn't you make them rebuild it from scratch.
This is exhausting. And it's entirely preventable.
Consistency means:
- The "Save" button is always in the same place
- Red always means danger/delete
- The same word is used for the same thing throughout the app
- If you swipe left to delete on one screen, swipe left to delete on every screen
This sounds obvious. It is obvious. And yet you open most enterprise software and the top navigation changes between sections, the primary action button moves around, and "Submit" sometimes means "submit for review" and sometimes means "submit and it's gone forever."
5. Feedback Is Mandatory
The user did something. They need to know it worked.
This is so basic that it's embarrassing to have to say it. And yet:
- Forms that submit with no confirmation
- Buttons that you press and nothing visibly happens so you press again and now you've submitted twice
- Loading states that don't load
- Errors with no explanation
Every action needs a reaction. A spinner. A success toast. A color change. Something that says "yes, I heard you, I'm doing the thing." Even if the thing takes 10 seconds, the user needs to know those 10 seconds are happening on purpose.
The silence between an action and a response is where anxiety lives. And anxious users become former users.
6. Design for the Distracted
Nobody uses your app with their full attention.
They're using it on a bus. In a meeting they should be paying attention to. With one hand while doing something else with the other. They get a notification halfway through. They put the phone down and come back later.
Good UX survives all of this.
This means:
- Progress is saved automatically, not lost the moment they switch apps
- They can pick up where they left off
- The most important action is the most visible thing on the screen
- Nothing irreversible happens without a warning
7. Accessibility Is Not Optional
This one lives at the intersection of ethics and UX.
If your app only works for people with perfect vision, steady hands, and a fast internet connection, you have not designed an app — you have designed a filter. You are telling some percentage of your potential users that they are not welcome here.
Good UX works for:
- People using screen readers
- People with color blindness (don't use red and green alone to convey meaning)
- People with slow connections
- People with motor impairments who navigate by keyboard
- People on older devices
Beyond the ethics: accessible design is almost always better design. Captions help people in noisy environments. High contrast helps people in sunlight. Keyboard navigation helps power users. When you design for the edge case, the average case gets better too.
What Bad UX Looks Like (A Field Guide)
You've seen these. You've suffered these:
- The infinite form — 47 fields, many of which are optional but not labelled as such
The forced account — you want to buy one thing, they want your life story first
The dark pattern — the "no thanks, I don't want to save money" button that makes you feel bad for opting out
The modal on modal on modal — you close one popup, another appears; you are now in popup hell
The app that forgets you — you logged in last week, nothing was saved, start over
The error message written by a robot — "Error 403: Forbidden" instead of "You don't have permission to view this, contact your admin"
What Good UX Actually Feels Like
Good UX is invisible.
You don't talk about it. You don't notice it. You just... do the thing. And then you tell your friend about the thing you did, not the app you used to do it.
The best compliment a UX designer can receive is "I didn't even think about it." It means the product got out of the user's way. It means the seven steps felt like one. It means the friction was so low you couldn't feel it.
That's the job. That's the whole job.
The One Question That Fixes Most UX Problems
If you build products and you want to improve them, there is one question that will do more work than any framework, any design sprint, any consultancy:
"What is the user actually trying to do right now?"
Not what you designed them to do. Not what you think they should do. Not what the product brief says they're doing.
What are they actually trying to do, right now, in this moment?
If you can answer that question honestly, and then put the answer to that question one step away from where they're standing, you've done UX.
Everything else is decoration.
