The most important design decisions happen at failure points, not during smooth operation. The Kintsugi Problem, published in UX Collective, argues that error states, broken flows, and edge cases are where product character is actually defined.
The piece borrows from kintsugi, the Japanese practice of repairing broken pottery with gold, to reframe how designers should treat failure: not as something to hide, but as a surface worth crafting deliberately. The argument is that most teams treat error handling as cleanup work, assigned late and resourced poorly.
If your team ships polished happy paths and skeletal error states, this is the article to send to your next sprint planning. The full piece works through the design reasoning behind why breakage deserves the same attention as first-run experience.
[READ ORIGINAL →]