I learned very early on in the process of selling web design & build projects that you never make optional any of the things you believe are critical to project success:

• User testing, either at the definition stage (testing paper prototypes, information architecture models, names, resonance of concepts) or later (interactive prototypes, launch ready sites)
• Accessibility testing and validation
• Content Development and refinement

If you made any of these things “optional” or (the phrase procurement often requested) “a la carte,” they inevitably got cut once the budget was an issue. “We’d love to do some user testing, but let’s get it built first and see what budget remains.” (Narrator: There would be no budget).

The answer then was to “bury” those items inside the actual discovery/design phase, the build phase, and the launch prep stage. Make them a default part of the process rather than something that can be opted out of. (We’d later do the same with things like design for specific breakpoints, testing on multiple devices, etc).

So given all the efficiency folks are getting out of their AI-driven coding, all these items that got punted due to lack of budget must be getting prioritized now, right? Are you overwhelmed with all the fresh investment in user validation, testing, and accessibility?

The reality is it was never about the budget. It’s about the set of priorities considered important, and shipping more functionality rather than less is easier to explain. Building the right things, iterating on features with real validation with actual users, and preserving accessibility show less visible productivity (are less “sexy”) than shipping more code, launching more features, making more landing pages, and the like.

I hope we can find ways to use newfound efficiency from AI to reinvest in the things we’ve been underinvesting in for decades. Making sites more usable, not just adding more features that work poorly for many if not for all. Is this the chance to actually reverse what Cory Doctorow has called enshittification?