Experience Creep

Products exponentially grow in complexity.

Similar psychology:

Tribalism

Curiosity Gap

User Delight

Likely impacts:

Productivity & Efficiency

Complexity & Understanding

Last updated: 23/09/2026

How to utilise this in your designs

To counter experience creep, you could tuck advanced setup steps into a collapsed section of an onboarding checklist, so new users see the essentials first.

Dark-mode checklist UI titled "More Stuff" with rounded task cards, left empty check circles and right dot toggles. Orange hand-drawn circle/arrow highlights gray chevron-down button expanding "Advanced Stuff..."

Example from

Stuff

You could experiment with hiding input suggestions as a query gets longer, so secondary UI doesn't crowd the screen and add to experience creep.

Three ChatGPT mobile screens show a typed query progression: "Where can I find examples," then adding "of really," then full "Where can I find examples of really great UX? On the web, online, or just about anywhere?" Arrows link the text changes. Suggestions like "doj releases epstein files" appear under the query on the first two screens. The "Focus" filter button and "Pro" subscription label are visible. The keyboard layout changes from alphabets to numbers on the third screen. A red pen 'x' marks the second screen phrase "of really."

Example from

Perplexity

As settings multiply through experience creep, you could try grouping data-loss actions into one clearly highlighted 'danger zone', rather than scattering them.

Settings menu with sections listed left. Export data box with "Create new export" button top right. Danger Zone outlined red includes red "Delete" buttons for deleting post archive, changing subdomain, or deleting publication.

Example from

Substack

When experience creep adds a feature like collages, you could teach it through an interactive walkthrough that reacts to mistakes, rather than a static tour.

UI shows a collage tutorial with penguin and blue swirl cutouts; arrows highlight instructions: "Learn how to change the order of cutouts," "Keep finger pressed, drag down," and "Your finger must be pressed the whole time." Buttons: Skip (grey) and Next (red).

Example from

Rather than explaining a growing feature set upfront, you could let users add demo activities in one tap, so they learn how features work by exploring.

Example from

Timespent

Possible impacts

As experience creep adds more features and nav items, users may take longer to complete core tasks, which could reduce their productivity in your product.

As seen in:

Fantastical Stripping out times

Lego Keeping track of your totals

Each new feature may need its own onboarding and status keys, so experience creep could increase confusion about what the product does and how its parts fit together.

As seen in:

Stuff Hiding the advanced onboarding

Pinterest Reactive (and interactive) onboarding

Written by Peter Ramsey

Consultant to 100+ companies

Published: 25/08/2023