Experience Creep

Products exponentially grow in complexity.

Similar psychology:

Tribalism

Curiosity Gap

User Delight

Likely impacts:

Productivity & Efficiency

Complexity & Understanding

Last updated: 18/09/2026

How to utilise this in your designs

As functionality creeps up, you could hide 'advanced' items inside a collapsed section, so new users only meet the extra complexity once they're ready for it.

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

When a new feature adds complexity, you might teach it with an interactive walkthrough that reacts to mistakes, rather than adding another tooltip to the UI.

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

You could let the interface strip itself back as input grows, e.g., shrinking text and hiding suggestions, so creeping functionality doesn't crowd the task.

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 pile up, you could group the riskiest actions into a labelled 'danger zone', so growing complexity doesn't bury destructive options among harmless ones.

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

If options keep multiplying, try explaining what a major change actually means at the point of choice, so added configurability doesn't become confusing noise.

Example from

Nike

Possible impacts

Managing experience creep, by collapsing or grouping rarely used functionality, could help users complete routine tasks faster as the product grows.

As seen in:

Fantastical Stripping out times

Lego Keeping track of your totals

Contextualising what each new feature or setting does may reduce the confusion that builds as functionality stacks up month after month.

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