The porcelain shards are still in the trash, clicking against each other every time I toss in a coffee filter, a reminder that something once perfectly ergonomic is now just a collection of 19 sharp edges. It was my favorite mug-a heavy, matte-blue thing that felt like an extension of my hand. I broke it because the shelf it lived on was cluttered with 9 other objects I never use, but which looked ‘aesthetic’ in the soft morning light. I reached for utility and found chaos instead. It is a small grief, but it mirrors a larger, more systemic failure in the way we build the digital spaces where we spend our lives. We have prioritized the ‘dazzle’ of the shelf over the safety of the mug, and in doing so, we have turned every landing page into a potential hazard for the stressed mind.

The Wisdom of the Cemetery Groundskeeper

Jackson P.-A. understands this better than most UI designers. Jackson is a cemetery groundskeeper I met a few years ago while he was clearing overgrown ivy from a headstone dating back to 1889. He manages 49 acres of silent, heavy stone, and his primary job isn’t just landscaping; it is wayfinding. People come to Jackson at the absolute nadir of their emotional resilience. They are grieving, they are tired, and they are often physically lost. They do not want a ‘curated experience’ of the cemetery’s most popular inhabitants. They do not want to see ‘trending’ plots. They want to know how to get to Section 29, Row 9, without having to navigate a labyrinth of decorative hedges that serve no purpose other than to look good from a drone’s perspective.

Jackson told me once that if a visitor has to ask him for directions more than twice, he has failed at his job. He uses simple, unadorned stone markers. He keeps the paths wide and the sightlines clear.

He understands that under stress, the human brain loses approximately 29 percent of its ability to process complex visual hierarchies. When you are in a state of high cognitive load-whether that is from grief, or simply from a 59-hour work week-you don’t want to be dazzled. You want to be oriented. You want to know where you are, where you are going, and how long it will take to get there.

Airports vs. Social Feeds

This is why entertainment platforms should stop looking at Instagram for inspiration and start looking at the wayfinding systems of the world’s busiest airports. An airport is a high-stress, high-stakes environment. If you miss your flight, there are real-world consequences. If you get lost in a terminal, you don’t just ‘discover’ a new shop; you experience a spike in cortisol that ruins your day. Consequently, airport signage is a masterpiece of humane design. It uses high-contrast colors-usually yellow on black or white on dark blue-and typefaces that are legible from 79 feet away, even in a crowd. It doesn’t try to be clever. It doesn’t use metaphors. It uses arrows and universal icons.

We have entered an era where digital products are so obsessed with ‘stickiness’ that they have forgotten the value of ‘throughput.’ In an airport, the goal is to get the passenger through the system as efficiently as possible. Success is defined by the passenger leaving the environment. In digital entertainment, success is often defined by the user never leaving. This leads to a design philosophy that intentionally obscures the exits and the navigation paths. We see ‘dark patterns’ that hide the search bar or bury the ‘continue watching’ list under 19 rows of algorithmic recommendations. We are treated like cattle to be herded into the path of advertisements, rather than humans with specific intentions.

The Gateway, Not The Destination

I admit, I have been guilty of this in my own thinking. Years ago, I argued that a website should be a ‘destination,’ a place to linger. I was wrong. Unless you are a video game or a long-form essay, you are not the destination; you are the gateway. When I open a streaming app, my destination is the movie. The app is merely the terminal. When the terminal starts pretending it is the movie, everything breaks. The friction I felt when my mug shattered is the same friction a user feels when they can’t find the ‘cancel subscription’ button or the search history. It is a jagged edge in a world that promises smoothness.

There are 239 different streaming services currently competing for our attention, and almost all of them are using the same tired playbook. They are all trying to be the loudest voice in the room. But as our digital lives become more cluttered, the platforms that will survive are the ones that offer a sanctuary of clarity. We are seeing a slow but steady shift toward what I call ‘Wayfinding Design.’ This approach, championed by groups like ems89, suggests that the future of the interface is not about adding more features, but about removing the barriers between the user and their intent. It is about acknowledging that the user’s time is the most precious resource they have, and that wasting it with ‘discovery’ mechanisms they didn’t ask for is a form of design malpractice.

Prioritizing Legibility Over Flash

We need this same shift in our digital interfaces. We need to stop treating users like metrics to be optimized and start treating them like the tired, busy, and often overwhelmed people they are. This means prioritizing legibility over brand-specific typography that looks cool but hurts the eyes after 9 minutes of reading. It means standardizing navigation patterns so that a user doesn’t have to relearn how to use a menu every time they switch apps. It means recognizing that ‘surprise and delight’ is often just a fancy way of saying ‘interruption.’

Digital platforms are terrified of respecting our choices because they think they know what we want better than we do. They think that if they don’t show us 149 other options, we will get bored. But the opposite is true: when we are overwhelmed by options, we become paralyzed. We end up closing the app and doing nothing at all.

The Broken Tool

My new mug arrived yesterday. It is not as pretty as the old one… It cost $19, and it doesn’t try to be anything other than a mug. It is a relief. In a world that is constantly trying to grab our attention and sell us a version of ourselves we didn’t ask for, there is a profound power in things that simply work. We don’t need digital platforms that ‘understand’ us; we need platforms that allow us to understand them. We need more airports, and fewer social feeds. We need more Jacksons, and fewer ‘disruptors.’ We need to be able to find our way through the 499 channels of noise to the one thing that actually makes the day feel a little less like a collection of sharp edges in the trash.