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Designing shame into the experience?

Published 3 months ago • 1 min read

Designing shame into the experience?

In this week's CX Passport, I talked with Joe Macleod about something we still don’t design with the same care as the rest of the journey: the end.

We spend a lot of time empowering customers early. We give them tools to compare, investigate, customize, and choose. Agency is designed into the experience from the start.

When the relationship winds down, that support often disappears.

Joe said:

“What we’ve done with the consumer is bamboozle them in this space of complexity…to a space where they’re totally dizzy with responsibility, and we also create this sort of shame environment where we’re all guilty because we’ve consumed.”

Most companies don’t intend to shame customers. But experience design doesn’t care about intent. When responsibility shifts without support, shame is what often shows up.

At the end of the relationship, customers are suddenly managing recycling rules, equipment returns, data deletion, or disposal on their own. The language changes. The systems change. The company steps back.

What was a shared experience becomes an individual burden.

And that ending doesn’t stay neatly at the end. The last experience reshapes how the relationship is remembered. The closing moments don’t just finish the journey…they rewrite it.

That’s why endings can’t be treated as cleanup work or compliance tasks. They’re still part of the experience. And whatever we leave customers with at the end is what they carry forward.

Your Turn​
Where does your organization step back at the end of the customer relationship…and what responsibility does that quietly hand to the customer?

Put those tray tables up and buckle those seat belts. Let’s go!

-Rick

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What’s on tap this week?…

Host - Rick Denton

Rick believes the best meals are served outside and require a passport

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