Definition
Human effort required mainly because an arrangement failed to accommodate foreseeable reality. Examples are remembering passwords, coordinating fragmented services, reproducing information the institution already holds, repairing software, and requesting the same exception again and again. It is distinct from the productive or reciprocal adaptation that learning, cooperation, compromise, and care require. Where the effort goes unpaid and unlogged, it is part of the human subsidy.
It matters because adaptive capacity is finite, and compensatory adaptation spends it without returning anything to the person who spent it. Where it accumulates, the arrangement remains stable precisely because people bend around it, which is why ethotechnical design treats recurring compensatory effort as a design failure to be eliminated or absorbed upstream rather than as user resilience.
Tests that show it is in place
- For each recurring user or operator demand, the design names whether the arrangement could absorb it instead.
- Compensatory effort is counted in burden accounting, not read as user capability.
- Repeated instances of the same exception raise the rule for review rather than the efficiency of the exception process.
References
- Ethotechnical design · Theory
- What outcomes hide · Theory