Definition
Difficulty that exists because the arrangement around an activity is badly built, not because the activity is hard. Entering the same data five times, spending hours finding out who has authority, correcting predictable errors, waiting at arbitrary gates, and supplying coordination nobody else provides are all compensatory.
It is distinct from productive difficulty, which belongs to the activity itself: learning a subject, raising a child, making a hard clinical judgment. Learning research calls one form of productive difficulty desirable difficulty, effort that builds the skill. Productive difficulty is worth keeping. Compensatory difficulty is a workaround an institution has made routine, and it is a design target. The work of getting through it is part of the human subsidy. See Where difficulty lives.
Tests that show it is in place
- Each recurring demand on a person is classed as productive or compensatory, with the reason recorded.
- Every compensatory demand names the function it performs and the layer that could perform it instead.
- A redesign is checked for whether the compensatory demand disappeared or moved to someone else.
Evidence to keep
- Artifact: A list of recurring demands on users or staff, each classed productive or compensatory.
- Behavior: A compensatory demand that has survived more than one review cycle.
- Metric: Hours per person per month spent on compensatory demands.
References
- Where difficulty lives · Theory