Design Debt Tracker

Design Debt Tracker

Design debt is every conscious compromise the team makes and every minor issue deferred to "next time." Like technical debt, it compounds. Unlike technical debt, most teams don't track it — so it disappears into the gap between what was shipped and what was intended.

This skill maintains a living register that captures debt as it's created, tracks it across iterations, and surfaces it when decisions are being made.

Why This Exists

The design-critic classifies findings as Critical, Major, Minor, and Note. Critical and Major get fixed. Minor and Note get a shrug and "fix if time allows." They rarely get fixed because no one remembers them.

The accessibility-reviewer does the same — Minor issues with specific fixes that never happen because they're buried in a report that no one reopens.

Every "fix if time allows" is a promise to a persona. This skill makes those promises visible.

When to Use

• After critique — when the design-critic produces Minor or Note findings that won't be fixed this round
• After accessibility review — when the accessibility-reviewer flags Minor issues that are deferred
• After a fix round — when not all issues were addressed and some were consciously deferred
• At project start — to review accumulated debt from previous iterations
• Before planning — to decide which debt items to address in the next cycle
• On user request — "show me the design debt" or "what did we defer?"

The Register

Design debt lives in a ## Design Debt Register section in design-state.md. One register per project. It persists across iterations.

Register Format

## Design Debt Register

_Items: [count] | Critical: [count] | Oldest: [date]_

| ID | Date | Source | Severity | What | Who is affected | Suggested fix | Status | Notes |
|----|------|--------|----------|------|----------------|---------------|--------|-------|
| DD-001 | 2025-01-15 | design-critic | Minor | Settings form shows all fields at once — cognitive load | Persona: Jamie (cognitive disability) | Progressive disclosure with sections | Open | Deferred from v1 — setup is one-time flow |
| DD-002 | 2025-01-15 | accessibility-reviewer | Minor | Category colour strips lack icon backup | Users with colour vision deficiency | Add icon per category alongside colour | Open | |
| DD-003 | 2025-01-16 | design-critic | Note | Empty state illustration is placeholder | All users | Commission illustration that matches brand | Open | Low priority — functional without it |
| DD-004 | 2025-01-15 | accessibility-reviewer | Minor | Toast notifications auto-dismiss before screen reader finishes | Screen reader users | Extend timeout to 8s or add persistent log | Resolved | Fixed in v1.1 |

Field Definitions

Status Definitions

Process

Step 1: Capture Debt (After Review)

When the design-critic or accessibility-reviewer completes a review:

1. Read their findings
2. Identify all Minor and Note severity items that will NOT be fixed in this round
3. For each deferred item, create a register entry with all fields populated
4. Append to the Design Debt Register in design-state.md
5. Update the summary line (item count, critical count, oldest date)

Do not capture items that are being fixed. The register tracks debt, not the fix list. If it's getting fixed now, it doesn't belong here.

Step 2: Review Debt (At Project Start or Before Planning)

When starting a new iteration or planning cycle:

1. Read the current Design Debt Register
2. Check for escalation triggers (see below)
3. Present a debt summary to the user:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  DESIGN DEBT SUMMARY
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Open items: [count]
  By severity: [X] Minor, [Y] Note
  Oldest unresolved: [date] ([age])

  ACCESSIBILITY DEBT:
  • [count] items affecting users with disabilities
  • Most affected: [persona or user group]

  TOP CANDIDATES FOR THIS CYCLE:
  1. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]
  2. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]
  3. [DD-XXX] [description] — [why now]

  ESCALATED (was Minor, now needs attention):
  • [DD-XXX] [description] — [escalation reason]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4. Ask the user which items to include in the current cycle's plan
5. Items the user selects get added to the design plan as tasks

Step 3: Escalation Check

Debt items should be escalated from Minor to Major when:

When escalating:

1. Change Status to "Escalated"
2. Add a note explaining why
3. Flag it in the debt summary
4. Present it to the user as needing attention

Step 4: Resolve Debt

When a debt item is fixed:

1. Update Status to "Resolved"
2. Add a note: "Fixed in [iteration/date] by [agent]"
3. Add the resolution to the Decisions Log in design-state.md
4. Do NOT delete the row — resolved items are history

Step 5: Accept Debt

When the user consciously decides an item is not worth fixing:

1. Confirm with the user: "This affects [personas]. Are you sure you want to accept this?"
2. Update Status to "Accepted"
3. Add the user's rationale in Notes
4. Add the acceptance to the Decisions Log

Accessibility debt requires explicit acknowledgement. If a debt item affects users with disabilities, the user must explicitly accept the trade-off. Do not silently accept accessibility debt.

Integration

• Receives from: designpowers-critique (Minor/Note findings), accessibility-reviewer (Minor findings), verification-before-shipping (deferred items)
• Feeds into: writing-design-plans (debt items become plan tasks), design-retrospective (debt trends are retrospective data)
• Updates: design-state.md (Design Debt Register section)
• Called by: using-designpowers (after reviews, at project start, on user request)

Anti-Patterns