That moment when you open a website and your shoulders tense up? 😒

That’s not just bad design. It’s a tax. A tax on your attention, your energy, and your willingness to stick around.

We pay this tax every day. With every confusing form field. Every cluttered dashboard. Every menu that makes us think twice.

The fascinating part isn’t that ugly design makes things harder to use. It’s that we’ve normalized paying this tax.

• “That’s just how enterprise software looks,” we tell ourselves.
• “You can’t have both beauty and function,” the cynics argue.
• “It’s too expensive to make it pretty,” the pragmatists declare.

But here’s the thing about cognitive taxes: they compound.

A beautiful interface isn’t a luxury – it’s a stress test. If it creates friction, people leave. If it flows, they stay. Simple as that.

Apple knew this. So did Braun. And Nike. They weren’t selling beauty. They were eliminating cognitive tax.

The next time you’re choosing a tool, launching a website, or building an app, ask yourself:

What’s the tax rate?

Because somewhere out there, someone is figuring out how to charge less.

And users? They’re really good at tax evasion.