I’m at a certain age where I have replatformed my music four times (I’m still stubbornly holding on to my analog music collection). The latest replatforming trades physical objects for access to a massive streaming platform promising to introduce me to new music, but nothing seems to top the sad songs and bops from 2008. This platform of seemingly endless musical choices is part of a broader shift in how we buy, use, and experience products and services: subscriptions, accounts, apps, software updates, and proprietary repairs. There’s a name for this shift: servitization—turning a physical product into an ongoing service or experience.
When done well, servitization can create real value. It can reduce the burdens of ownership, make services more accessible, distribute resources more efficiently, and can even be easier on the planet’s resources. The Dutch have embraced this model wholeheartedly, with successful subscription services for everything from bicycles and modular phones to large home appliances, supported by both policy and culture.
But lately I’ve been wondering: When does servitization stop creating value and start creating lock-in?
John Oliver’s recent Last Week Tonight episode on subscriptions and “dark UX” got me thinking about the bigger picture: ubiquitous subscriptions, toasters that absolutely do not need to be “smart,” the right to repair, and the hidden value of our personal data. These might seem like separate problems. I think they’re connected.
They’re all examples of what happens when the value a business can extract from a customer starts to outweigh the value the service provides.
So, what can we do about it? As designers, we have more agency than we sometimes realize. I don’t have a magical framework to correct the wrongs of dark UX and extractive services. There’s no quadruple diamond for this! But here are a few questions I’m trying to ask more intentionally to help ensure the services we design create net positive value for customers.
1. The “Free” Service: What Are You Actually Paying With?
A free service rarely means there is no exchange of value. You’ve probably heard the phrase: “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” I certainly had, but I had no idea it was attributed to Richard Serra until I started researching this piece.
Art history side note that you can use at your next cocktail party: Richard Serra! Yes, the famous artist whose sculptures will literally have you lost in a wondrous maze of massive steel. Apparently, he was also musing about television, advertising, and the commodification of audiences back in 1973.
Free trials expire. Free tiers are limited. And my personal favorite: your free email is at storage capacity, yet again! Get off my back, Google! Increasingly, the service itself may be subsidized by access to something else: your data.
The exchange can look something like: Free service → access to your data → value extracted from that data.
And we’re not just talking about the information we knowingly provide. Our behavior can be used to infer things about us that we never explicitly shared.
Even more troubling, privacy itself is increasingly something you can pay more to protect. That raises a question that feels especially uncomfortable in a K-shaped economy: If privacy is something you can buy, who gets to have it?
A designer should ask:
→ What is the actual value exchange?
Map it. Who gives what? Who gets what? What happens to the information along the way?
→ Do we need to collect data?
Be a good data steward. Compliance (hello GDPR) is the floor, not the goal.
2. The Subscription: Is It Easy to Get In and Impossible to Get Out?
Subscriptions can be genuinely useful. They can make services more flexible, affordable, and convenient.
But we’ve all encountered the other version: the service that’s easy to start and difficult to cancel, the subscription you forgot about, or the cancellation flow that makes leaving feel like you’re reliving your Catholic guilt upbringing all over again. It makes you want to spend all your money to go buy back your tape collection! In 2026, the average adult in the U.S. spends $111 a month on subscriptions, with roughly 19% of that being on unused subscriptions.
This reveals a more sinister part of design: dark ux patterns such as flipped primary and secondary buttons, confusing copy and flows, and baroque instructions. The experience is intentionally designed to undermine a customer’s ability to choose.
A designer should ask:
→ Are we designing offboarding with the same care as onboarding?
Remember the peak-end rule: the ending is part of the experience too.
→ Where are we using friction to support the customer, and where are we using it to trap them?
3. The “Smart” Product: Does It Need to Be a Service at All?
Not everything needs to be connected.
A lightbulb doesn’t necessarily need an account. A physical product shouldn’t automatically become an excuse to create an ongoing revenue stream. And for the love of all things holy, I do not want to download an app to use my toaster! The Internet of Things (IoT) promises more flexibility and accessibility. By being “smart,” these products and services can adjust to your patterns, find efficiencies, and provide remote access. But with that comes a cost.
TVs, doorbell cameras, thermostats, speakers, and even refrigerators labeled smart devices are all tracking, collecting, connecting, and brokering your data. The same things that make them smart also make them susceptible to misuse in the form of surveillance, harassment, and hacking.
A designer should ask:
→ Does it create meaningful customer value, or simply create another reason to keep charging?
→ What happens to the product if the service disappears?
4. The Right to Repair: Who Really Owns the Product?
I remember going to a talk at SXSW more than a decade ago about how John Deere’s software was making farmers dependent on the manufacturer to repair equipment they already owned.
That talk has stuck with me. If I buy something (and granted, commercial tractors start around $200,000), but only the manufacturer can diagnose, repair, or update it, how much ownership do I really have? More than ten years later, the FTC is taking action to give farmers greater access to repair tools.
This isn’t just a technology or a business decision. The service ecosystem surrounding a product can determine who has power long after the transaction is over.
A designer should ask:
→ Who has the power in this service relationship?
→ Are we designing for continued value or continued dependence?
→ Can we design products and services to be modular, repairable, and sustainable?
🔸Annotate that service blueprint. Look beyond the happy path. Defy enshittification!
5. The Bigger Question: What If We Anchored to Value Instead?
To Mr. Oliver’s point 🍸, what if we focused more energy on making valuable services and products and less on finding increasingly sneaky ways to extract money, data, attention, and dependence?
The issue arises when the value exchange becomes unbalanced, and design fails to address that imbalance or, worse, is used to obscure it. Before we launch the next subscription service, connected product, or loyalty program, we should ask ourselves: Are we designing services that genuinely create value, or simply creating new ways to extract money, data, attention, or dependence?
A service is a relationship, and design has a role in determining whether that relationship creates mutual value or becomes extractive. Our job as designers is to make the value exchange visible and make sure it benefits everyone involved.
