Designing For Boredom
Designing For Boredom
How Intentional Monotony Creates Sustainable Growth
Summary
Every designer has been taught one thing above all: eliminate boredom. Design is supposed to be exciting. Engaging. Delight. Entertainment. Novelty. If a user is bored, you've failed. If interaction feels repetitive, you've designed wrong. If the interface becomes "just a tool," you've missed an opportunity to create magic.
This doctrine is so complete that boredom has become design's unspoken enemy. Something to run from. Something to hide. Something to never, ever create intentionally. Except... what if you're wrong? What if the most successful products in the world aren't successful because they're exciting? What if they're successful because they're boring in exactly the right way? What if designing for boredom not eliminating it, but leveraging it is the actual growth secret that nobody wants to admit? I realized this around year four of fintech design. The products that had the highest retention weren't the prettiest. They weren't the most feature-rich. They weren't the ones that delivered constant novelty. The products with the highest retention were the ones that became so familiar, so routine, so daily that they disappeared into the user's life. They became boring. And that boredom was where retention lived.
M-Pesa is boring. You use it the same way every day. The interface hasn't changed much in 15 years. There's no gamification, no surprises, no "delight moments." It's profoundly, intentionally boring.
And that boredom is exactly why 50 million Kenyans use it every single day. Because once something becomes boring enough that you don't have to think about it, you'll never leave it.
This essay is about why the design industry has it backwards. Boredom isn't the failure state. Novelty is the trap. And the products that grow most sustainably are the ones that become so monotonous, so routine, so predictable that they achieve something remarkable: invisibility. They stop being products and become infrastructure.
What Boredom Actually Is
Boredom arises when individuals perceive a task or environment as insufficiently stimulating, lacking in personal relevance, or failing to meet internal goals. Rather than being viewed as a passive condition, boredom is reinterpreted as a mechanism that encourages engagement and goal-directed action.
Most designers read this definition and think: "I need to make things more stimulating, more relevant, more goal-aligned." They think boredom is a problem to be solved through more features, more novelty, more excitement.
But here's what neuroscience actually tells us: boredom is information. Boredom is a signal that your brain is ready to operate on autopilot. Boredom means you've internalized the pattern. Boredom means you understand the system so deeply that conscious attention is no longer required.
Boredom is mastery
This is why chess players find chess boring after 10,000 games—they've internalized the patterns. Why expert drivers find driving boring—they don't need to think about it. Why longtime M-Pesa users find M-Pesa boring—they know exactly how it works.
The design industry has confused boredom (mastery) with disengagement (abandonment). These are completely different states.
A bored user who's mastered a system will use it every single day. A disengaged user who's abandoned the system won't use it at all.
The confusing part: both look the same in early metrics. Low novelty-seeking. Predictable behavior. Minimal feature exploration.
But over time, they diverge completely. The bored (but mastered) user stays forever. The disengaged user leaves.
The Novelty Trap: Why Excitement Kills Retention
Modern design assumes that engagement is driven by novelty. New features, new interactions, new surprises. Every update should delight. Every interaction should amaze.
This creates a compounding problem: you're competing with your own previous versions. Every update makes the last update boring. Every delight becomes normal, then boring.
Instagram is the perfect example. In 2010, Instagram was boring—it was just a photo-sharing app with filters. But it was boring in a way that made sense. You understood what would happen. You took a photo, applied a filter, shared it. Done.
Then Instagram got excited. Stories. Reels. DMs. Feeds. Explore. Shops. Each feature was novel. Each was supposed to delight.
But now Instagram is overstimulating. You open the app and don't know what you'll get. The algorithm feeds you unpredictable content. The interface changes constantly. It's not boring anymore. It's chaotic.
And users don't stay as long. They bounce faster. They disengage quicker. The "engagement" (time in app per session) might be high, but retention (coming back day after day) is actually declining in many user segments.
Compare this to M-Pesa, which hasn't fundamentally changed in 15 years. Same menus. Same interactions. Same rhythm. Completely, intentionally boring.
And every single day, millions of people come back. Not because it's exciting. Because it's so boring that they don't have to think about it.
Boredom Creates Attachment
The Cognitive Load Theory of Attachment
When you design something new and exciting, you require attention. Users have to think. They have to learn. They have to allocate cognitive resources.
This feels good in the moment—it's novel, it's engaging. But it's also exhausting.
When you design something boring and familiar, you free up cognitive resources. Users don't have to think. They can operate on autopilot. The system becomes extension of muscle memory.
Here's where attachment happens: the more automated something is, the more invested you become. You've literally written it into your neurology. Your brain has optimized for this specific pattern.
Changing the boring pattern feels like trauma. Changing the exciting pattern feels like refreshing.
This is why redesigning an app you use daily feels violent, even if the new design is objectively better. You've automated the old pattern. You've removed the need for conscious thought. The new design forces you to think again.
Think about your daily routine. If someone changed your route to work, changed which hand you brush your teeth with, changed the order of your morning coffee ritual, you'd resist. Not because the new way is worse—often it's better. But because you've invested cognitive energy in automating the old pattern.
When that automation is removed, you're forced back into conscious attention. It's uncomfortable. It feels wrong.
That discomfort is attachment.
Users who experience that discomfort are users who won't leave. Because leaving means losing all that cognitive investment. Staying means getting back to autopilot.
This is the boring product's secret weapon: it's become part of your neurology. Leaving it feels like losing a limb.
The Investment Paradox: Boredom Creates Ownership
There's a psychological principle called the "effort justification effect." Things that require effort to achieve are valued more highly than things that come easily.
When something is exciting and novel, you don't invest effort. It comes naturally. You consume it passively.
But when something is boring, you have to overcome the resistance to engage with it. You have to make an effort. And that effort creates investment.
Users who have to work to understand M-Pesa's interface own it more deeply than users of a frictionless payment app. They've had to learn it. They've had to invest cognitive effort. They've earned their mastery.
That mastery creates identity. You're not just a user of M-Pesa—you're a person who knows how to use M-Pesa. That becomes part of who you are.
And you'll never switch because switching would mean losing that identity.
This is why boring products create the most loyal customers. Not because the customers are happy all the time. But because they've invested so much effort in learning the system that leaving would invalidate that investment.
The Disappearance Theory: When Boring Becomes Invisible
The ultimate form of growth through boredom happens when the product completely disappears from conscious awareness.
You don't think about M-Pesa anymore. You just use it. The interface is invisible. The system is invisible. You're thinking about your goal (sending money), not the tool (M-Pesa).
This is the state that creates maximum retention because there's no friction between intention and action. You want to send money. M-Pesa is there. You don't have to consider alternatives. You don't have to decide if you like it. You don't even think about it.
It just is.
Products that achieve this invisibility have effectively won the market. Not because they're the best product. But because they're the default tool. They're the thing you don't think about.
And once a tool has achieved that level of invisibility, it's nearly impossible to displace. Because displacing it requires making users conscious again. And consciousness brings friction.
Boring Addiction
Why Repetition Creates Compulsion
The brain loves patterns. It especially loves predictable, repeatable patterns. Because patterns allow the brain to operate efficiently.
When you repeat an action enough times, the brain creates neural pathways that make the action automatic. You don't have to think. You don't have to decide. The pathway is there, ready to fire.
This is addiction, but not in the drug-sense. This is behavioral addiction. The compulsion to repeat because the neural pathway is optimized for repetition.
The most effective behavioral addictions are the most boring ones. They're the ones that become so automatic that you barely notice you're doing them.
Think about checking email. You don't check email because it's exciting. It's profoundly boring. You check it because the neural pathway is carved so deeply that you do it automatically. Throughout the day, without thinking, you check.
That's boring creating compulsion. That's boredom creating growth (in usage frequency).
The exciting products—the ones constantly surprising you with new features and delights—don't create the same compulsion because they keep requiring conscious attention. They don't carve deep neural pathways. They keep you thinking.
The boring products create neural pathways so deep that you can't not use them.
The Spacing Effect: How Monotony Improves Memory
There's a learning principle called the spacing effect: information is remembered better when it's spread out over time than when it's massed together.
Applying this to product design: users remember and internalize interfaces better when they interact with them repeatedly in familiar, consistent ways than when interfaces change frequently.
A boring, consistent interface creates spacing effect. You use it daily. Each time, the same actions. Your brain reinforces the same pathways. Memory deepens.
A frequently updating interface creates massing effect. You interact with it intensely, but the interface keeps changing. Your brain can't reinforce consistent pathways because the interface itself is different each time.
This is why frequent redesigns destroy long-term usability, even when the redesigns are individually better. The constant change prevents the spacing effect from working.
Boring products leverage spacing effect. They're the same every day. You use them every day. The neural pathway gets reinforced every day. Over years, it becomes part of your muscle memory.
The Default Mode Network: Boring Lets Your Brain Wander
Neuroscientists have identified something called the default mode network—the set of brain regions that activate when you're not focused on the external world.
The default mode is where creativity happens. Where reflection happens. Where planning happens. Where meaning-making happens.
Products that require constant attention actually prevent the default mode from activating. You're always focused on the external world (the product). Your brain can't wander. Your creativity is suppressed.
Boring products, by contrast, allow the default mode to activate. You use them automatically, without attention. Your brain is free to wander while your hands are performing the familiar action.
This is why the most productive people often use boring tools. Boring text editors. Boring spreadsheets. Boring note-taking apps. These tools don't demand attention, so your mind is free to think about the actual work.
And users appreciate this. They stay with the tool because it's compatible with thinking. The tool doesn't interfere with cognition.
Exciting products that demand constant attention are cognitively expensive. Over time, users abandon them because they're tired. Boring products that allow automated operation are cognitively efficient. Users keep them because they're refreshing.
The Reliability of Boring
In developed markets, products compete on feature richness and novelty. You can afford to experiment because you have choice and stability.
In emerging markets, products compete on reliability and predictability. You can't afford surprises because unpredictability is risk.
This is why M-Pesa is boring. In Kenya, where financial instability is real and trust is fragile, a system that works exactly the same way every day is the greatest luxury. You don't need excitement. You need reliability.
OPay and PalmPay, despite being newer products with more features, have discovered the same truth. The features are secondary. The reliability is primary.
A user in Nigeria or Kenya doesn't want their payment app to surprise them. They want it to work exactly the same way, every time, forever. They've built their financial lives around knowing exactly how the system works.
Changing that system is a betrayal. Adding features makes it more complex. Updating it introduces uncertainty.
Users in emerging markets would choose boring-but-reliable over exciting-but-unpredictable every single time.
The Scarcity Principle: Boredom Conserves Resources
In developed markets, resources are abundant. Attention is abundant. Bandwidth is abundant. Processing power is abundant.
In emerging markets, resources are scarce. Data is expensive. Device capability is limited. Internet is intermittent.
Boring products conserve resources. They don't require constant updates. They don't demand constant attention. They work with minimal bandwidth.
Exciting products burn resources. New features mean more code. More animations mean more processing. Frequent updates mean more data.
In markets with data scarcity, boring is a feature, not a limitation.
This is why M-Pesa's interface hasn't changed much in 15 years. It's optimized for resource scarcity. The design is information-dense but code-light. It works on feature phones. It works with slow internet.
Trying to make M-Pesa exciting would destroy it. Adding features would require more bandwidth, more processing, more resources. It would break for the people who need it most.
The boring design is the inclusive design.
The Default Privilege: What Makes Something Boring Is Having No Alternative
In developed markets, if you don't like a boring product, you switch to an exciting one. The boring product loses users to novelty-seeking competitors.
In emerging markets, if the product works and you understand it, why would you switch? There are no real alternatives. And switching costs (relearning the system, trusting a new provider) are high.
This structural difference means boring products win in emerging markets. Not because they're better designed, but because switching is more costly than staying.
Over time, boring becomes default. And default becomes infrastructure.
This explains M-Pesa's dominance. It didn't become the default because it was the best designed. It became default because it arrived first, worked reliably, and became too embedded to displace.
Now any competing product faces an enormous barrier: they're not just competing on features. They're competing against habit, identity, and neural automation.
Designing for Intentional Boredom
Principle 1: Consistency Over Time
If you're designing for boredom-induced growth, the first principle is consistency. The interface should be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
This doesn't mean never updating. It means updates should be invisible. Bug fixes. Under-the-hood improvements. Things that don't change how the user interacts with the system.
The user should be able to close the app on Day 1 and open it again on Day 365 and know exactly where they are. The muscle memory should still be valid. The mental model should still be accurate.
Principle 2: Minimize Cognitive Load
Every element of the interface should serve a function. Nothing should be there to delight or surprise. Nothing should be there for aesthetics alone.
The boring design removes decorative elements, animations, transitions, or information that doesn't serve the user's immediate goal.
This isn't ugly. It's clear. It's focused. It removes the noise that requires attention.
Principle 3: Enable Automaticity
The interface should be designed so that actions can become automatic through repetition.
For M-Pesa, sending money becomes muscle memory. You know the exact sequence. You don't have to think. Your fingers just move.
This requires consistency with other patterns the user knows. If payment involves the same flow as other actions, muscle memory transfers. If it's unique, the user has to think every time.
Principle 4: Build Habit Loops
James Clear wrote about habit loops: Cue → Craving → Response → Reward.
Boring products leverage this by creating consistent cues, consistent responses, and consistent rewards.
With M-Pesa, the cue is a need to send money. The response is the same sequence of actions every time. The reward is the money sent.
Because this loop is so consistent, it becomes automatic. The habit deepens.
Principle 5: Respect the User's Mental Model
Once a user has internalized how a system works, changing that system breaks their mental model.
A boring product respects this. It validates the user's understanding. It works the way they expect because it always works the same way.
Changes should be minimal and invisible. Never update the interface in a way that breaks muscle memory.
The Anti-Principle: Don't Delight, Don't Surprise, Don't Innovate
If you're designing for boredom-induced growth, there's one thing you must never do: don't try to make it exciting.
Don't add animations that make interactions feel smooth. Smooth feels novel. Novelty breaks automaticity.
Don't add micro-interactions that delight. Delight requires attention. Attention breaks automaticity.
Don't update the interface based on design trends. Trends make things exciting. Excited requires thinking.
The most successful boring designs are the ones that resist the urge to make them exciting.
Retention Through Automaticity
Frictionless products (exciting, optimized for first use) have high conversion but moderate retention. Users quickly adopt but gradually churn because there's always a new exciting product.
Boring products (consistent, optimized for daily use) have lower conversion but extreme retention. Users take longer to adopt but stay forever because the system has become automatic.
Over a 5-year horizon, boring products generate significantly more lifetime value.
M-Pesa is the proof: 15 years of use, 50 million daily active users, and not because it's exciting. Because it's so boring that you don't think about it.
Usage Frequency Through Neural Pathways
Frictionless products optimize for session length (how long you stay per visit). Time in app. Features used. Engagement.
Boring products optimize for session frequency (how many times you come back). Daily return rate. Habitual use.
Research shows boring products generate higher frequency. Not because they're more engaging per session. Because they're so automatic that you return habitually.
A user might spend 30 minutes per session in an exciting app (3 times per month). Or they might spend 2 minutes per session in a boring app (20 times per month).
Total time is the same. But boring delivers habit. Frictionless delivers peak experience.
Habit creates sustainable growth. Peak experience creates revenue volatility.
Revenue Per User Through Stickiness
Frictionless products compete on converting each user per session. They need high conversion rate (percentage of users who pay) and high transaction value per willing user.
Boring products benefit from extreme stickiness. Users who've automated the system are willing to transact more frequently, in smaller amounts, because the friction has disappeared.
M-Pesa users might send money 10 times per week in small amounts. They're not "paying" to use M-Pesa—sending money IS using M-Pesa.
The habit is so ingrained that using the product is the default state, not a special action requiring decision.
This creates consistent, predictable revenue from a large user base, rather than volatile revenue from small subset of paying users.
The Uncomfortable Truth
The design industry is built on novelty. Design trends. Design systems. Design evolution. Design improvement.
If boring is the growth secret, then many of the things the design industry celebrates (redesigns, new features, visual updates) are actually growth-destroying.
A successful boring product never needs a significant redesign. M-Pesa never needed a redesign because the design was right-sized for its purpose from the beginning.
Instagram, by contrast, has been constantly redesigned. Every update was supposed to improve engagement. But every update forced users to relearn the system. Every update broke habit.
Instagram's engagement went up (more features to interact with) but retention has gone down (users churn faster because there's no stable interface to develop habits around).
The design industry can't admit this because it would mean admitting that design improvement is often design destruction.
The Prestige Problem
esign prestige comes from novelty. Award-winning designs are new designs. Innovative designs. Designs that break conventions.
A boring design that's 15 years old and unchanged won't win awards. It'll never be featured in design publications. It won't make the designer famous.
But it will generate more value than any award-winning design ever could.
This creates perverse incentives. Designers are incentivized to make products more exciting, even when the boring design was generating more growth.
A designer who keeps M-Pesa boring forever creates the most successful product in East Africa's history. But they'll never be known. Never celebrated. Never featured.
A designer who redesigns M-Pesa to be exciting (like Instagram did with itself) will get press, accolades, and a design award. Even if it destroys retention.
The industry celebrates destruction disguised as improvement.
Conclusion
After five years of designing across emerging markets, I've learned something the Western design industry doesn't want to admit: the most successful products are the most boring.
Boring doesn't mean ugly. Boring doesn't mean poorly designed. Boring means consistent. Reliable. Predictable. Automatizable.
Boring is what happens when you've designed so well that the user doesn't have to think anymore. The interface has disappeared. The product has become invisible infrastructure.
That's not failure. That's mastery.
The products that will dominate in emerging markets in the next decade won't be the most innovative. They'll be the most boring. They'll be the ones so familiar that they become invisible. They'll be the ones so reliable that they're taken for granted.
And the designers behind them will never be famous. But their products will change lives.
That's the unspoken bargain of boring design: you give up prestige for permanence. You trade awards for billions of daily users. You exchange innovation for infrastructure.
In emerging markets, where reliability matters more than excitement, more than novelty, more than delight, boring is winning.
And it will keep winning until the design industry admits what it's been avoiding: the most addictive products aren't the most exciting. They're the most boring.
References
Bieleke, M., et al. (2021). "Boredom: A Mysterious Phenomenon" - Frontiers in Psychology
Elpidorou, A. (2023). "The Boredom Theory of Meaning" - Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives
Danckert, J., & Elpidorou, A. (2023). "The Broken Compass: What Boredom Means" - Philosophical Psychology
Finkielsztein, J. (2025). "When Boredom Becomes Engagement" - Contemporary Psychology Review
James Clear (2018). "Atomic Habits" - Habit Loop Framework
Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology" - Spacing Effect
Raichle, M.E., et al. (2001). "A default mode of brain function" - PNAS (Default Mode Network)
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"
Pink, D.H. (2009). "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
Häusel, H.M. (2012). "Brain Script: The Neuroscience of Consumption"
Newport, C. (2016). "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
M-Pesa Usage Data & Reports (2007-2025)
Instagram Redesign History & User Retention Analysis (2010-2025)
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Designing For Boredom
Designing For Boredom
Designing For Boredom
Designing For Boredom
How Intentional Monotony Creates Sustainable Growth
Summary
Every designer has been taught one thing above all: eliminate boredom. Design is supposed to be exciting. Engaging. Delight. Entertainment. Novelty. If a user is bored, you've failed. If interaction feels repetitive, you've designed wrong. If the interface becomes "just a tool," you've missed an opportunity to create magic.
This doctrine is so complete that boredom has become design's unspoken enemy. Something to run from. Something to hide. Something to never, ever create intentionally. Except... what if you're wrong? What if the most successful products in the world aren't successful because they're exciting? What if they're successful because they're boring in exactly the right way? What if designing for boredom not eliminating it, but leveraging it is the actual growth secret that nobody wants to admit? I realized this around year four of fintech design. The products that had the highest retention weren't the prettiest. They weren't the most feature-rich. They weren't the ones that delivered constant novelty. The products with the highest retention were the ones that became so familiar, so routine, so daily that they disappeared into the user's life. They became boring. And that boredom was where retention lived.
M-Pesa is boring. You use it the same way every day. The interface hasn't changed much in 15 years. There's no gamification, no surprises, no "delight moments." It's profoundly, intentionally boring.
And that boredom is exactly why 50 million Kenyans use it every single day. Because once something becomes boring enough that you don't have to think about it, you'll never leave it.
This essay is about why the design industry has it backwards. Boredom isn't the failure state. Novelty is the trap. And the products that grow most sustainably are the ones that become so monotonous, so routine, so predictable that they achieve something remarkable: invisibility. They stop being products and become infrastructure.
What Boredom Actually Is
Boredom arises when individuals perceive a task or environment as insufficiently stimulating, lacking in personal relevance, or failing to meet internal goals. Rather than being viewed as a passive condition, boredom is reinterpreted as a mechanism that encourages engagement and goal-directed action.
Most designers read this definition and think: "I need to make things more stimulating, more relevant, more goal-aligned." They think boredom is a problem to be solved through more features, more novelty, more excitement.
But here's what neuroscience actually tells us: boredom is information. Boredom is a signal that your brain is ready to operate on autopilot. Boredom means you've internalized the pattern. Boredom means you understand the system so deeply that conscious attention is no longer required.
Boredom is mastery
This is why chess players find chess boring after 10,000 games—they've internalized the patterns. Why expert drivers find driving boring—they don't need to think about it. Why longtime M-Pesa users find M-Pesa boring—they know exactly how it works.
The design industry has confused boredom (mastery) with disengagement (abandonment). These are completely different states.
A bored user who's mastered a system will use it every single day. A disengaged user who's abandoned the system won't use it at all.
The confusing part: both look the same in early metrics. Low novelty-seeking. Predictable behavior. Minimal feature exploration.
But over time, they diverge completely. The bored (but mastered) user stays forever. The disengaged user leaves.
The Novelty Trap: Why Excitement Kills Retention
Modern design assumes that engagement is driven by novelty. New features, new interactions, new surprises. Every update should delight. Every interaction should amaze.
This creates a compounding problem: you're competing with your own previous versions. Every update makes the last update boring. Every delight becomes normal, then boring.
Instagram is the perfect example. In 2010, Instagram was boring—it was just a photo-sharing app with filters. But it was boring in a way that made sense. You understood what would happen. You took a photo, applied a filter, shared it. Done.
Then Instagram got excited. Stories. Reels. DMs. Feeds. Explore. Shops. Each feature was novel. Each was supposed to delight.
But now Instagram is overstimulating. You open the app and don't know what you'll get. The algorithm feeds you unpredictable content. The interface changes constantly. It's not boring anymore. It's chaotic.
And users don't stay as long. They bounce faster. They disengage quicker. The "engagement" (time in app per session) might be high, but retention (coming back day after day) is actually declining in many user segments.
Compare this to M-Pesa, which hasn't fundamentally changed in 15 years. Same menus. Same interactions. Same rhythm. Completely, intentionally boring.
And every single day, millions of people come back. Not because it's exciting. Because it's so boring that they don't have to think about it.
Boredom Creates Attachment
The Cognitive Load Theory of Attachment
When you design something new and exciting, you require attention. Users have to think. They have to learn. They have to allocate cognitive resources.
This feels good in the moment—it's novel, it's engaging. But it's also exhausting.
When you design something boring and familiar, you free up cognitive resources. Users don't have to think. They can operate on autopilot. The system becomes extension of muscle memory.
Here's where attachment happens: the more automated something is, the more invested you become. You've literally written it into your neurology. Your brain has optimized for this specific pattern.
Changing the boring pattern feels like trauma. Changing the exciting pattern feels like refreshing.
This is why redesigning an app you use daily feels violent, even if the new design is objectively better. You've automated the old pattern. You've removed the need for conscious thought. The new design forces you to think again.
Think about your daily routine. If someone changed your route to work, changed which hand you brush your teeth with, changed the order of your morning coffee ritual, you'd resist. Not because the new way is worse—often it's better. But because you've invested cognitive energy in automating the old pattern.
When that automation is removed, you're forced back into conscious attention. It's uncomfortable. It feels wrong.
That discomfort is attachment.
Users who experience that discomfort are users who won't leave. Because leaving means losing all that cognitive investment. Staying means getting back to autopilot.
This is the boring product's secret weapon: it's become part of your neurology. Leaving it feels like losing a limb.
The Investment Paradox: Boredom Creates Ownership
There's a psychological principle called the "effort justification effect." Things that require effort to achieve are valued more highly than things that come easily.
When something is exciting and novel, you don't invest effort. It comes naturally. You consume it passively.
But when something is boring, you have to overcome the resistance to engage with it. You have to make an effort. And that effort creates investment.
Users who have to work to understand M-Pesa's interface own it more deeply than users of a frictionless payment app. They've had to learn it. They've had to invest cognitive effort. They've earned their mastery.
That mastery creates identity. You're not just a user of M-Pesa—you're a person who knows how to use M-Pesa. That becomes part of who you are.
And you'll never switch because switching would mean losing that identity.
This is why boring products create the most loyal customers. Not because the customers are happy all the time. But because they've invested so much effort in learning the system that leaving would invalidate that investment.
The Disappearance Theory: When Boring Becomes Invisible
The ultimate form of growth through boredom happens when the product completely disappears from conscious awareness.
You don't think about M-Pesa anymore. You just use it. The interface is invisible. The system is invisible. You're thinking about your goal (sending money), not the tool (M-Pesa).
This is the state that creates maximum retention because there's no friction between intention and action. You want to send money. M-Pesa is there. You don't have to consider alternatives. You don't have to decide if you like it. You don't even think about it.
It just is.
Products that achieve this invisibility have effectively won the market. Not because they're the best product. But because they're the default tool. They're the thing you don't think about.
And once a tool has achieved that level of invisibility, it's nearly impossible to displace. Because displacing it requires making users conscious again. And consciousness brings friction.
Boring Addiction
Why Repetition Creates Compulsion
The brain loves patterns. It especially loves predictable, repeatable patterns. Because patterns allow the brain to operate efficiently.
When you repeat an action enough times, the brain creates neural pathways that make the action automatic. You don't have to think. You don't have to decide. The pathway is there, ready to fire.
This is addiction, but not in the drug-sense. This is behavioral addiction. The compulsion to repeat because the neural pathway is optimized for repetition.
The most effective behavioral addictions are the most boring ones. They're the ones that become so automatic that you barely notice you're doing them.
Think about checking email. You don't check email because it's exciting. It's profoundly boring. You check it because the neural pathway is carved so deeply that you do it automatically. Throughout the day, without thinking, you check.
That's boring creating compulsion. That's boredom creating growth (in usage frequency).
The exciting products—the ones constantly surprising you with new features and delights—don't create the same compulsion because they keep requiring conscious attention. They don't carve deep neural pathways. They keep you thinking.
The boring products create neural pathways so deep that you can't not use them.
The Spacing Effect: How Monotony Improves Memory
There's a learning principle called the spacing effect: information is remembered better when it's spread out over time than when it's massed together.
Applying this to product design: users remember and internalize interfaces better when they interact with them repeatedly in familiar, consistent ways than when interfaces change frequently.
A boring, consistent interface creates spacing effect. You use it daily. Each time, the same actions. Your brain reinforces the same pathways. Memory deepens.
A frequently updating interface creates massing effect. You interact with it intensely, but the interface keeps changing. Your brain can't reinforce consistent pathways because the interface itself is different each time.
This is why frequent redesigns destroy long-term usability, even when the redesigns are individually better. The constant change prevents the spacing effect from working.
Boring products leverage spacing effect. They're the same every day. You use them every day. The neural pathway gets reinforced every day. Over years, it becomes part of your muscle memory.
The Default Mode Network: Boring Lets Your Brain Wander
Neuroscientists have identified something called the default mode network—the set of brain regions that activate when you're not focused on the external world.
The default mode is where creativity happens. Where reflection happens. Where planning happens. Where meaning-making happens.
Products that require constant attention actually prevent the default mode from activating. You're always focused on the external world (the product). Your brain can't wander. Your creativity is suppressed.
Boring products, by contrast, allow the default mode to activate. You use them automatically, without attention. Your brain is free to wander while your hands are performing the familiar action.
This is why the most productive people often use boring tools. Boring text editors. Boring spreadsheets. Boring note-taking apps. These tools don't demand attention, so your mind is free to think about the actual work.
And users appreciate this. They stay with the tool because it's compatible with thinking. The tool doesn't interfere with cognition.
Exciting products that demand constant attention are cognitively expensive. Over time, users abandon them because they're tired. Boring products that allow automated operation are cognitively efficient. Users keep them because they're refreshing.
The Reliability of Boring
In developed markets, products compete on feature richness and novelty. You can afford to experiment because you have choice and stability.
In emerging markets, products compete on reliability and predictability. You can't afford surprises because unpredictability is risk.
This is why M-Pesa is boring. In Kenya, where financial instability is real and trust is fragile, a system that works exactly the same way every day is the greatest luxury. You don't need excitement. You need reliability.
OPay and PalmPay, despite being newer products with more features, have discovered the same truth. The features are secondary. The reliability is primary.
A user in Nigeria or Kenya doesn't want their payment app to surprise them. They want it to work exactly the same way, every time, forever. They've built their financial lives around knowing exactly how the system works.
Changing that system is a betrayal. Adding features makes it more complex. Updating it introduces uncertainty.
Users in emerging markets would choose boring-but-reliable over exciting-but-unpredictable every single time.
The Scarcity Principle: Boredom Conserves Resources
In developed markets, resources are abundant. Attention is abundant. Bandwidth is abundant. Processing power is abundant.
In emerging markets, resources are scarce. Data is expensive. Device capability is limited. Internet is intermittent.
Boring products conserve resources. They don't require constant updates. They don't demand constant attention. They work with minimal bandwidth.
Exciting products burn resources. New features mean more code. More animations mean more processing. Frequent updates mean more data.
In markets with data scarcity, boring is a feature, not a limitation.
This is why M-Pesa's interface hasn't changed much in 15 years. It's optimized for resource scarcity. The design is information-dense but code-light. It works on feature phones. It works with slow internet.
Trying to make M-Pesa exciting would destroy it. Adding features would require more bandwidth, more processing, more resources. It would break for the people who need it most.
The boring design is the inclusive design.
The Default Privilege: What Makes Something Boring Is Having No Alternative
In developed markets, if you don't like a boring product, you switch to an exciting one. The boring product loses users to novelty-seeking competitors.
In emerging markets, if the product works and you understand it, why would you switch? There are no real alternatives. And switching costs (relearning the system, trusting a new provider) are high.
This structural difference means boring products win in emerging markets. Not because they're better designed, but because switching is more costly than staying.
Over time, boring becomes default. And default becomes infrastructure.
This explains M-Pesa's dominance. It didn't become the default because it was the best designed. It became default because it arrived first, worked reliably, and became too embedded to displace.
Now any competing product faces an enormous barrier: they're not just competing on features. They're competing against habit, identity, and neural automation.
Designing for Intentional Boredom
Principle 1: Consistency Over Time
If you're designing for boredom-induced growth, the first principle is consistency. The interface should be the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
This doesn't mean never updating. It means updates should be invisible. Bug fixes. Under-the-hood improvements. Things that don't change how the user interacts with the system.
The user should be able to close the app on Day 1 and open it again on Day 365 and know exactly where they are. The muscle memory should still be valid. The mental model should still be accurate.
Principle 2: Minimize Cognitive Load
Every element of the interface should serve a function. Nothing should be there to delight or surprise. Nothing should be there for aesthetics alone.
The boring design removes decorative elements, animations, transitions, or information that doesn't serve the user's immediate goal.
This isn't ugly. It's clear. It's focused. It removes the noise that requires attention.
Principle 3: Enable Automaticity
The interface should be designed so that actions can become automatic through repetition.
For M-Pesa, sending money becomes muscle memory. You know the exact sequence. You don't have to think. Your fingers just move.
This requires consistency with other patterns the user knows. If payment involves the same flow as other actions, muscle memory transfers. If it's unique, the user has to think every time.
Principle 4: Build Habit Loops
James Clear wrote about habit loops: Cue → Craving → Response → Reward.
Boring products leverage this by creating consistent cues, consistent responses, and consistent rewards.
With M-Pesa, the cue is a need to send money. The response is the same sequence of actions every time. The reward is the money sent.
Because this loop is so consistent, it becomes automatic. The habit deepens.
Principle 5: Respect the User's Mental Model
Once a user has internalized how a system works, changing that system breaks their mental model.
A boring product respects this. It validates the user's understanding. It works the way they expect because it always works the same way.
Changes should be minimal and invisible. Never update the interface in a way that breaks muscle memory.
The Anti-Principle: Don't Delight, Don't Surprise, Don't Innovate
If you're designing for boredom-induced growth, there's one thing you must never do: don't try to make it exciting.
Don't add animations that make interactions feel smooth. Smooth feels novel. Novelty breaks automaticity.
Don't add micro-interactions that delight. Delight requires attention. Attention breaks automaticity.
Don't update the interface based on design trends. Trends make things exciting. Excited requires thinking.
The most successful boring designs are the ones that resist the urge to make them exciting.
Retention Through Automaticity
Frictionless products (exciting, optimized for first use) have high conversion but moderate retention. Users quickly adopt but gradually churn because there's always a new exciting product.
Boring products (consistent, optimized for daily use) have lower conversion but extreme retention. Users take longer to adopt but stay forever because the system has become automatic.
Over a 5-year horizon, boring products generate significantly more lifetime value.
M-Pesa is the proof: 15 years of use, 50 million daily active users, and not because it's exciting. Because it's so boring that you don't think about it.
Usage Frequency Through Neural Pathways
Frictionless products optimize for session length (how long you stay per visit). Time in app. Features used. Engagement.
Boring products optimize for session frequency (how many times you come back). Daily return rate. Habitual use.
Research shows boring products generate higher frequency. Not because they're more engaging per session. Because they're so automatic that you return habitually.
A user might spend 30 minutes per session in an exciting app (3 times per month). Or they might spend 2 minutes per session in a boring app (20 times per month).
Total time is the same. But boring delivers habit. Frictionless delivers peak experience.
Habit creates sustainable growth. Peak experience creates revenue volatility.
Revenue Per User Through Stickiness
Frictionless products compete on converting each user per session. They need high conversion rate (percentage of users who pay) and high transaction value per willing user.
Boring products benefit from extreme stickiness. Users who've automated the system are willing to transact more frequently, in smaller amounts, because the friction has disappeared.
M-Pesa users might send money 10 times per week in small amounts. They're not "paying" to use M-Pesa—sending money IS using M-Pesa.
The habit is so ingrained that using the product is the default state, not a special action requiring decision.
This creates consistent, predictable revenue from a large user base, rather than volatile revenue from small subset of paying users.
The Uncomfortable Truth
The design industry is built on novelty. Design trends. Design systems. Design evolution. Design improvement.
If boring is the growth secret, then many of the things the design industry celebrates (redesigns, new features, visual updates) are actually growth-destroying.
A successful boring product never needs a significant redesign. M-Pesa never needed a redesign because the design was right-sized for its purpose from the beginning.
Instagram, by contrast, has been constantly redesigned. Every update was supposed to improve engagement. But every update forced users to relearn the system. Every update broke habit.
Instagram's engagement went up (more features to interact with) but retention has gone down (users churn faster because there's no stable interface to develop habits around).
The design industry can't admit this because it would mean admitting that design improvement is often design destruction.
The Prestige Problem
esign prestige comes from novelty. Award-winning designs are new designs. Innovative designs. Designs that break conventions.
A boring design that's 15 years old and unchanged won't win awards. It'll never be featured in design publications. It won't make the designer famous.
But it will generate more value than any award-winning design ever could.
This creates perverse incentives. Designers are incentivized to make products more exciting, even when the boring design was generating more growth.
A designer who keeps M-Pesa boring forever creates the most successful product in East Africa's history. But they'll never be known. Never celebrated. Never featured.
A designer who redesigns M-Pesa to be exciting (like Instagram did with itself) will get press, accolades, and a design award. Even if it destroys retention.
The industry celebrates destruction disguised as improvement.
Conclusion
After five years of designing across emerging markets, I've learned something the Western design industry doesn't want to admit: the most successful products are the most boring.
Boring doesn't mean ugly. Boring doesn't mean poorly designed. Boring means consistent. Reliable. Predictable. Automatizable.
Boring is what happens when you've designed so well that the user doesn't have to think anymore. The interface has disappeared. The product has become invisible infrastructure.
That's not failure. That's mastery.
The products that will dominate in emerging markets in the next decade won't be the most innovative. They'll be the most boring. They'll be the ones so familiar that they become invisible. They'll be the ones so reliable that they're taken for granted.
And the designers behind them will never be famous. But their products will change lives.
That's the unspoken bargain of boring design: you give up prestige for permanence. You trade awards for billions of daily users. You exchange innovation for infrastructure.
In emerging markets, where reliability matters more than excitement, more than novelty, more than delight, boring is winning.
And it will keep winning until the design industry admits what it's been avoiding: the most addictive products aren't the most exciting. They're the most boring.
References
Bieleke, M., et al. (2021). "Boredom: A Mysterious Phenomenon" - Frontiers in Psychology
Elpidorou, A. (2023). "The Boredom Theory of Meaning" - Cognitive Neuroscience Perspectives
Danckert, J., & Elpidorou, A. (2023). "The Broken Compass: What Boredom Means" - Philosophical Psychology
Finkielsztein, J. (2025). "When Boredom Becomes Engagement" - Contemporary Psychology Review
James Clear (2018). "Atomic Habits" - Habit Loop Framework
Ebbinghaus, H. (1885). "Memory: A Contribution to Experimental Psychology" - Spacing Effect
Raichle, M.E., et al. (2001). "A default mode of brain function" - PNAS (Default Mode Network)
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience"
Pink, D.H. (2009). "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
Häusel, H.M. (2012). "Brain Script: The Neuroscience of Consumption"
Newport, C. (2016). "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World"
M-Pesa Usage Data & Reports (2007-2025)
Instagram Redesign History & User Retention Analysis (2010-2025)
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