The Customer Impact Filter
Every technical decision sorts people into two streams: who benefits, and who absorbs the friction. Good systems make that sorting visible and deliberate.
Every decision in a system is also a decision about people. Some get a benefit; some absorb a cost. The filter makes that distribution visible instead of accidental.
Two streams#
Picture a funnel. A choice goes in at the top; people come out sorted into two streams.
- Who benefits — faster answers, fewer errors, less waiting, more control.
- Who absorbs the friction — a new step, a worse default, a cost moved off the balance sheet of one team and onto another.
The friction never disappears. It moves. A "simplification" for the analytics team is often a new manual step for support. A faster checkout for customers can be a heavier reconciliation burden for finance.
The honest question#
For any decision, ask: who is downstream of this, and what does it cost them? Not to veto every cost — sometimes moving friction is exactly right — but to choose it on purpose, with the affected party in view, rather than discovering it later as a complaint.
The customer is always somewhere in the data model. Friction you can't see is still being paid by someone.
How to use it#
Before shipping, name the two streams out loud. If you can only describe the beneficiaries and not the people absorbing the friction, you have not finished thinking about the change — you have just stopped where it was comfortable.