When technology stops feeling like a tool and starts feeling like a small bureaucrat sitting on the other side of the screen, it is a strange moment.
You are trying to do something ordinary. Change an address, book an appointment, or reach a real person.
The form rejects the truth of your circumstances because the truth does not fit the available box. The chatbot keeps circling back to the same approved sentence. The security code has been sent somewhere you cannot easily reach.
Eventually, the machine is not helping you complete the task.
You are helping the machine maintain its version of order.
We tend to call this digital exclusion, as though the person has failed to keep up.
I think we need to become far more willing to call it poor design.
A system can be fast, polished and technically impressive while still asking too much of the human being standing in front of it.
Technology in service to the human should create more room for participation, not make entry conditional upon perfect memory, steady hands, endless patience or a life tidy enough to fit inside a drop-down menu.
The real measure of progress is not whether the machine works. It is whether the person can remain fully human while using it.