Why your design team hates disabled features

Understanding why designers dislike disabling features and what alternatives exist.

I joined a local co-working space recently and met a developer who wanted to ask a controversial question. I thought the topic of conversation would be the 20B acquisition of Figma by Adobe. Instead, he wanted to know my thoughts on disabling features. The controversy is that he’s a fan of disabling, yet his design team is not.

This question, when to disable, has plagued me for some time as it’s a frequent point of friction between engineering and design. When you google ‘when to disable buttons’, my search yields cases for and against the pattern.

I’m going to outline the conversations I’ve had on disabled features, why designers are not fans, and what alternatives exist.

They make your UI look broken

A defining feature of a product you love is that it just works. When you disable a primary feature, especially for first-time users, it can look like something is broken. It’s not a good look; it makes your product look low quality and ultimately erodes trust with the product and the brand.