# • Jan 28, 2026 • 5 min read • Erik Sagen
Delivery Is a Trap
How UX slid from strategy to service — and what it might take to climb back out.
We're making drawings.
That thought hit me a few years ago. Credit to a former manager who made it obvious. We were stringing together polished screens into nice-looking workflows, testing them with a handful of people meant to represent everyone, and calling that validation. Somewhere along the way, the drawing became the work. Not the thinking behind it. Not the problem it was meant to solve. The artifact itself.