The Diaper Dilemma: Designing for Users Who Don’t Pay

Babies wear diapers. But babies don’t buy diapers.

This simple observation introduces a layered challenge that quietly shapes the design and success of many products: the disconnect between the person experiencing the core pain and the person making the purchasing decision. The one who feels the consequence is not the one with the money. And in this disconnect lies a recurring dilemma for designers, founders, and product teams alike.

In the case of diapers, the user is voiceless, preverbal, and unable to articulate feedback. Their needs are intimate and immediate: comfort, dryness, and freedom from irritation. Yet their satisfaction is inferred through signs and signals, not survey results or support tickets. Meanwhile, the buyer (the parent) has their own priorities: price, availability, absorbency ratings, brand trust, and aesthetic packaging. One fascinating study used diaper repurchase intervals to assess quality from the buyer's perspective. It showed how decision-makers respond over time to subtle user signals like discomfort or leakage, even when those users cannot speak. For the product to succeed, it must somehow serve both without collapsing under the weight of compromise.

This asymmetry between user and buyer appears in far more contexts than baby care. It shows up in enterprise software where executives sign contracts but frontline employees endure the daily interface. It appears in employee benefit platforms that HR teams implement, only to discover low engagement across departments. It is evident in children’s educational tools, where parents pay for a subscription but children are the ones who have to use it. And it is woven throughout healthcare systems where insurers and administrators select tools that patients must later navigate in moments of vulnerability. In studies of educational software adoption, researchers found that mismatched expectations between purchasers and student users frequently led to underutilization, regardless of technical quality.

In all these cases, the product team faces a design decision that is not about functionality alone, but about allegiance. Who do we center? Whose needs take precedence when tradeoffs become inevitable? And how do we design in a way that acknowledges the power dynamics without surrendering entirely to them?

Too often, the answer is defaulted rather than chosen. The buyer is prioritized because they hold the budget and make the decision, and the user is left to adapt to a system never truly designed with them in mind. When this happens, short-term gains are often mistaken for long-term success. A contract is signed. Adoption looks promising. But in time, usage drops, friction accumulates, and resentment builds silently in the hands of the user. What looked like success becomes slow erosion.

Designing for dual audiences is not a matter of simple compromise. It requires a kind of structural empathy that sees the ecosystem clearly and assigns intent with precision. Messaging may need to speak to the buyer’s rationale: the promise of ROI, of organizational alignment, and of simplicity in deployment. But the experience itself must serve the user’s friction, pain, and goals, because their behavior will ultimately determine whether the product lives or lingers.

This is not merely a UX consideration, but a strategic one. If the person with purchasing power begins to receive complaints, notices disengagement, or sees a widening gap between expectation and outcome, the initial confidence in the product can erode. Conversely, if the user finds unexpected clarity and ease, even when they were not the primary audience, loyalty often follows. And with that loyalty comes influence over future purchasing decisions. In industries like children’s products, this dynamic has been widely documented as “pester power”, where the user’s emotional experience indirectly but powerfully shapes buyer behavior over time.

Ignoring this dynamic can have real cost. Decks can be designed to appeal to leadership while saying little of value to the people who have to implement what is inside. Tools can be built with technical elegance yet still fail because the person who uses them was never consulted. And products can achieve initial traction only to encounter silent churn because the experience felt extractive rather than enabling.

At Human Intervention, we approach this not as a flaw to patch but as a structural reality to map. We have learned to ask not only who the product is for, but who it is about, and who it affects most when it does not work as intended. We trace the edges between purchase logic and user behavior, and we intervene at the seams. We help teams redesign not just features, but the invisible contract between buyer and user.

The diaper dilemma is not confined to infancy. It exists wherever a product’s success depends on harmonizing two human realities: the one who funds the solution and the one who must live with it. Recognizing this tension early, and designing with both eyes open, is not a nice-to-have. It is the difference between a product that sells and a product that lasts.