Adam Ginther

When it comes to user research, we can’t just provide a long laundry list of pain points and tiny fixes. 📝 That’s not enough. 👇 Researchers so often get stuck in the hamster wheel of incremental product improvement that we aren’t actually spending enough time with our research (synthesizing it using design thinking) to provide true innovative solutions. (As you know, providing innovative solutions is the KEY to creating real impact.) Instead, what usually happens is that stakeholders receive these research reports with a big long list of basic, surface-level pain points to address at the end (🥱), along with some basic recommendations, and they get added to some product/feature roadmap, prioritized, and implemented in a routine life cycle. 🤷 This is great, to an extent! BUT, hello!!… DESIGN (the bigger umbrella of design) is NOT about identifying a million pain points and painfully fixing each one. Design is about creating experiences and things that delight ✨ and excite 🤸people, while being functional. User research should support that. 👉 Try not to get stuck in this trap when you’re working on your next project.  Next time, when you’re looking at a fresh set of raw research data: 🧩 Strategize: Employ frameworks to start processing the themes and repeating ideas in your data. 🧘‍♂️ Marinate: Let these themes and ideas wash over your subconscious again and again, even while you sleep! 🌀Bend and push your creative mind: Work hard at putting those ideas together in new and exciting ways. 💥 Don’t stop until you get to the magic: You will find those “aha” moments waiting underneath it all. 🎯 Communicate and sell that magic in your reporting: Showcase opportunities that will actually get at the deep-rooted design problem and elevate your organization into a trendsetting power player. The way we do this for our clients is through Action Plans. Yes, we still provide the laundry list of pains — because it IS still useful. BUT, the genius 🧠 we deliver is in translating these larger themes into ACTIONABLE and INNOVATIVE solutions that will literally transform the way those businesses deliver their products and services, and propel them ahead of the industry. This is how you get noticed in your UX career — bringing these types of solutions to the table!! #UserResearch #UXResearch #DesignInnovation #UXCareer #DigitalTransformation

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Unsurprisingly the feeds have been ablaze with talk of Figma's MCP server, and yesterday Akbar Mirza joined Liam Hampton to discuss some good practices to ensure a more accurate output in the code generation inside of VSCode. One of the key takeaways was the importance of documentation in your co-pilot instructions.md file, suggesting fixes based on some of the recurrent issues. It gives me huge confidence that the labour intensive process of Design System and Developer documentation is truly starting paying off. You can check out the full session here ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gavm-T_8

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The main objections I hear about hiring UX contractors: “The ramp-up will be too slow,” “They’re too pricey,” and, “They won’t know our culture, or how we work.” Let’s unpack that. 👇 With recent UX downsizing, companies might have smaller permanent design teams — but trust me, demand for design work is still there, because stellar contractors are building that demand.🌟 I’ve watched it firsthand as I oversee staffing at Outwitly Inc. By utilizing contractors to augment their teams at specific points in the design lifecycle, organizations can still get the work done — without burning out their internal team with millions of feature requests on top of their usual load. It can be a win-win that keeps businesses healthy. 🌱 Back to those objections. Like many UX-related objections, they’re generally founded on shortsightedness: 🏁 Ramping Up vs Acting Now: 🏁Bringing on a contractor can actually add velocity, especially with longer projects that promise big impact but get pushed out or deprioritized because of the sheer amount of work. If you need something done and no one else has the capacity now, you can bring on a specialist for six months, instead of waiting. (^You can also make use of contractors to lay the foundation for upcoming work, like specialists in design ops, research ops, design systems, etc., while others focus on immediate deadlines. ) 💰Up-front Cost vs ROI: 💰Contractors often have higher rates because they take on higher risk, but when you consider the cost of slow internal hiring, employee turnover, long-term overhead, employee benefits, etc., contractors can be a lower-risk option. Specialized contractors can also pull research initiatives out of holding patterns and uncover opportunities for innovation with major ROI potential. 🧩 Like-Minded vs New Perspectives: 🧩New personalities aren’t scary! Blended teams are amazing for bringing in fresh perspectives and diverse skillsets that your internal team members can learn from and adopt, to the long-term benefit of their organizations. (^ Plus, the beautiful thing about the people who tend to go into contracting is that they’re often senior practitioners, willing to bet on themselves because they know they’re experienced enough to consistently win contracts, and they HAVE to be that good to find work.🔥) 👉 So, in reality, you get the "cream of the crop," new perspectives and more speed/flexibility. You get to skip over red tape and get straight to work. (Especially if you have support with choosing the right candidates.) If you’re considering this hiring move, OR you’re trying to convince your supervisor to consider it, give this blog post another look: https://lnkd.in/gRP-V3JS We posted it a while ago, but it’s still a good resource. I’d be interested to hear about other experiences with blended teams. What’s your favourite part?  What’s working best? #UXDesign #StaffAugmentation #UXContractors #BlendedTeams #DesignOps

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4 Comments

Your lack of a design handoff process could be costing your team 6 hours every week. It’s not laziness. It’s not egos. It’s systemic breakdown. Here’s where devs say they lose the most time: Missing states, everywhere → No error handling → No loading indicators → No empty states → No accessibility specs (96% of websites still have accessibility barriers, via WebAIM) Unusable files → Layers named “Rectangle 9” and “Frame 55” → No semantic structure → Components scattered across pages → No interaction documentation Technical feasibility ignored → Breakpoints? Missing → Performance? Unchecked → Accessibility? Assumed The shift? Stop treating devs like implementation resources. Start treating them like strategic partners—the ones who can flag feasibility before design calcifies. 🧠 Developers: What’s the #1 thing that makes a handoff smooth for you? 🎨 Designers: Which of these 5 steps are you skipping? Let’s make this less painful. #uxdesign #designsystems #devhandoff #accessibility ⸻ 👋🏼 Hi, I’m Dane, a UX designer and mentor. ❤️ If you found this helpful, a 👍🏼 would be thuper kewl. 🔄 Share this to help others (or for easy access later). ➕ Follow me for more like this in your feed.

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One really positive outcome that's come from AI tools bringing designers and devs more into each others' world is the empathy it's building. Seeing so many designers realize how much more complex a seemingly small visual change can be in code and developers realize how hard it can be to design a great user experience ♥️

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UX costs nothing—until it costs everything. Every ignored friction point eventually resurfaces as support tickets, dropped leads, stalled onboarding, or lost renewals. We've seen this consistently across B2B platforms, member portals, and internal tools: → Poor navigation floods help desks → Inconsistent UI slows adoption and erodes trust → Bloated workflows quietly push users toward competitors Organizations often think they're avoiding UX costs, unaware they're already paying—through wasted time, constant patches, and staff burnout. High-performing teams don't see UX as a line-item luxury. They treat it as preventive ops. They measure it. Fund it. Protect it. Because solving root problems always costs less than endlessly triaging symptoms. If your support team is swamped or onboarding is stalled, it's probably not just a content issue. It's a UX issue—and you're already footing the bill.

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Senior designers who can't code are becoming obsolete faster than they think. I'm not saying you need to be a full-stack developer. But a few months ago I watched a senior designer spec an interaction that would take three months to build. The engineer said "this is technically impossible with our current architecture." The designer had no idea what that meant. Here's what I've learned managing designers for years: you don't need to code. You need to understand what's hard versus what's impossible. I've seen designers request real-time collaboration features with zero understanding of websocket complexity. Pixel-perfect animations that break accessibility. Infinite scroll that destroys performance. Then they get frustrated when engineers push back. The best designers I worked with? They don't write production code. But they understand rendering, state management, API limitations. They know when they're asking for two days of work versus two weeks. AI is making design execution easier. But it's not solving the gap between what designers want and what systems can actually do. If you can't speak the language of technical constraints, you're becoming just a visual decorator. And we already have AI for that. So…you need to become a more technical product designer.

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DesignOps is simple in theory: help designers spend time on work that matters, not on blockers, chaos, or process confusion. That was our focus in 2025. 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧: Reduce operational hurdles, clarify how we work, and make collaboration across teams easier so design can stay focused on customer impact. What we delivered in 2025: ⏱️ 15 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐞𝐬  average from problem to solution The goal was fast unblocking. No endless MS Teams threads. No trial and error for half a day. 🧠 7 𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 From AI best practices, to design process guidance, to an intro to SAP Build Work Zone for designers. 🛠️ 40+ 𝐬𝐮𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐝 Through Doctor’s Hour and ad hoc support, we removed critical blockers, reduced delays, and kept teams moving. For me, DesignOps is not overhead. It is how you protect focus and keep delivery smooth when things get messy. Big thanks to everyone who contributed, supported, documented, and showed up when someone was stuck 🙌 Stefan Haingärtner, Simon Schelsky, Niklas Winterfeld and Co. @ sovanta AG And you: what is your biggest DesignOps pain right now: process clarity, tooling, or cross team collaboration? #DesignOps #SAPUX #UX #SAPBTP #BuildingInPublic #EnterpriseUX #TeamEnablement #AIinUX #CleanCore

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Most founding designers don't fail because they can't design. They fail because of stage mismatch. I see it a lot - brilliant designer joins a seed stage company, everyone's excited, then 6 months later it's not working. What happened? - Usually the company hired for where they want to be, not where they actually are - They brought in someone incredible at design systems, craft, and polish But right now? They need someone who can ship scrappy solutions, operate in complete ambiguity, and figure things out as they go. Different skillsets. Different mindsets. If you're hiring your first designer, get honest about what stage you're actually at: - Do you need someone to define direction or execute on yours? - Strategy or speed? - A builder or a refiner? These are fundamentally different profiles. Hire for where you are today, not where you hope to be in 12 months

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Hey designers. Ever feel like you’re working through a design problem where you’ve applied what you can regarding #accessibility, but your gut tells you it’s just not quite enough, like you’re missing something, and you just don’t know what that gap might be? Well, I wanted to find a way to help designers bridge that gap. Over the years, I’ve worked on and refined my personal process for tackling any design problem with accessibility in mind. I’ve now molded that process into a framework that others can use to apply accessible design thinking to anything they’re working on. I call it the Accessible Design Framework. To learn more, check out my article on the Level Access website: https://lnkd.in/gmmAJiSe And be sure to check out the the demonstration videos too, where I show how to put the framework into action on a practical, everyday design task: https://lnkd.in/gNMxHqbf #a11y #AccessibleDesign

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Ever had an app idea stuck in your head for weeks? ✍️ You write it down. 📂 You open a Figma file. 🗄️ Maybe even start a repo. 🤦 Then... nothing ships. GitHub Spark just changed the game. This isn’t a toy. It’s not a sandbox. It’s a production-grade app builder that takes you from natural language to deployed app in minutes. ➡️ Frontend and backend built with Claude Sonnet 4 ➡️ No API keys to manage ➡️ No config, setup, or hosting drama ➡️ One-click deployments ➡️ GitHub repo with Copilot, Actions, and Dependabot baked in You can even assign tasks to Copilot agents and let them ship features inside your repo. This is the closest thing we’ve seen to "describe your idea, get your MVP live." If you’re a builder, or early-stage dev, Spark lets you go from idea to iteration fast. Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gtVuwUUA #developers #startups #buildinpublic #copilot #github #microsoft

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Most designers fail interviews because they talk about pixels. Not problems and profits. The exact framework that got a senior designer I'm coaching into Atlassian (1st round): 1. Set the stage - Name the business problem first - Show how it impacts revenue - Explain your role and team setup - Keep it under 1 minute 2. Define the real problem - Lead with data and research - Show how you uncovered hidden user needs - Connect it back to business goals 3. Show your process - Focus on decisions, not deliverables - Highlight key trade-offs you made - Demonstrate cross-team influence 4. Prove your impact - Lead with numbers when possible - Include user feedback - Show behavior changes 5. Share your growth - One key lesson learned - How it shaped future work - Link to company context Between each project, use this transition: "Here's a different challenge where I had to [solve X] while considering [Y]" Stop treating portfolio reviews like an art gallery tour. Start treating them like a business impact presentation. One gets you the job. The other gets you rejected. #design #careers #ux #tech

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We've all come across a design system graveyard at some point in our careers. Design systems that were built with good intentions but never quite fit the nuances of the product, weren’t fully tested for accessibility, or lacked the collaboration needed between design and development. We inherit them, wonder why they were never fully adopted, and try to understand why they didn’t evolve with the product. Over the past month, I've been building Khatabook's new dual-theme design system and spending time exploring what truly drives excitement and adoption. Here are a few takeaways from Design System University's course that I'm excited to carry forward in my work: 💡 Real organisational value lies in truly connected design systems. Valuable design systems are the ones that truly connect with the design, development, live software and the people that need to use it. 💡 Pitching the design system first to leadership and then creating it may not always work out. The best way to implement a design system is through good old product design. Try integrating it into your existing product roadmap features and ship it in small pilots. 💡 True collaboration takes the most advantage of the promises of a great design system. Collaboration goes beyond meetings and status updates. It lives in the shared tools, documentation, code, and processes we rely on every day. 💡 You can serve people well if you understand what drives them. Daniel H. Pink, in his book Drive, notes that autonomy, mastery, and purpose are the core drivers of human motivation. Think about how your design system can "drive" adoption among your team and your users. 💡 Building a design system that your team wants to use is about helping, inspiring, challenging and protecting them. Shared ownership and governance make everyone feel invested. Foster a strong community with open communication, active feedback loops, and engaging workshops.

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We are on the cusp of a tech exodus? I’ve spoken to tech workers who are all looking to leave the industry. Here's the reasons they gave me. Trust: Most designers got into this business to help people but they no longer trust that the corporate machine they work for actually shares that value. When your daily work pushes against your personal ethics it becomes hard to stay motivated and keep turning up. AI: AI is being forced into every workflow, but many UXers are skeptical. It feels like we’re being asked to abandon years of judgment and pattern recognition for a "new frontier" that doesn’t actually seem to solve real human problems yet. Shipping faster was never a problem, solving actual user problems was. Ageism: It seems like Ageism is still alive and well, Older designers are finding it increasingly hard to find new roles despite their huge amount of experience in the market. Burnout: As teams get thinned out, those left behind are carrying the load. The workday is getting stretched. Return to office is making days longer and people are generally being treated more like disposable resources than ever before. The hiring market is fucking insane: A mixture of inexperienced hiring managers, unrealistic expectations, oversupply and new technology have created the perfect shit storm. Designers are sick of jumping through hoops interviewing for roles that they are often overqualified for only for the role to be offshored in the end as companies seek to trim the fat. Reclaiming the "Fractional" Life: People are tired of being stuck between needing stability and wanting a sustainable next chapter. More and more designers are pivoting to fractional consulting or coaching just to work on projects they actually care about and reclaim their lives. This was my reason. My takeaway? The industry isn't just losing headcount; it’s losing its conscience and its most experienced hands. If we keep treating tech talent as a cost center rather than an asset, the exodus won't just be a trend it'll be the new standard. Shoutout to Laura Klein for her brilliant post highlighted a similar trend.

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