What’s it like being a user of the product you’re designing? That’s what we asked Strella’s product designer, Adam Barley.
Adam designs for Strella and is also one of our core users. He runs prototypes through Strella, analyzes the sessions, pulls insights — the same workflows our customers use every day. Which means every design decision he makes, he has to live with.
That changes everything, so we asked him what it's actually like to design for your own use case.
*What's it like designing a product that you yourself use day-to-day?*
"It removes a layer of guesswork. You're not just interpreting user needs — you're feeling friction, spotting gaps, noticing opportunities in real time. There's a constant feedback loop between 'designer me' and 'user me.' You can't hide behind assumptions when you're the one experiencing the product firsthand."
*How does that show up in your design process?*
"I can move from observation to iteration fast. If something feels unclear or slow during my own workflow, I don't just log it — I can immediately contextualize it. I know what I was trying to achieve, what I expected to happen, and where the experience broke down. That context makes design decisions sharper. They're grounded in real use cases, not hypothetical ones."
*Can you give an example?*
"Heatmaps. As a designer, understanding how users interact with a prototype is everything. Before Heatmaps, we had strong qualitative insights from interviews, but there was still a gap when it came to visualizing behavior at scale — where users click, hesitate, or deviate from expected paths.
Heatmaps let you see exactly how users move through a Figma prototype. Which screens they visit. Where they click. Where friction emerges. It bridges the gap between what users say and what they actually do. That's where the most valuable insights live.
This is something I would naturally push for because it directly impacts how confidently I can make decisions. Instead of relying on intuition alone, I can validate whether a layout is working, whether a CTA is being noticed, whether a flow is breaking down — all before a single line of code is written."
*What does it mean to you personally to be building in this space?*
"I'm solving problems I genuinely care about. I've always relied on user research to guide decisions, but traditional methods can be slow and resource-heavy. Working on something that makes high-quality insights faster and more accessible feels meaningful — not just as a product challenge, but as a shift in how teams can build better products.
Designing for users is one thing. Designing *as* a user is something else entirely. It creates a level of accountability and clarity that's hard to replicate any other way."
