Design Process Articles & Videos

  • Closing the Loop: What to Do After a Design Critique Ends

    Most designers invest in running critiques but skip the followup. That missing step is often why feedback culture breaks down.

  • The Case for Design Disposables

    Design disposables are rough artifacts you make to think, not to deliver. Learn to tell them apart from deliverables and avoid the sunk-cost trap.

  • Small by Design: The Strength of Lean Design-System Teams

    Lean design-system teams, when strategically planned, can move faster, prioritize sharply, and scale impact beyond their size.

  • Boost Design Autonomy with an Information Pipeline

    A four-step framework for building influence over product direction by closing the information gaps that large, complex organizations create.

  • Field Guide to Explaining UX Strategy

    Simple, relatable ways to explain complex UX strategy concepts like UX vision, goals, OKRs, and outcomes. Translate UX strategy into language anyone on your team can understand.

  • Design Process Isn't Dead, It’s Compressed

    As AI speeds up design work, the argument to "throw out the process" misrepresents how experienced designers work.

  • Project Postmortems for UX Teams: Learning from Success and Failure

    Although postmortems are one of the most powerful learning tools in product development, most teams haven't yet discovered how to use them effectively.

  • Your Design System Needs an Enforcer

    Although design systems promise consistency, most still fail without someone actively enforcing the rules and making teams follow them.

  • Prompt to Design Interfaces: Why Vague Prompts Fail and How to Fix Them

    Create better AI-prototyping designs by using precise visual keywords, references, analysis, as well as mock data and code snippets.

  • When is High-fidelity Worth It?

    4 questions to ask yourself when deciding whether process work should be high-fidelity or not.

  • Good from Afar, But Far from Good: AI Prototyping in Real Design Contexts

    AI prototyping tools follow general directions but lack the judgment and nuance of an experienced designer.

  • From Confrontation to Collaboration: The Developer-Designer Relationship

    The infamous developer-designer relationship doesn’t need to be toxic. Design and development teams should approach collaboration as coowners of the product experience.

  • AI-Assisted Prototyping: Promise and Pitfalls

    AI tools turn static designs into working prototypes fast, but speed can mask flaws. Use them to explore, not as a final product.

  • Template Trap

    Templates help, but only when used with intent. Use them thoughtfully, adapt them to context, and don’t skip the critical thinking.

  • UX Strategies for Complex-Application Design

    UX in complex, specialized domains requires adapting familiar methods across the design lifecycle to address domain constraints and expert-user needs.

  • The Product Triad: Design’s Role

    Effective product teams work across silos to create value. Designers are expected to make products not only desirable, but also viable and feasible.

  • Wireflows 101

    Wireflows combine wireframes with flowcharts to help document user interactions. They can aid in team collaboration, developer handoff, and help ensure clear communication for complex interactions.

  • Creating Design Specs for Development

    Design specifications should provide all the relevant information needed to align the design and development teams.

  • The Template Trap: How Template Culture Is Dumbing Down UX

    Overreliance on frameworks as universal solutions rather than adaptable starting points undermines critical thinking and threatens our field's intellectual rigor.

  • 5 Common Mistakes When Creating Design Specs

    Avoid disorganized files, late dev collaboration, unclear updates, scattered conversations, and assumptions over communication during spec’ing to ensure smoother implementation.