Design Process Articles & Videos

  • The Role of UX in Agentic Software Factories

    AI-native software development lifecycles reduce UX to AI context. UX must discover user needs, shape what’s built, and evaluate it before and after launch.

  • UX Maps: Glossary

    Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and concepts related to UX maps.

  • Prevent Last Minute Design Requests: A Guide

    Avoid last-minute deadlines and requests by using this guide to help stakeholders understand your work and make requests with intention.

  • Empathy Mapping: The First Step in Design Thinking

    Empathy maps help UX teams visualize user attitudes and behaviors, building a shared understanding of end users while highlighting gaps in existing user data.

  • The New Big Ball of Mud: Why Agentic AI Systems Turn Fragile

    AI makes building nearly free, so users grow agentic systems piecemeal into fragile messes they no longer understand.

  • Design + Development: 5 Tips for Working Together

    Better collaboration starts with one relationship. Learn how small shifts in communication can transform how your teams work.

  • Democratizing User Research

    A clear guide to UX research democratization—definition, misconceptions, benefits, research ops, templates, training, tech, and AI best practices for scaling quality insights.

  • The Custodial Era of UX: Cleaning Up After AI

    AI lets teams build faster than UX can evaluate. UX can adapt by building shared judgment, accelerating evaluation, and guiding AI-generated designs.

  • A Concrete Definition of “Product Sense” (and How to Build It)

    Product sense means predicting which product decisions will succeed based on patterns learned through experimentation — and knowing when those patterns apply.

  • 4 Mistakes to Avoid When Presenting Complex UX Maps

    UX maps clarify complexity but are often presented poorly. Prepare audiences by communicating early, speaking plainly, and focusing on collaborative outcomes.

  • Design-System Maturity: A 6-Dimension Framework

    Use this maturity model to assess your design system’s health and identify where to focus next.

  • What are Design Specs?

    When designs get rejected in dev review, missing specs are often the culprit. A solid spec covers layout, interactions, requirements, and project scope.

  • Quantity Yields Quality in UX: Iterative vs. Parallel vs. Competitive Design

    No design is perfect on the first try. Combining iteration, parallel design, and competitive testing helps teams move quickly, explore broadly, and make confident, evidence-based design decisions.

  • Atomic Research: Small Insights, Big Impact

    Atomic research breaks user research into small, evidence-backed units to improve analysis, repository organization, and cross-team collaboration.

  • 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.