#Not_My_Type
Projects I turn down and why. Expensive lessons from discovery calls with 17 stakeholders, redesigns that hide pricing problems, and other red flags.
You know how this goes. Three weeks on the portfolio. Rewrote the case study twice. Rebuilt the layout because something felt off at midnight on a Wednesday. Sent it to two designer friends who said it was strong. Found the right contact on LinkedIn, personalized the message, attached the link. Three days later: automated rejection.…
Six months into her first junior role, she kept doing something her manager couldn’t figure out. Every time a PM overruled a design decision, she just… did it. No pushback. No “here’s why that creates a problem.” She’d nod, open Figma, and make the change. Her manager asked her about it once. “Why don’t you…
Six months into her first junior role, she kept doing something her manager couldn’t figure out. Every time a PM overruled a design decision, she just… did it. No pushback. No “here’s why that creates a problem.” She’d nod, open Figma, and make the change. Her manager asked her about it once. “Why don’t you…
A prospect emailed last month. Polite. Clearly done their homework. “I noticed you’re not on Clutch’s top UI UX design agency list for New York. We usually only consider agencies with a strong Clutch presence. Is there a reason you’re not listed?” There is a reason. It costs $8,400 a month. The “Top UI UX…
The wireframes looked perfect. Clean navigation. Clear hierarchy. Logical flow. Three stakeholders approved everything in 45 minutes. “This is exactly what we need.” PM scheduled development to start Monday. Then the designer added real content. Product names weren’t the placeholder “Product Name” shown in wireframes. They were 43 characters with special symbols and line breaks:…
The job posting said “Product Designer.” Responsibilities included: user research, wireframing, prototyping, visual design, design systems, stakeholder management, A/B testing strategy, and “owning the product vision.” Basically: eight jobs disguised as one title. I asked the recruiter what made this a product designer vs UX designer role. Long pause. Then: “Product designers are more strategic.”…
The UX writer opened the staging site. Clicked through the onboarding flow. First button said “Proceed to Next Step.” Second screen: “Click Here to Continue.” Error message when she left a field blank: “Input required. Please try again.” Empty state in the dashboard: “No data available at this time. Please check back later.” She counted…
Got a Slack message Tuesday afternoon. 2:47pm. “Quick question – can you design our new checkout flow by Friday? Just needs to look clean. We’re launching Monday.” I asked: “When did you start planning this launch?” “Three months ago. We’ve been building it since October. Just need design now.” Three months of planning. Eight weeks…
Discovery call last month. SaaS startup, 12 people, looking to hire a freelance ux designer. “We need someone 15-20 hours a week. Flexible schedule. Remote. Rate is $85/hour.” Sounds reasonable. I asked about the work. “We’re redesigning the onboarding flow. Should take 4-6 weeks. Then ongoing UX improvements as needed.” Still fine. Then came the…
Got a call two months ago. Enterprise software company, 650 employees, been around 12 years, profitable. “We need to improve the UX of our internal platform. Our teams keep complaining it’s hard to use. Can you help?” Sure. I’ve done enterprise UX work before. Asked the obvious question. Me: “Who makes product decisions for this…
