Last month a design lead showed me their adoption metrics dashboard. Figma library: 97% connected. Component usage tracked across 47 teams. Monthly reports with color-coded progress bars trending green like a very healthy plant. “Fantastic adoption,” they said, clicking through to a slide about governance wins. “Can I see your team’s Slack?” I asked. They…

Here’s what works when you use AI for UX research — and what almost made me design for the wrong problem. Late 2023, Deutsche Telekom data hub redesign. 8 interviews, 6-week deadline. After transcribing the first two interviews manually (6 hours), the math broke: 6 more = 15+ hours. Plus synthesis, analysis, recommendations. Would need…

Something broke between February and August 2025, and I have receipts. I was working on client team headshots in August. Ran the first photo through my usual background removal tool — the same one I’d used reliably for two years. The edge looked chewed. Like someone attacked it with a chainsaw set to “drunk.” My…

If you’ve been researching the same problem for three months, you’re not being thorough — you’re being scared. There’s a special kind of hell reserved for product teams drowning in UX iceberg syndrome. You know the type: every decision needs another user interview. Every wireframe requires a deeper dive into personas. Every button placement sparks…

Every SaaS team hits the same wall around 10-15 features: the interface feels inconsistent, new features take longer, and someone suggests building a design system. Six months later: 83 Figma components, 40 pages of documentation, developers using it about 23% of the time. The rest is cowboy code with “urgent deadline” justifications. I’ve watched this…

I audited a SaaS homepage last year that took three paragraphs to explain what the product actually did. Bounce rate: 73%. Time on page: 11 seconds. The founder was confused. “But our sales team loves the copy. The investors said it was compelling. Legal approved every claim.” Cool. Your buyers still don’t understand what you…

I caught a critical signup bug three days before launch by pretending to be a 69-year-old librarian with trust issues. The bug? If you backspaced in the password field and then tried to paste, the form silently failed validation but didn’t tell you why. It just… sat there. Blinking cursor. No error message. No progress.…

The final days of Pesach are about walking forward. Not escaping anymore – moving. Through the sea. Into the unknown. So this is a story about control. About what happens when product design becomes fear-driven. And about why trying to manage every click, every user move, every pixel of behavior ends up hurting the people…

We’re deep into Pesach season. A time of freedom, storytelling, and asking difficult questions. And as odd as it sounds, it’s also a perfect time to talk about dark patterns in UX design. Because the Exodus isn’t just a historical escape – it’s a metaphor for systems that trap versus systems that liberate. And too…