Nassos Kappa

Great design delivers value to users faster. In my Glaringly Obvious conversation with Thomas Sutton, he made the case that product design teams must clearly define what design quality means, own it, and connect it directly to both user and business value. Without this clarity, design risks being misunderstood, undervalued, and ineffective. Love the conversation, check it out: https://lnkd.in/gVTU5jS5 Thomas’s product design quality framework maps a causal chain: → If design, technology, and support are good, people use the product. → If people use it and it works, you get product outcomes like user benefit, business value, and systemic impact. But here’s where it got me thinking: the speed of that chain matters. → Time to value for users How quickly someone feels the product is usable, useful, and enjoyable. → Time to create value for users   How fast the team can release improvements that increase that value. These two clocks run in parallel. When teams reduce the lag between user benefit and product iteration, design signals become clearer, trust builds faster, and business value compounds sooner. When they drift apart, users wait too long to see progress, and teams stall in endless refinement. In my conversations, here are some of the reasons decisions slow down: 1. Teams wait too long to test ideas, losing momentum. 2. They don’t have fast, clear ways to see what’s working. 3. Design work gets stuck in narrow solutions or tech limitations. 4. Research is incomplete, feedback overlooked, or siloed. 5. Too much refinement, not enough real signals. 6. Confirmation bias clouds decisions. 7.  Leaders struggle to align on user needs vs. business goals. 8. Limited resources stall iteration. That’s where collecting the right signals comes in. In our open framework Glare, we use UX metrics like usability, usefulness, and sentiment to quickly test whether design quality is landing. Helio helps us gather the metrics. They shorten both timelines: showing where users already get value, and where teams must act to deliver more. Building on Thomas’s framework: design quality goes beyond end outcomes. Quality also ensures the path to those outcomes is fast, clear, and measurable. #productdesign #uxmetrics #productdiscovery #uxresearch

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Are you struggling to connect user insights to business impact? If you're in design or research, you know the challenge: moving past simple user needs to uncover what truly drives behavior. The Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework is the key to making that leap. This excellent text by my friend Itamar Medeiros, "Using Jobs To Be Done to Elevate your Design and Research Practice," breaks down exactly how JTBD can help you: - Gain sharper insights by focusing on user outcomes, not just demographics. - Improve collaboration by framing research in a way that aligns design, product, and engineering teams. - Win buy-in by connecting your design choices directly to business value and a more focused roadmap. If you want to elevate your influence and build more impactful products, this is a must-read. https://lnkd.in/dXGgv8sb #JobsToBeDone #JTBD #UX #CX #Design #UserResearch #ProductStrategy #ProductDesign #DesignThinking #GrowingDesignCulture #AmplifyingDesign #BusinessTransformationByDesign

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The most successful design teams use *less* AI, but it's not because they're against it. Mature design teams have laid the ground work and built the systems that essentially make AI unnecessary. For these teams, fixing AI mistakes takes more time than leveraging their time-tested strategies and frameworks. But how do we know this? Earlier this year, zeroheight surveyed 294 UX professionals for their 2025 Design Systems Report. After reviewing it, 2 signals quickly jumped out to me: → 84% of mature teams have adopted tokens → Only 10% of teams use AI for docs or ideation IOW: The stronger the system, the less reliance on prompts. Here's how team maturity breaks down: → Immature teams struggle with consistency and use AI to fill gaps. → Developing teams have some structure, some experiments... and some mixed results. → Mature teams, with their high token adoption and strong systems, use AI sparingly. There's a very clear curve—as system maturity goes up, AI reliance goes down. Here's the truth: Not all productivity gains are equal. → Design systems bring a ~38% efficiency boost (via Figma). → AI tools are associated with ~9% productivity swings (via Netguru | B Corp™ + Boldare). Mature teams don’t avoid AI because they’re scared of it. They just finish projects faster, and with fewer errors, by not using it. ✔ Systems enforce quality + consistency ✔ Components scale predictably ✔ Tokens compound over time; AI outputs don’t It's faster working within the frameworks you've built than fixing the mistakes AI invariably makes. If your team leans too hard on prompts, here's something to try this week: 1️⃣ Spot one thing you keep regenerating with AI. 2️⃣ Convert it into a token or component. 3️⃣ Add it to your system and share it. 📣 This week, I’m unpacking hard truths about UX design—realities that newcomers and seasoned pros alike need to know. Tomorrow’s topic is the accessibility crisis and answering why do 94.8% of websites still fail basic checks? Don’t miss it ✌🏼😎 👉 Your turn: Does your team lean more on systems or prompts right now? Share your take in the comments—I’ll be watching (& responding)... #uxdesign #designsystems #ai #productdesign ⸻ 👋🏼 Hi, I’m Dane—your source for UX and career tips. ❤️ Was this helpful? A 👍🏼 would be thuper awethome. 🔄 Share to help others (or for easy access later). ➕ Follow for more like this in your feed, every day.

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New, from me: Hiring for Creativity in a World of UX Design Systems https://lnkd.in/gJY-Efdn Leaders depend on designers who can work within system constraints that demand assembly‑level consistency, yet when hiring, they value candidates who challenge assumptions, reframe problems, and propose unexpected solutions. Portfolios, however, often show neither, a gap many managers attribute to the rapid‑training pipelines of contemporary bootcamps. Managers express concern that the systems enabling efficient production may be narrowing the range of skills they see when hiring, leaving a profession caught between creative ideals and the industrial machinery shaping modern product design. Citations (and thanks) to Josh Therese Joe Matic Rahul Jeff Joshua Elizabeth Jude Emma Craig

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Whether you’re trying to get hired or promoted, we’ve developed an obsession with “showing impact.” I’m guilty of it too. Many talented designers struggle with this. They work in organisations where tracking is incomplete, and they’re forced to choose between showing nothing or making up numbers. But here’s something to keep in mind: Awareness beats access. I’d rather work with someone who doesn’t have data but understands what their work affects. Than someone who has all the data and no idea what to do with it. If you don’t have perfect data, you can still show impact by thinking through these layers: 1. Behaviour --- What are the smallest user actions your design is meant to influence? For example: • Form submissions • Button clicks • Page visits These are leading indicators. You can directly influence them with design. 2. Product --- If hundreds or thousands of users perform that behaviour more often, what product metric would it influence? For example: • Activation rate • Engagement • Discoverability These are team-level outcomes. Your work should support one or more of them. 3. Business --- If that product metric improves, what business impact would it have? For example: • New MRR • Retention • Expansion These are your lagging indicators. They show up later, but they matter most to leadership. Even if you can’t measure these directly, talk about what you believe your work affected. Be honest about the gaps. You can also share what you would have tracked if the data had been available. If you can tell a plausible story using these three layers—behaviour, product, and business—you’re already showing strong strategic awareness. And you’re pointing to the organisational gaps that made measurement difficult. That mindset matters more than a dashboard.

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Inside most banks, UX dies by a thousand “just for now” decisions: a temporary flow patched to meet quarter-end targets, an extra field added to satisfy an audit trail, three teams “owning” the same journey, a vendor contract dictating the interface instead of the other way around. The result? Call centers absorb the cost, NPS slides, and executives wonder why acquisition is falling when “the feature shipped.” And here’s the bigger truth: you may be the long-awaited hero to move things forward. The one who can turn empathy into economics, transform broken journeys into business metrics, and show executives that UX isn’t a cost—it’s the growth engine, the risk control, the cost-to-serve reducer. You hold the power to change everything before it’s too late. When executive buy-in is missing, digital service delivery in banks quickly fragments into a patchwork of “quick fixes” and underfunded initiatives. UX gets treated as surface polish instead of strategy, leaving core journeys weighed down by legacy systems, compliance-driven forms, and vendor templates that dictate design. Product teams fight for scraps of budget, projects stall in silos, and what launches often fails to deliver adoption. https://lnkd.in/gfmBT5r9 #DigitalBanking #FinancialServices #Banks #Fintech #Banking #UXDA

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“Everything is design and design is everything.” - Emily Campbell Today, Kim Lenox, Emily and I had a conversation with a thousand people to discuss Figma’s new study exploring how work is changing for 7 roles involved in product development. The quote above sums it up. Roles are blurring. And, more people than ever see design as an integral part of their work. The full story is longer and even more interesting: - 64% of respondents identified with two or more roles, and over a third said their responsibilities span three or more roles. - 56% of non-designers say design tasks like prototyping are a major part of their work, up 12 percentage points in a year - 19% of time is now spent with AI tools, expecting to increase to 27% in the next 12 months. This time is taken from solo work time rather than work with colleagues. And, 57% say they’re spending more time on work that’s higher value and strategic. - 53% say deep knowledge is still needed to do a task well, less than a quarter believe AI reduces the need for expertise. Matt Walker and team built the study of 1200 respondents and 50 interviews, covering 67 tasks. Alia Fite, Emma Webster, and Alex Praeger created an amazing report from the findings. Chad Bergman and Greg Huntoon answered so many questions in today's discussion. The key here is it’s not just design. It’s not just product development. And, I would guess this trend is actually is bigger than just this field. I think at the heart of these changes are a strong desire to communicate intent from one expertise to another. From marketing to design. From design to development. From PM to development. And, I think we’ll see even more of this blurring moving forward.

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Bad design is concluding in your hierarchy of importance that volume adjustment (which you can hear happening) is more important than your directions. What a bizarre decision, not only to black out the entire screen, but to have such a massive volume indicator - AND to keep it up for so long. Solution: - visual indicator is a secondary signal, so only a tiny area needs to be utilized - provide a visual indicator in the controls areas (there are two outside of this screen - if you use the screen, make a tiny floating area only, no black out.

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📌 UX Mapping Cheat Sheet If you’ve ever felt lost between journey maps, service blueprints, and experience maps, this guide will be your go-to reference! Clear, practical, and packed with visual examples, it’s perfect for both beginners and experienced designers. 🔗 Read here: https://lnkd.in/dks9m7eD 📖 Credits: Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) #UXDesign #UserExperience #DesignThinking #JourneyMapping #ServiceDesign #UXResearch #ProductDesign #UXTools #DesignStrategy

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