How to Improve Your Design Skills

I'm not usually one to share my product design 'hacks.' Hope this helps more folks tap into the 🪄 of better product thinking. 1. Steal workflows from industries outside of tech. Architects, game designers, even chefs—everyone solves complex problems differently. Borrow their frameworks. It’s wild how much it improves your design logic and product flows. 2. Every new feature should subtract something old. If adding a feature doesn’t naturally replace or improve something else, you’re layering complexity. The best products stay sharp because they evolve—not accumulate. 💥 3. Use constraints to force better solutions. Limit the width. Limit the colors. Limit the interaction patterns. Constraints make you think deeper, and users will never feel the difference—except that everything just works. 4. Kill unnecessary settings. If a setting exists to “fix” something that could have been designed better by default, you’ve taken the lazy route. The best products have fewer decisions for users to make, not more. 5. Build interactive prototypes, even for simple ideas. Static designs don’t reveal problems—movement does. Sketch out transitions, hover states, and micro-interactions early. It sharpens your design instinct fast. 6. Start with mobile. Not because “mobile-first” is trendy—but because smaller screens force brutal prioritization. If the design works on mobile, scaling it up feels like a reward. 7. Test for boredom, not just usability. “Does this work?” is step one. Step two is asking, “Would I use this every day without hating it?” Usable products get abandoned. Engaging ones stick. 8. Design without data at your own risk. Placeholder content lies. Inject real (or semi-real) data early. Long names, weird edge cases, and incomplete info will blow up pixel-perfect layouts faster than anything else. 9. Never trust the first solution. The first design is often the most obvious. The second one starts to explore. The third version? That’s usually the winner. Keep pushing until it surprises you. --- PS - There are somehow 125,000 of y'all following along. Appreciate your support 🙏 🎁 For regular product design/product building insights, don’t miss ADPList’s Newsletter — my free weekly newsletter: https://lnkd.in/guJJsBaT

When you're starting in UI/UX design today, the traditional advice doesn't work anymore. I've been designing since 2010, but if I was starting to learn design in the AI era, here's what I'd do: The old way: Learn Figma → Practice UI → Get a job → Learn UX on the job The new reality: You need vibe coding skills to ship & practice UX research, AI prompting to refine prototypes, AND figma design effecient workflows before you even apply. My updated roadmap: → Start with vibe coding using AI tools (Figma Make, Lovable, Bolt) → Learn proper prompting techniques (shoutout to Felix at Lovable for amazing guides) → Focus on design thinking fundamentals: user testing, validation, iteration → Master figma design workflows while you learn ui fundamentals → Start practicing design systems with components → Document everything and build case studies Why this matters: Product teams in 2025 expect designers who understand the full development process. From AI prototyping to user research to design system handoffs. The good news: The tools for rapid prototyping and user testing are better than ever. You can go from idea to tested prototype in hours, not weeks all without needing a dev team to get the ideas published. The product designer role is more complex than before, but if you're passionate about solving real problems through design, you can absolutely do this. What's your biggest challenge learning UI design or UX design right now? #uxdesign #figmadesign #vibecoding #productdesigner

You want to be a designer? Start by learning how things break. A young guy called me yesterday. Dreaming of interior design. He asked about schools, software, the usual. I told him the truth: If you want to design things that actually get built—go work in construction. Design is creativity, yes. But creativity without constraints is fantasy. Real design lives in the tension between vision and reality—between what you imagine and what can actually stand. You need to know structure. Materials. Budget. What happens when drywall meets tile, when ductwork kills your ceiling height, when your dream door doesn’t meet code. That’s not learned in a classroom. It’s learned onsite. Talking to trades. Watching builds go right—and wrong. Construction knowledge doesn’t kill creativity. It sharpens it. It’s what turns an idea into a space. A sketch into something people walk through. If you want to design, learn how things come together. That’s when your ideas start to hold weight—literally.

The first mockup rarely works perfectly, but it reveals secrets CAD can't: - How an object feels to hold - How it lives in its context - How users interpret it - How proportions translate to reality Early in my career sketching and rendering fascinated me. I grew up with a love for art and visuals So, naturally I sketched a lot which meant tons of ideas to sift through. Probably also a result of being in design consulting for most my professional life. Now, I find joy in carefully selecting and refining ideas rather than generating hundreds. This is probably the natural transition for most designers as well. The real excitement in the process really comes from validating and knowing that your ideas work. I'll leave you with a few thoughts on building and validating: 1) Physical prototypes unlock tactile insights: CAD can't replicate the feel of a product in your hand. Build early to understand ergonomics and user interaction. 2) Context is king: Seeing a prototype in its intended environment reveals design flaws or opportunities invisible on screen. 3) Rapid iteration beats perfection: I've found that creating 3 quick, rough prototypes often yields better results than obsessing over one "perfect" version. 4) User feedback on physical objects is revealing: People interact with physical prototypes in unexpected ways, providing insights you'd never anticipate from sketches/CAD alone. 5) Prototyping develops your designer's intuition: The more you build, the better you become at predicting how 2D concepts will translate to 3D reality. Alright, that's it! happy building! #industrialdesign #productdesign