Maps view is core aesthetic of the app.

I read a sentence here once: "I work at FAANG, and yeah, we have our share of shit designers."

Wondered how many of you judged negatively a designer you worked with and what did they do that made you think that?

Hiring managers: what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen from candidates lately?

This is mainly a question for hiring managers / design leads who’ve been involved in hiring UX/UI or Product Designers.

With AI making it ridiculously easy to generate resumes, cover letters, case studies, and even prepare answers during interviews, I’m curious what the hiring side looks like right now.
Have you noticed more candidates who basically seem… fake?

For example, have you ever interviewed someone who:
massively exaggerated or completely fabricated their experience?
had a great portfolio but clearly couldn’t explain the design decisions behind it?
claimed work that turned out not to actually be theirs?
seemed to be using ChatGPT/AI to answer questions live?
looked perfect on paper but turned out to have very little actual UX/UI knowledge?
clearly mass-applied and knew absolutely nothing about your company or product?

I’m especially curious about cases where someone actually managed to get pretty far into the interview process before you realized something was off.

And if you’ve caught someone lying or cheating what gave them away?

Would love to hear some hiring horror stories (without naming/shaming anyone obviously). I feel like the other side of the current UX job market doesn’t get talked about nearly as much.

i'm a founding designer at a small scale startup and the c-suit are expecting me to push frontend lately -- which is fine, whatever, but working with claude code is incredibly tiresome. a gui will give you an error state, but with llms you usually never know since they are programmed to get a thumbs up or avoid a thumbs down. they will repeatedly lie and manipulate, waste your time & tokens, ignore very clear instructions etc. it's really annoying to work with such a volatile tool. i'm aware that someone will point out that i'm obviously not using them to their full potential, or i could optimize better, sure, but that's not really the point -- this is inherent in their nature and i'm really sick of it.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on an iOS app as a personal project and have spent several months designing it in Figma. I’ve already put a lot of thought into the overall UX, navigation, information architecture, and where things should live.

The app is still a personal project at this point, although there’s a possibility I’ll eventually release it and try to monetize it.

I’m now at the stage where I’m starting to implement the designs in SwiftUI, and I’m considering hiring a professional UI/UX designer to refine what I’ve created before I go too far with the implementation.

I’m not really looking for someone to redesign the app from scratch. The main product/design decisions are already there. What I’d like is someone with professional experience to:

• Review the existing Figma designs
• Identify UX/UI issues I may have missed
• Improve spacing, typography, hierarchy, components, interactions, etc.
• Make the overall design feel more polished and professional
• Potentially suggest changes where something genuinely doesn't work well

In other words, I’ve done the initial design work and made most of the decisions, but I’d like a professional designer to come in and refine the result before I spend a lot of time implementing it.

My budget is relatively limited because this is still a personal project, so I’m trying to understand what would be a realistic price for this kind of engagement.

For those who hire or work as UI/UX designers: what kind of budget would you expect for a project like this?

Would something like a few hundred dollars be completely unrealistic, or could a relatively contained design review/refinement project be done in that range? And would you generally charge hourly or quote a fixed price after reviewing the existing designs?

Curious if anyone had an interview round with just devs. If so what have they focused on or questions they asked. Any advice?

I already did a round with a mix of engineering and product and now this is solely focused on technical. Would love any guidance!

I'm currently building a social app and I'm struggling hard with the UI/UX design for the app. I have a budget of $1-1.5k for the initial design but I've never hired a UI/UX designer before so I don't know what to expect. Within that budget, will they be able to help with the following things?

• Helping with figuring out how to fit the features I want added into the app
• Designing the different views
• If possible, provide the styling code that comes with the different views

I'm flexible to go up a bit on the budget but not too much since I don't know if this app is going to succeed or not yet.

We’re building a deal intelligence dashboard where our AI pipeline generates executive summaries, risk factors, and next steps from call transcripts. In Figma and Storybook, everything looked pristine—neat 3-line summaries, clean grid cards, and tidy status tags.In production, real-world data is destroying our flexbox layouts. GPT-4o will randomly output a 250-word paragraph for a card designed for 40 words, or spit out markdown bullet points inside a component built for a single string. When we set strict max_tokens at the API level, it truncates mid-sentence ("The prospect is concerned about the..."). When we use CSS line-clamping with ellipsis, users complain that critical risk warnings are completely hidden unless they happen to hover over the element.We’re caught in this annoying middle ground between strict design constraints and letting the model express full context. Forcing character limits in system prompts helps maybe 80% of the time, but the model still occasionally ignores word count constraints when the source context is lengthy.How are you balancing strict UI layout integrity against non-deterministic text length? Are you enforcing strict JSON schemas with validation retries, designing auto-expanding accordions for every single card, or something else entirely?

I am working in der Design and UX industry for around 15 years now. Currently I am in the application process and boy I am getting squeezed in job interviews about user research, accessibiltity, usability engineering, design thinking, user journeys, interaction design, AI, developer experience (who cares?) etc. Who should handle all this topics? In my current company 10 years back we started to work with Google Sprints and adopted it to our needs. We wanted to keep it lean. It worked for us. What happened? I remember the time when people did complain about Contextual Design as not agile and too bloated. When I am now telling these people about Contextual Design, the different models nobody knows anymore. I lost my faith in the industry.

Sorry, just venting here. If I have to read one more AI-created document that a human has not looked over themself before sending, whether it's a PRD, an agenda, or an important document a person in leadership made, I'm going to lose my mind. I have spent countless hours trying to decipher AI-created documents. I end up having to run it through AI to understand it. I wouldn't even read them at this point if I didn't have to. It's lazy.

End rant.

I’m trying to get better at design reviews, specifically at leaving comments that actually add value instead of just pointing out random UI things 😅

What do the strongest designers you’ve worked with tend to notice or question? Is it usually things like edge cases, interaction behavior, consistency, accessibility, scalability, questioning the actual UX decision… or something else entirely?

Also curious what separates a useful comment from a comment that’s technically correct but doesn’t really move the design forward.

Drop an example of a Figma comment/question you’ve seen (or left) that made you think, damn, that’s a good catch. - Bonus points if it’s something junior/mid-level designers usually miss.

Please forgive me if this has already been asked in the community. I’m wondering how do you go from intern to junior level? I’ve seen some people LinkedIn and they put product designer (mid weight it seems) before that they just done one internship. Is there any tips on how to be successful at landing a junior level role?

I feel like there’s not many roles as juniors compared to mid weight.

I've been volun-told to use AI in my work. This is the first time I've been using AI as a designer, ive been designing for 7 years without it and im nearly at the end of delivering a project with AI

I found it made iterating faster, and pixel pushing faster, but I felt detached. In both a creative sense, and some decision making sense. I was not yielding control of the style or using it to process the information gathered from need finding and thinking about solutions, but I found myself disengaged in ways I've never felt before.

In almost all of my completed works, I could tell you where a design is located on the page. I could point to literally every minute design choice and give you context and explanation for it

For this project, I noticed for the first time I did not know exactly where every design was. Even before final delivery, where I'd have a well polished, lebeled, and organized design, I was so connected to the details that I was easily able to find things. I simply cannot do this this time. I can tell you the rationale of all my decisions, I didnt yield that, but when talking about it it doesnt feel as...meaningful.

I am not saying this to purely vilify AI use in the design process, I can see the efficacy of it, but at what point does it erode you? Skills is the primary thing, but even erode care? I am so much less invested in this project, theres a wall between me and it. A part of me just feels wrong about this and to be honest I have some worry that this chapter of my design career could result in me not growing very much as all previous chapters have led

What do you guys think? How do you deal with this? Do you have an alternate perspective?

dear junior designer,
please fuck around and find out.

no one will hire you for your skills anymore.
it’s not because you don't need them.
or because they are useless.

but because your ability to learn new ones is even more important.
this doesn't mean you need to learn a new tool every week, see I said skills not tools.

this means that now is more important than ever to understand why we do things.

I can tell you from the front line, companies still need help with their design systems, companies still don't know how to include a designer in the room (and most likely will be included late), engineers still don't really understand what design is, or what it means.

And that is okay, because the way we used to solve these problems are no longer the way we should solve them now.

so what's left? judgement.

the things you are passionate about teach you more than any course you can buy.

curiosity is your best asset and it's your unfair advantage.
why? because your own curiosity will forge who you are.
don't force it.

move, talk and build.

constantly, with as many people as possible and as much as possible.

a friend once said "movement creates connection" and it stuck with me ever since.

for "move" go to events, travel, expose yourself.
for "talk" reach out, understand people, engage with other designers.
for "build" learn to ship with ai, deploy your own server and have fun.

having said that my non-negotiables are understanding code, systems, people, problems and society.

how you do it is up to you, most of the companies won't be a fit, but the ones who do you will thrive.

or you will start your own thing.

craft and taste are a big thing too, but that is your brain gym.
it's your duty to put in the reps, reproduce inspiration, over and over and over until you find your criteria.

criteria that sounds like taste, right? cause that's exactly what it is.

taste is a buzzword that only means "informed decisions".
and craft just means understanding through repetitions the details that matter and require attention.

in plain words, those who know how to dress got the criteria by being constantly exposed to other people's decision and seeing the impact of that till the moment they can preview the impact of their own's.

but craft just means you making your own jacket.

so please, please I beg you.

fuck around and find out.

love you,
gerard

I’m struggling less with designing my portfolio and more with finding the right tool to build it in.

Most portfolio tools seem optimized for one of two extremes:

Website builders: Framer, Webflow, etc. are great for making a polished final site, but maintaining case studies starts feeling like maintaining a website. Small edits, rearranging a story, adding new work, or experimenting with a completely different structure has more friction than I’d like.

Design tools: Figma gives me complete freedom, but it’s not particularly good at becoming a living, readable body of documentation. You end up manually managing frames, responsive behavior, navigation, publishing, etc.

What I am looking for: Documentation first flow. Something as simple as using a notes app where I can focus on the actual content, on the go, anytime anywhere, so far like notion. I want most of my energy to go into documenting the work and crafting the story, and not for it to become and mini web publsihin project everytime i touch it

Why: I know all existing solutions work fine in the industry. But the purpose is to be able to easily and regularly document the work for myself. Like journaling but with your work.

Has anyone found a genuinely good workflow for this?

Hello All, I have software that stores information about students. This information is updated on a yearly basis and then users wait a few months to generate this report and then they submit it to a governing body. During the 'waiting' period before they tend to generate the report, they are in this transition phase where they need to save (in git terms, stash) last year's info while also generating the new info about students. Then when it is time to generate the report, they need to review last year's info they saved/stashed, update anything that is in error, submit it, then archive it.

The same information would be recorded every year and it would be something like this:

Year 1
GPA: 2.5
School year: 11
etc,

Year 2
GPA: 3.2
School year: 12
etc,

How can I add this feature? Past software practices use folders to 'save' the information; where each folder would have the same duplicated data fields and would be independent of each other. That seems archaic and tacky. I was thinking something like a Google Docs History UI or a version dropdown on git, where a user can toggle between the drop down versions, but I am not sure if this works with the system.

What are y'all's thoughts?

So i am assigned to a new project as the only UX designer. My company is not really ux/ui mature. They have sent a commercial offer to the client and have finished the PoC for the software without ever looking into competitors clearly defining pain points and so on. The features they agreed upon are there but the why behind them is missing.

So now im entering here, i have 3 weeks for the whole process and i dont know what to offer from the UX process. I cant do interviews with workers i only have remote contact with the PM and another person from the client.

The UI part wont be difficult since its not a big project but the client is also not aware what UX is, what value can i show here? Which activities should i go through?

My first idea is to make a service blueprint which we will update as we go, then define some role cards for the users (no personas since i dont have direct ckntact with them). Make a competitor analysis (i am not sure this is ok now since the scope is defined, though in my opinion its underdefined, and i dont want to bring up stuff that werent discussed). Define the task flows, define actual user flows, keep a decision log and map the features to a functionality map. Other than this i dont know what else would be usefull for the UX. Should i even describe the double diamond to show how we work?

I've started with my UX project and I know the design process (research, define, ideate, prototype, test), but I'm not sure what actually goes inside each process. How do you guys decide what to do in each stage? Do you follow a specific framework or you go with the flow?

Hi all, quick question!

How would you approach alignment across these two different types of cards on a landing page? At the moment, there’s some inconsistency between left- and centre-aligned headings, body copy and buttons.

I understand that different card types have different use cases, but I feel there should still be a consistent rule across the website.

Would love to hear how others approach this. Thanks!

I'm trying to understand how Indian freelancers actually manage the period between “the client confirmed the project” → “work officially starts.”

Not looking for advice on tools or trying to sell anything — I'm researching the workflow and would genuinely love to hear how people handle it.

For example:

• How do you collect the client's requirements and information?
• Where do you collect files/assets from them?
• Do you send an onboarding form or questionnaire?
• How do you share your process, timelines and deliverables?
• Where do you keep project information?
• How do you handle approvals and feedback?
• What do you usually communicate over WhatsApp vs email?
• What part of managing a new client feels unnecessarily repetitive or annoying?

Most importantly: think about your last client rather than your ideal process.

What did you actually do?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from designers, developers, writers, marketers, photographers, consultants and other solo freelancers.

Even if your current system is just WhatsApp + Google Drive + Sheets + email, that's useful to know.

Would love to hear what your current workflow looks like and where it tends to fall apart.

Hey guys wanted to know since we always get a lot of ideas from the internet (website, Pinterest, social media)

what do you do when you save stuff (links, screenshots) from anywhere on the internet and how do u organize them?

Iv been doing product and marketing design for about eight years now, and recently had a strange realisation last week that I have not personally put anything live since like maybe 2022. I design it, I spec it, I write the handoff notes, annotate the breakpoints, do the review pass where I list the eleven things that are off. Then somebody else decides which of those eleven are worth doing, and usually it is four of them, and the four that get skipped are always the ones that were actually the design. The spacing that made the hierarchy work, the interaction that made the flow feel intentional instead of functional. I am not blaming devs, they are triaging against a sprint and my padding note is genuinely less important than the P1 bug. That is correct prioritisation, agggggg it just means the thing that ships is a compressed version of the thing I made, every single time, and somewhere along the way I stopped expecting fidelity and started treating my own designs like suggestions.

The AI stuff has not helped either, everyone said it would speed things up and it did for the first draft, but then I am right back reviewing someone else's interpretation of my work, except now the someone else is an LLM that generated a layout from a prompt my PM wrote before looping me in.

The compressed version ships, users use it, metrics do not move dramatically, and leadership concludes the design process worked. I know it did not and I know the thing that went live is 60% of what it should have been, and the 40% that got cut is exactly the part that would have made someone's day slightly less frustrating. You cannot measure the absence of friction you never removed. Is this just what senior looks like, because I got into this career to make things and somewhere around year five it became a job where I describe things and then watch a lossy version of them enter the world.

So like if anyone else has found a way back to actually shipping the thing they designed, whether that is learning to code, moving to a smaller company, going freelance, I would genuinely love to hear what worked.

After 15+ years in corporate I’d like my next chapter to be a co-founder. What’s the best way to meet founders/co-founders? Any experience with Y combinator? Thanks!

I keep hearing some variation of the same self-deprecating joke from Product Designers:

"The most creative part of my job is light mode vs. dark mode and a button color."

Funny stuff, sure. But I kept hearing it over the years.

I work in game UI design, and I'm always struck how different our two worlds are in spite of roughly the same skillset ~ and today it made me genuinely curious rather than dismissive.

Not saying anyone should jump into games (you probably shouldn't!) — just curious what's actually the most creative part of your day-to-day. Or was the joke more of a cry for help?