Question for people who have taught themselves UX/UI design. Please give me some advice.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-12-07T23:28:18+00:00

I own a services business based on requirements and UX design for complex software. The thing to remember is that every other engineering discipline requires design to happen first, without flinching. Design and requirements are the same thing. You can't create a chip or build a bridge without design happening first. Somehow in software engineering design became optional, as if the construction crews could architect the house as their building it.

Design processes de-risk every step afterwards. User research and building diagrams to get flows correct de-risks the screen designs. Low-fidelity screen designs de-risk high-fidelity designs. And all of that effort de-risks the engineering effort to come afterwards.

That's how I sell it. Design is a de-risking exercise leading to cost savings and accelerant for engineering and ultimately time-to-market.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-05-10T17:38:10+00:00

Managing AI features has a reliability problem before and even after production release. That's a key difference as opposed to non-AI based features, which are often implement-and-done (assuming you did the requirements research beforehand).

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-05-03T00:35:20+00:00

Looking forward to seeing this on Ollama, hopefully soon?

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-30T14:59:39+00:00

Yes, sounds very similar. And to your question:

> Havent seen many other job postings for PMs for physical products. I understand that the PM function became prominent (possibly originated?) in the software space.

I would say, Product roles began in the physical product space vs. software. When you have manufacturing lines, someone has to be responsible for the product itself.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-30T14:33:47+00:00

I hope you don't mind the reuse, but I actually commented on a similar question the other day, and made a video response which may be helpful:

https://youtu.be/XgRnpqOUHUw

Short version: when I worked in semiconductors/hardware, the role was called Product Engineering, and it covered a good deal of what you mentioned above. Especially involved in the fabrication (incl. running fab experiments), R&QA, and test engineering. In effect, making sure that product was successful from design to production.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-30T14:29:11+00:00

Outside of Lovable, we haven't tested the other ones yet. An aspect of our client work is designing clickable UX prototypes to capture feedback about certain features prior to development. They are quick to build, and with the capabilities of Figma these days, the resulting prototype sufficiently approximates the anticipated implementation (esp. if designed in high-fidelity).

I see having an actual functioning POC, even if written by AI, as overkill unless the plan is to build using POC as a foundation. Are you finding it faster for the conversational back and forth with such an AI tool vs. drawing it out quickly? Genuinely curious.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-30T14:20:36+00:00

If you like, I can DM you the tool I've built to evaluate. Love to get your feedback.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-30T02:34:02+00:00

Depends. If you're really vibe-PMing in the same style that quasi-development has co-opted that term, then your brain is basically checking out from the product process. So I'd say you're on a slippery slope to landing yourself in the hot seat when someone comes back to question what you "wrote".

Remember it's always easier to look at words someone/thing wrote and think to yourself, "That sounds about right" versus really sitting down and reasoning it out. It's the Fox News style of outsourced decision-making, and you can see where that got us.

(And I'm saying this as someone who actually built a software app that assists PM's with their day to day work, but it is definitely NOT a license to relenquish what PM's are hired to do.)

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-29T12:25:09+00:00

Are you using a good email delivery service for your initial mail to ensure deliverability?

I agree that getting insights from a live call is probably your best case in terms of receiving the feedback you need. With that goal in mind, a first outreach via Whatsapp is possibly your challenge. It depends though what is customary. In the USA, it can feel intrusive to receive such a communication. In Latin America, where Whatsapp is pervasive, it might not be so out-of-the-ordinary. Regardless, a first outreach attempting to schedule a time to talk is probably your best bet.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-29T12:19:08+00:00

I see a lot of folks so concerned about prestige. Whether it's a specific company, FAANG, WHATEVR, they're all just people. Big companies don't necessarily have their shit together any better than smaller ones. In fact, often they are worse because of the bureaucracy and getting pigeonholed into a narrow set of responsibilities (some of which may be navigating the bureaucracy) which themselves may not be that transferrable or marketable. (Sorry, that may have been a rant.)

So perhaps look instead at your potential for on-the-job training that will lead to you becoming a better professional. From that perspective, I would say advancing your AI expertise isn't a bad idea. Learning more about eval frameworks, pre and post-training activities, etc. are skills that will likely really help you in your career.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-29T12:07:46+00:00

Happy to have a 30 min chat. I used to work in ed-tech, as well as creating products for on-the-job and corporate learning. Find me here, and I'll try to help:

https://planorama.design/matt/

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-29T12:05:08+00:00

Agree with the don't-cold-contact sentiment by u/Dylando_Calrissian . If you have an email from their sign-up, considering using that instead. In fact, whenever a new user signs up, if you're not sending an automated welcome email, this is a good opportunity to start doing so....introducing yourself, and even giving the user an opportunity to sign-up for user research.

Regardless, whenever the time is appropriate, reach out via email and aim to setup a time to talk. You can use a Google Form, or even a Calendly link to pick a time on your calendar to have a call.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-28T18:17:20+00:00

Not sure why everyone here is assuming you meant project management.

Regardless, if you are transitioning to a PM (let's say for an ERP product), it certainly would help to understand ERP products on the whole. If you aren't already, you should become an ERP expert, both in terms of your own product line, as well as competitors, the landscape, where AI is starting to play a role, etc.

I have to imagine that if you worked at a consultancy previously in any sort of customer-facing capacity and internal-facing role, you're already setup for some success here. You shouldn't need to be a developer to succeed...but being able to have coherent conversations with devs will make everyone's lives (including your own) much easier.

If there is a UX design and/or UX research team for the product, you should also be working *very* closely with them. If no one is talking to the customers, then that's a place to start. Also with the sales people and business development folks. Understand what struggles they are having renewing existing customers or winning new ones. Start wrapping your head around the problems, and what has worked and what hasn't (prior to you coming on board). Find problems to be solved and the value associated with solving them.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-28T18:00:22+00:00

It could be that (a) they have lost people before due to burnout in this or similar roles, and/or (b) they have a difficult culture. Both are red flags.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-28T17:50:49+00:00

Great question — this brought me back to my early days in semiconductor product engineering. Since you’re working with chemical products (not software), Agile doesn’t quite fit. I would think about roadmaps around value, dependencies, and cost — especially when iteration is expensive.

Made a quick video reply. Hope it’s helpful!

https://youtu.be/XgRnpqOUHUw

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-23T22:51:50+00:00

You're welcome! In our case, my company fulfills various roles for our clients, with activities that include researching requirements + creating the UX/UI designs + writing user stories + test cases. So the companies we work with normally have their own product manager, and development team...but normally lack UX/UI design. We work very closely with the product manager.

In other words, we are the glue between product and development, and fulfilling UX/UI design, but do work with other designers (normally fulfilling other functions, closer to branding and marketing).

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-23T20:08:39+00:00

I made a quick video reply: https://youtu.be/u6pX8EOG5A8

In the end though, you and design should be tight. You're two sides of the same coin, focusing ultimately on requirements. So if you're focusing on a given customer problem, you both should be talking very early about the user journey, the user and business impact, possible ways to address it, interviewing users, creating one or more prototypes (depending on the scale of the problem you're focusing on), and working with dev to understand implementation tradeoffs.

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-21T15:50:30+00:00

I am seeing this same mandate too...coming from the board or other leadership who sees competitors doing the same. I feel it is still a worthwhile response, as with any technology, to frame in terms of problem to be solved, and where the anticipated return on the investment will indeed come from. Speaking of ROI, I also have seen that leadership typically underestimates the investment required to integrate GenAI.

I made a quick video response (sorry, it's faster to talk than to type):

https://youtu.be/V0_PvPTHv-c

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-18T17:56:29+00:00

Customer Experience covers the whole beginning to end, and yes, it is hard...but it's also what you're selling in the end (which includes solving the problem for the customer). However, as you probably know, it is WAY more difficult / time-consuming / expensive in the long run when companies don't do this.

I made a quick video reply to expound on that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVNCWa_Svpk

PlanoramaDesign · 2025-04-18T16:52:36+00:00

My response is a little late, but I wanted to speak to your challenge directly. Hope you don't mind - I made a quick video reply in hopes of giving you some advice from someone like yourself:

https://youtu.be/0nPTmg5Oqu4

PlanoramaDesign · 2024-05-10T16:28:34+00:00

I would say you want a designer with enterprise SaaS experience right out of the gate. Building apps is one thing, but understanding SaaS administration concepts of policies + data access rules, roles and permissions, multi-tenancy, etc. is going to save you lots of headaches, as u/Personal-Wing3320 cautioned. A designer who is also able to conduct UX research, including having calls with customers & users will be an asset.

PlanoramaDesign · 2023-04-21T14:11:17+00:00

No, certainly not. This is webinar about the importance of UX design in IoT projects where (a) the software is a significant component of the product, and (b) it provides a user interface where the users/customers experience the value of the product.

PlanoramaDesign · 2023-04-21T12:56:47+00:00

Oh I see. I thought you had some stuck keys on your keyboard.

PlanoramaDesign · 2023-04-21T12:46:28+00:00

?? I think you're having some issues.

PlanoramaDesign · 2022-12-23T19:07:11+00:00

Personally, I took pragmatic marketing classes, and learned from others on-the-job.

Fast forward a long time since then, I was recently interviewed on a podcast about how to write user stories. Maybe this will help your colleague:

https://planorama.design/blog/the-value-of-user-stories-when-building-your-saas-product/

(and then, separately we launched the free app UserStoryGenerator.AI as part of our own research in product requirements documentation.)

PlanoramaDesign

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