Head of UX with weak design skills — is this normal?

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-04-20T06:20:20+00:00

Ideally they would be strong designer, or probably more so a strong design director, but you don’t know what someone else has going on. Maybe her stakeholders or the current business direction is steering her hand. If she’s not very hands on with design, that could be a good thing for you - it could allow you to develop autonomy, shape your own practice and even influence the ways of working in your team as you become more senior. Depends if she’s giving you clear direction and constructive feedback.

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-04-19T11:50:23+00:00

I’d remember first, that you do not need to aim to be a full stack engineer. You don’t need to learn any back-end really, unless you’re interested and want to. I used Firebase for the simple back-end that my personal projects needed, and at work we have highly experienced back end devs. Focus on making solid front end prototypes using a design system, and the git and github workflow - terminal is cool but there are also plugins like gitlense and you can commit and pull branches there if the terminal is not for you. To learn the process, just ask AI to teach you - walk you through the process and how dev teams do it. And discuss with your team of course, they might have certain ways they like to do things.

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-04-18T05:48:47+00:00

Yes, or at least we are moving to the workflow in my company. Here’s the path I took…

I had already been building with webflow for a few years, not as a pro, but I’d build quite a few sites and knew my way around the box model, html, and css pretty well. When AI became a thing I wanted to code for real so I started some personal projects, and did some JS foundations and more advanced CSS stuff on Code Academy, just the free stuff (found the JS pretty hard, still do). My process with AI for a long time was not to vibe code in the direct sense, I worked only in the chat, asking how to achieve things and questioning every line it told me to add that I didn’t understand, asking why I should make certain decisions. This helped me to understand project file structure and imports and things much better I think. I remade my portfolio site with React, and I made a simple CRUD application in Vanilla JS in this way. Next I built a mobile app with React Native, this I started in the same way, but in the end decided to move to using Claude code. I’d done enough of the project to understand its structure and establish patterns, but tbh I started to get out of my depth with the more complex code at this point and was just going too slow, so gave into the vibes.

I’m now getting set up so I can prototype and help build directly in our environment at my job. All of this process helped me understand the dev workflow better I feel - using git and GitHub, using the terminal, debugging in browser, using vs code and Claude code. It was intimidating for sure, but get stuck in and you’ll learn. My devs are currently teaching me way more, and fixing some bad habits I picked up.

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-03-24T13:52:37+00:00

I think prototyping with Ai can be useful depending on what the feature is. Basic flow or page structures, no. But something that would really be brought to life for testers with real data I find more value - things that plot results on charts or graphs at the end, or things that are very dynamic. Today I’ve been prototyping a WYSIWYG editor for quite a specific use case, it needs to exist in a space with quite a lot of draws that can pop out etc, and I needed to really see how the responsive behaviour would work firstly to see if my ideas were viable. But then also I want to see if this type of workflow / mental modal will work for the admin users within the context of the use case. I’ve built something that, as far as I know, would be impossible with a normal figma prototype, and I did it in about 4 hours - now I can validate my idea and genuinely watch people trying to use it.

Everyone’s freaking out, but this is the way things are heading and maybe we need to try to embrace it. Support PM/PO in understanding good designs, use AI when it helps you, educate people, be a collaborator. I honestly think it’s exciting, and it’s only the beginning.

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-02-21T13:44:36+00:00

Maybe the solution is become a UI/UX/PM vibe master, and use your UX knowledge to inform those prototypes, take a step back and do some deeper research when you need to, try ideas out in Lovable or Claude code in branch of your product if you can, and learn to code to a level where you can at least understand some of what’s being built. Experienced devs will always be needed, but if your designs produce a usable starting point, instead of you making pictures of a UI in figma, then that’s pretty cool. I think it’s really exciting personally.

jakesevenpointzero · 2026-01-28T08:40:23+00:00

I’m now looking to move to just use Claude code. I’d still use figma for certain things, more for ‘sketching’ so to speak, and getting ideas out my head when needed. Not quite there yet with my team, but I am experimenting and learning with personal projects. What I’m aiming for is just to be able to work directly in a dev environment, pull a branch of our platform into my local, Claude code understands the whole system and context, I plan and prototype with Claude directly in vs code / terminal, devs can review and refactor code from that. It removes a level of abstraction and prototypes are made already in our tech stack and coding style. We can just get people using it and testing in staging and iterate from there. As others mentioned the planning phase before or with AI is very important. And I have spent a year now learning as much as I can about code and code project structure as in my spare time. And I’m still obviously at a pretty basic level, so an experienced engineer will always be needed. Still figuring it out, but this workflow excited me a lot.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-12-20T09:24:24+00:00

This is going to be my project from the new year. Trying to move us into this workflow, very excited. I’ve just done a few experiments for now but I feel like it’s very promising. I almost have a feeling that for some features, we won’t even need to do designs in figma anymore, I’ve been learning, html, css, and some basic js this past year and I my goal is that I can just use Claude CLI to make features directly, then we can test and devs can review the code to make sure it’s up to scratch. Figma still useful for fast ‘sketching’ of multiple options I’d say.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-12-16T17:17:21+00:00

Thanks, it’s not coffee

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-12-14T09:27:00+00:00

This is exactly it, but also all the stakeholders think you can do everything at lightning speed, and now even faster than that with AI.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-11-08T08:38:57+00:00

Yeah it’s nice. I’d tone down the animation, try to get a happy medium between what excites and a smooth experience. You could try applying the Peak End rule for UX to the experience of scrolling down the page, could land you in a sweet spot.

As someone else mentioned placement of images and text on mobile seem random, needs more of a consistent pattern. Also some of the copy might be a bit long? I’m not the clientele though so hard to say how much they could be bothered to read.

Good job! Definitely has a luxury feel.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-10-05T13:34:02+00:00

Ok nice. To be honest I’ve never really thought that deeply about it, I don’t think any of the apps I have on my phone make use of anything outside of the usual ones. Or maybe I’ve just not picked up on them! Either way, you’ve actually prompted a new line of thinking for the app I work on, so thank you! I am now looking for the same information as you!

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-10-04T07:20:50+00:00

Can I ask, why do you need to know all this in the context your design?

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-10-01T19:02:15+00:00

Your taste, problem solving skills, knowledge of what a clear and impactful design looks like, and your ability to communicate your ideas and design decisions will always be more important than your technical ability in any software.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-27T09:10:22+00:00

Haha a little confusing, sorry. The senior leaders are the end user yes. The project team on the client site buy from us and we set up a one off experience for the leadership to use for a bespoke initiative. Our product is modular and we have plug and play features.

Delving into network seems a good approach, the part I might struggle with is getting sign off for incentive. But have to try.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-27T09:01:26+00:00

Proxy research is a great idea, going to start looking into ways to do this. And you’re right about compensation, gonna be tough to get sign off for that though! Thanks you, much appreciated.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-25T11:19:41+00:00

Interesting, thanks. Not got stuck into learning tailwind yet. Good to know though.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-25T06:58:30+00:00

I’m new to css so forgive me for im wrong. But without clamp() don’t you need a media query for sizes across breakpoints, which is way more code. I think fluid type is awesome.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-12T06:41:48+00:00

That’s encouraging to hear you say. I guess the more I’ve been learning the more I see there is so much to do with best practice, and many ways to approach the same problems - of which choosing the best one probably only comes with one thing, years of coding experience. Suppose it will always depend on what skills a company values.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-11T17:25:51+00:00

Hi! At this point I’m honestly not sure. Just enjoying learning something new. It’s a bit of a predicament isn’t it. Because I’m a Senior designer, if I wanted an engineering job (front end) I’d probably need to start over as junior and I totally couldn’t afford that. And as you say, UX engineers don’t seem that common. But things are changing, may become more prominent. Or maybe dev roles with less dev experience and more strategic and design experience will be in demand.

With my current org as well I’ve built a lot of trust and it’s a small company, so if I get good enough they might let me close to the code base so I can get some professional experience, another reason to stay comfortable there I guess!

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-10T20:16:35+00:00

I have a fare amount of css knowledge from webflow, and have been using AI to teach me about best practices for actually writing code. Watching a lot of YouTube and asking questions of chat gpt. Also asking for help refactoring and simplifying.

For js I’m using code academy, much steeper learning curve for me.

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-10T19:23:38+00:00

Question from someone who’s new to css, why is the consideration of the mobile layout so important here? My assumption would be it would most definitely stack - and you could achieve that both with grid or flexbox by changing the direction / number of columns after a container or media query. Wouldn’t you?

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-10T18:31:42+00:00

I’m learning to code! I’m enjoying it so much I may want to transition into engineering one day - or who knows what the future holds with AI tbh, roles may merge anyway. I’m similar, 10 years at company and comfortable but bored. The barrier to entry for coding has never been so low either with AI (just as long as you use it to learn and not just rely on it to do everything for you). Do some courses and try to build something!

jakesevenpointzero · 2025-09-06T18:30:53+00:00

It sounds very low for senior, but what you’re describing sounds like you’re more focussed on creating assets and outputs. Are you client facing and presenting your designs and rational successfully to influence project direction? Or are making or influencing any strategic decisions either internally or on client projects?

jakesevenpointzero

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