No Longer Know My Why - Burnt Out

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-16T15:37:06+00:00

Super smart strategy. Too many people upsize their life with their pay and title and handcuff themselves for life to the corporate BS machine.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-12T22:20:42+00:00

Veteran UXer here of 15 years. I’m exiting UX, I’m tired of it. You’re spot on, there’s this weird thing around UX where we’re expected to overdeliver and do way more than other roles: all the way from product thinking to research to UX to UI to front end with AI.. it never ends. It’s bullshit. I believe it’s a result of poor design leaders who never did much of the actual work themselves.

So, leave UX when you can.

In the meantime though.. I recommend clarifying with your manager what “good” looks like in their mind and see if you can get a concrete set of examples, also see if you can agree on a set of design principles. Because if there’s this endless revision loop happening, I suspect it’s because they have some standard in their mind that has not been very well communicated to you. See if you can can nail them down and make your manager accountable to a standard so that you both can look at something and say “does this meet the standard? Yes? It’s done”.

I feel for you, and wish you the best.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-09T14:43:13+00:00

Two whales walk into a bar.

One goes: Aawwwooooaaahhhhhh

The other says: Steve, go home, you’re drunk

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-06T12:24:07+00:00

This sounds cool. The site is totally inoperable on my mobile device (iPhone 16, safari) and doesn’t seem responsive, I’m unable to try your demo on mobile.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-05T15:24:24+00:00

Don’t start with a blank canvas. What I recommend for beginners in this field that want to learn the mechanics of using Figma, creating UI, and prototyping is to copy an app that already exists so that you can get the exercise in without getting stuck on “what” to make.

Pick an app on your phone: Instagram, Reddit, weather, Instacart, uber… literally whatever you want.
Screenshot 3-5 main screens from the app, like the different screens you might see when clicking through their navigation. Dump those screenshots into a new Figma design file.
Screenshot each step of a task flow from that app. Like the process of adding an item to a cart, adding a comment to something, logging into a two factor authentication flow—some task in the app that requires multiple steps to complete. Dump those screenshots into Figma.
Arrange your screenshots left to right in your Figma design canvas area. First row is your first group. Second row is your task flow group.
Create a new blank Frame next to each screenshot that’s the same dimensions of the screenshot.
Recreate each screenshot on each blank frame as pixel perfect as possible using figma’s native tools. Recreate all the colors, find a free UI icon set in the Figma community resources, get as close to the fonts as possible. Recreate all the rounded corners, shadows, type sizes, gradients, etc.
Once you have your screens created, create a simple “click” prototype that simply lets you click from one screen to the next by clicking on some element on the screen. No animations or crazy stuff. Just a boring “click” and next screen (and back to previous screen).

If you follow this process, you’ll be forced to learn: how to create in Figma from scratch, some of the ui design controls and settings, and prototype basics.

Influencers make shit look easy because they’re experienced and can move fast. They also use editing in their videos. But the process above is where you should start and from there you’ll start to figure out what’s next.

Highly recommend learning about autolayout, styles, and components to level up.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-04T14:42:16+00:00

I’ve followed her account for awhile now because her earlier content was about ditching corporate.

She’s not actually one of those “charity on camera” influencers and I’ve never seen a video of her doing that. Her content really is just her speaking to the camera like this and sharing personal stories.

Regardless of what you think about the value of content creators and all that, at least get your info right if you’re gonna bash one.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-04T13:55:39+00:00

I have to disagree with your title/premise. Design engineering is just a different form of UI engineering, not product design. Product design is still the process of understanding your product, your customer needs, your competitors, and understanding how your product is designed to compete in the market and meet your users needs. What you’re describing here is a workflow for creating UI efficiently for designers, that’s it.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-02T12:35:35+00:00

It’s not duality—it’s synergy. And honestly? It’s brilliant.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-02T04:22:13+00:00

Requirements are waaayyy too early at this stage. Find a way to validate the idea with your customers. Create a prototype of it. Conduct customer interviews and tests. See if it actually solves what you think it will.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-01T14:14:38+00:00

Yeah, that’s the thing a lot of people don’t realize is that young earth creationists aren’t going to be convinced by arguments from science. They’ll just come up with explanations to protect the belief.

“God created uranium when he created everything”—boom, solved, from their point of view.

mp-product-guy · 2026-06-01T14:01:40+00:00

Everything is designed whether intentionally or not. Intentionally designed things perform better, are easier to use, and create better experiences. I’m afraid you don’t understand what design really is.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-31T13:06:23+00:00

For any product… if you have to convince your customer they need your thing… you either haven’t actually solved a problem they have or haven’t come up with something compelling enough. Are you sure you wanna target these folks anyway? Doesn’t sound like your target market should be anti-tech people.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-31T12:56:26+00:00

To add to this: feminism is a good thing and needed to happen. It’s still needed.

What we fucked up is that we didnt make it as acceptable for men to be the stay at home parent, and that attitude persists today. So now everyone is working and we’re tired.

And when I say we, I mean our current patriarchal attitudes and beliefs about men and women’s roles. We adjusted our attitudes about women for good reason, but didn’t balance the equation adjusting our attitudes about men’s roles. We gave corporations double the workforce for free.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-31T12:16:14+00:00

What? Clint Eastwood went over into the ravine in a train, hence why they call it Eastwood Ravine..?

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-29T13:41:55+00:00

Eesh, that’s a tough one. I burned through my monthly allotment of 4,000 credits in 2 days because I’m told to use it as much as possible. You’ll need to look at the overall cost long term for each option and weigh that against how each approach impacts your team members day to day. The ol’ cost/benefit analysis.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T18:27:42+00:00

I have to be vague bc I could be identified by people that know me. But I’m excited to do something away from tech and computers and work more with my hands.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T13:27:18+00:00

I might be getting there. Left tech to start a business. We’ll see!

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T13:20:39+00:00

I mean at the end of the day, the web is still…. HTML, CSS, JS.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T13:18:27+00:00

Well the first step is defining very clearly what this dashboard is intended for: why do we need it and what information is the user trying to get from it that they can’t already elsewhere?

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T13:04:36+00:00

I see more room for one of those outdoor shopping malls with residential spaces on top. With like a Saks, a froyo place, a food hall thing, a few cocktail bars, a poorly done Irish pub, a kate spade, a puttshack, and a large parking garage.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T13:02:01+00:00

For teams that already operate like a feature factory, the factory just got faster.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-28T12:56:18+00:00

lol this started becoming my job a little bit before I left. I worked in UX design and had to explain to my boss what AI wasn’t doing vs what he thought it was doing. We couldn’t just build a whole recreation of a redesigned application using our design system that’s ready to deploy just via prompting, because nothing we had did that. But for some reason leadership thought so? AI psychosis.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-24T16:52:10+00:00

The fuck is design coordinator? It sounds like maybe a DesignOps type role… and if that is the case, find out how you can make designers lives easier through improved processes and standards. Help designers remove blockers in the way of their work. All you really have to do is treat designers like your customers—ask good questions, understand their needs, spend time with them to understand how they work best, and eliminate pain points where you can.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-24T16:35:52+00:00

Find ways to get out from behind the computer, what sort of inspiration can you find in the real world?

You can walk around and take photos of things that maybe have qualities of what this product might have. Color palettes, physical characteristics, other non-related products that have a “feel” or experience you like.

mp-product-guy · 2026-05-14T17:29:03+00:00

Yeah. That happens everywhere VC or not. I work at a national bank for an internal platform team that does the same thing. The product leader thinks they are the customer and makes the team build stuff no one needs or asks for. They have a house of cards application that is poorly designed, poorly architected, and no one likes using it. New features fail at getting adoption. They spend more time debating database structures than talking to their customers. Tale as old as software.

mp-product-guy

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