Field notes
Writing on product design,
UX and craft.
Practical essays on SaaS onboarding, fintech UX, mobile patterns, design systems and the AI-era design workflow. Lessons from 70+ shipped products.
How to Hire a Product Designer for Your SaaS in 2026 (A Founder's Guide)
A practical 2026 guide for founders hiring a SaaS product designer — what skills to look for, how to read a UX portfolio, the questions that surface real product thinking, what to pay, and the red flags that cost you six months.
Read the essaySaaS Onboarding UX: The 7 Patterns That Actually Convert in 2026
A practical breakdown of the SaaS onboarding patterns that move activation — progressive disclosure, empty states that sell, sample data, checklists, the activation moment, and the metrics that prove it worked.
ReadBuilding a Design System From Scratch: A 2026 Playbook for Product Teams
A senior product designer's playbook for building a design system from scratch — tokens, components, documentation, governance, adoption, and the mistakes that kill systems before they ship.
ReadFintech UX: Designing for Trust, Speed and Compliance in 2026
How to design fintech products that users actually trust — onboarding, KYC, money movement, error states, security signals, and the design patterns banks and neobanks use to convert and retain.
ReadMobile App UX: 10 Principles That Hold Up in 2026
Ten mobile UX principles for product designers — thumb zones, card-based UI, navigation patterns, motion, offline behaviour and the small details that make a mobile app feel native.
ReadThe UX Audit Checklist: A Senior Designer's 60-Point Framework
A 60-point UX audit checklist used by senior product designers — navigation, content, accessibility, performance, conversion, mobile, forms, errors and the report structure that gets action.
Read20 Figma Tips That Save Product Designers an Hour a Day
Practical Figma tips for senior product designers — auto layout, variables, components, prototyping, plugins, file structure and the workflow habits that compound across years of design work.
ReadDashboard Design: 12 Patterns That Make Data Actually Useful
How to design dashboards users actually use — information hierarchy, chart selection, filtering, density, empty states, drilldowns and the patterns that separate decision-grade dashboards from data dumps.
ReadThe UX Portfolio That Actually Gets You Hired in 2026
A senior designer's guide to building a UX portfolio that converts — case study structure, what to show, what to cut, presentation, and the mistakes that get portfolios skipped in 30 seconds.
ReadThe AI-Era Product Design Workflow: How Senior Designers Actually Use AI in 2026
A practical look at how senior product designers use AI in their daily workflow — research synthesis, copywriting, prototyping, visual exploration, dev handoff and the places where AI still gets in the way.
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