UX isn't what you design. It's what people feel when they use it
Nobody taught me UX in a classroom. A badly designed tap did.
You've already experienced bad UX today
This morning, before you opened your laptop, you probably touched at least three things someone designed. A tap. A door handle. A switch. And at least one of them made you pause for half a second — which side is hot? Do I push or pull? Why is this so awkward?
That pause? That's UX failing. Not a screen. Not an app. Just a thing that was designed for a person — and didn't quite get it right.
Two identical handles. No label. Which one burns your hand?
The chair you're sitting on is a UX decision
The height of it. Whether the back supports you or fights you. Whether the armrests are where your arms actually fall. Someone decided all of that. That's UX.
The road sign that confused you last week? UX. The queue system at the bank that had everyone standing in the wrong place? UX. The restaurant menu where you couldn't find the price? UX.
None of these are screens. All of them are experiences someone designed — or forgot to design properly.
"UX is the gap between what the designer assumed and what the person actually felt."
The door with no handle cue
Pull? Push? Nobody knows.
The unlabelled tap
Which side burns your hand?
The chair at the wrong height
Fine for who, exactly?
Not screens. Not aesthetics. Not UI
UX is the experience of using something. How it makes you feel while you're doing a task. Whether it helped you or got in your way.
A tap can work perfectly — water comes out, nothing leaks — and still have terrible UX if you burned your hand figuring out which side was hot.
Functional is not the same as good.
It works
But does it feel right?
Once you see it, you can't unsee it
This is the most useful thing I've picked up in 6 years of doing this. Not a tool. Not a framework. A way of noticing things.
Notice the friction
That half-second pause, the small confusion, the moment you had to think when you shouldn't have — that's your signal. Start there.
Ask who it was designed for
Good UX requires someone to genuinely care about the person on the other side. Most bad UX happens when someone designed for themselves, or for "the average user" — without asking who that is.
Connect it back to digital
A confusing road sign and a confusing nav menu are the same problem in different materials. Once you see the parallel, principles stop feeling abstract.
Design for the person, not the function
The tap works. The form submits. The chair holds weight. But did the person feel capable and clear while using it? That's the difference between something that functions and something with good UX.
I don't start in Figma. I start by watching people
Before I design a single screen, I try to understand the moment the person is in. What do they already know? What are they trying to do? What would make them feel stupid — and how do I design that feeling out?
That comes from years of noticing UX outside screens. The bad tap taught me more about feedback and clarity than any design book. The confusing queue taught me about system visibility. The menu with no prices taught me about trust.
The screen is just the surface. The experience lives in the person using it.
Every bad tap is a teacher
The mindset that makes good design good — the empathy, the observation, the insistence on designing for the person rather than the function — that's trained everywhere. Not just in Figma.
Pay attention to the things that make you pause. They're trying to tell you something.