Blog
Notes on designing products people keep using.
UX audits, dashboards, onboarding flows, and what we learn shipping them.
What FinTech apps get wrong about trust
Trust in a financial product is decided by button size, colour rules and where the numbers sit, not by padlock icons. What we designed into a trading app and an investment dashboard.
Designing for people who stare at one screen all day
Operator tools are not consumer apps. Steppers, radio groups over menus, conditional fields and navigation for people who are on shift, not visiting.
Data tables that do not overwhelm
A table gets overwhelming when it is designed as a view of the database rather than an answer to a question. Columns, sorting, status and density.
Onboarding that survives the first week
Onboarding is designed for the first ten minutes and judged on the first week. What to show before the product holds any of the user's data.
Empty states: the screens most SaaS products forget
First run, no data yet, filtered to nothing and error are four different problems with four different fixes. How to design each one properly.
Designing a dashboard people actually check daily
A dashboard earns a daily visit by answering a question the person already had. What that means for the top row, the chart, the rail and the colour.
The 30 days after a UX audit: how to ship the fixes
The report lands. Everyone reads it. Somebody says “this is really useful”. Then the sprint starts, a customer escalation arrives, and the document goes into a folder where…
The UX audit checklist: 15 points that decide sign-ups and second visits
The 15-point checklist we use to audit a live product, in the order a new user meets it: landing, sign-up, the first session, mobile, and coming back.