good design means nothing
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on something that keeps coming up in my work — a pattern I’ve seen over and over again. Despite all the evidence, despite how much design can elevate a product, many companies still treat good design as invaluable. And I don’t mean invaluable in a good way — I mean they treat it as if it has no real value at all.
This has been a personal source of frustration. I’ve put heart and thought into creating user-centered, intuitive designs that genuinely improve the experience — only to have them dismissed as "just visuals" or left out of the conversation until it’s too late.
One of the biggest issues I’ve encountered is the ongoing misconception that design is just about aesthetics. I’ve heard people say things like, “we’ll let you make it pretty once it’s built,” as if design isn’t core to how a product works. The research, the thinking behind user flows, accessibility, usability — all of that tends to stay invisible. And even when I try to bring others into the process, most people still don’t fully understand what design really involves or why it matters.
When something does work well, it goes unnoticed — because that’s the goal. But that effortlessness often gets mistaken for simplicity, rather than the result of thoughtful, layered work.
Design’s impact is also hard to quantify. In my experience, most of my design goals are things like reducing support tickets, improving retention, or increasing conversion — goals that are super hard to achieve alone. The best results usually come from working with a good design team that understands and values design. But when leadership can’t see the value in numbers right away, design gets deprioritized. Especially in engineering- or sales-led cultures, where speed is everything and design is seen as a layer you can just add later.
And sometimes, companies just haven’t felt the pain yet. They only start to care when users drop off, competitors catch up, or feedback gets ugly. By then, it’s a scramble to fix what could have been prevented with good design thinking upfront.
What I’ve learned is that it’s not enough to design well — you have to advocate for your work. In my experience, most people don’t care about the process — they care about fast results. But good design takes time. It requires careful thinking, iteration, and understanding the problem before jumping to solutions. So even though I try to involve others, I’ve learned that I also need to speak their language, tie my decisions to real business outcomes, and keep showing how design adds value.
And when you can, seek out teams where design isn’t just tolerated, but valued — where you’re brought in early, asked for input, and trusted to shape the product, not just paint it.
Because when that happens, everything just works better. For users. For the team. And yeah — for me, too.