tanya-donska

5 ms·

1.
by tanya-donska 8mo ago
Every UI/UX design agency in New York claims SaaS specialization. Most are lying. Check their portfolio. If it’s only landing pages and marketing sites, they don’t design products. If it’s consumer apps, they don’t understand B2B. If t
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by tanya-donska 10mo ago
Product Twitter, Y Combinator, every startup blog: build fast, ship minimal, test, iterate. Here’s what actually happens after teams launch their mvp ux design: Month 1: “Users don’t understand onboarding. Add tooltips.” Month 2: “Activatio
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by tanya-donska 11mo ago
You want someone who can do UX design work. But you don’t want to pay junior designer rates ($50-70K). So you call it an internship ($0-20/hr, or free with “great exposure”). The requirements give it away. Let’s decode: “2+ years exper
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by tanya-donska 11mo ago
You’re hedging. Which is understandable – hiring is expensive, commitment is scary, you’re not sure if investing in product design will actually move the needle. So you post for a “freelance UX designer” because it feels lower-risk than ful
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by tanya-donska 11mo ago
Last year, a SaaS company paid me to fix their onboarding. Churn was 23% monthly. Brutal. First call, the CS lead opened their dashboard. Gorgeous interface. Real-time health scores. Customer journey maps. Risk alerts. Engagement tracking a
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Five years ago, I hired a UX designer with exceptional soft skills. Articulate in meetings. Diplomatic with stakeholders. Created beautiful presentation decks. Responded to Slack within minutes with encouragement and emoji. Three months lat
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Here’s what nobody tells you about onboarding patterns: they work in isolation, fail in combination. I’ve tested this across seventeen products over four years. The math is consistent and depressing: One pattern (account setup wizard): 60%
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
The project was fine. Good product. Clear brief. Reasonable timeline. They paid on time. Nobody yelled at me. I delivered everything they asked for, and they were happy with it. And I was fucking miserable. Four stakeholders. That’s all it
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
If the demo can’t prove the headline in 60 seconds, change the headline. Most campaigns are expensive fiction. We dream up the perfect customer journey in a conference room that smells like optimism and dry-erase markers. We comp visuals th
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Here’s what actually works when you use AI for UX research — and what’s just expensive procrastination. I resisted using AI for UX research for longer than I probably should have. Not because I’m anti-AI or think it’s going to steal jobs. B
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Four years ago, I would’ve said yes before they finished the brief. Marketing websites were my bread and butter. I had a process. I had case studies. I had that dangerous confidence that comes from not knowing how broken the industry actual
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Social Media Marketing Essentials for Designers Who Hate Marketing(dnsk.work)
1 points by tanya-donska 1y ago|1 comments
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
If you’ve been avoiding social media because it feels like a scam, the algorithms just caught up to your instincts. I’ve watched designers torture themselves trying to learn marketing for years (oh, hi, Ira!). They take courses on “growth h
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AI Model Collapse: What Happens When Your Design Tools Eat Their Own Output(dnsk.work)
1 points by tanya-donska 1y ago|1 comments
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
You’ve probably noticed your AI design tools getting weirder. Here’s why that’s happening and what you can do about it. Something strange has been happening with AI design tools over the past few months. That background removal tool that us
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I Only Design Mobile Apps for One Type of Client Now(dnsk.work)
2 points by tanya-donska 1y ago|1 comments
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
After designing eleven mobile apps that made everyone miserable, I figured out which clients are worth the headache. Five years ago, I’d take any mobile UI UX design services project that walked through the door. SaaS dashboards crammed int
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Totally agree — it’s wild how often “good design” gets confused with just knowing the latest tool or trend. The fundamentals get lost. Asking candidates to walk through actual workflows is such a better way to spot real thinking vs surface-
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The UI UX Design Skills Lie That's Bankrupting New Designers(dnsk.work)
3 points by tanya-donska 1y ago|3 comments
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by tanya-donska 1y ago
Somewhere along the way, UI UX design skills became a product to sell rather than abilities to develop. Think about it: every week there’s a new “essential” skill you’re missing. A new tool that’s “revolutionizing” the industry. A new metho