Want to Become a Better Designer? Build a Product
For the last 10 years, I’ve been designing products for companies. But nothing has accelerated my growth as a designer more than building my own product.
When you’re the Founder, Designer, PM, Marketer and spend most of the time as a QA, you stop thinking in screens and start thinking in systems.
So let’s dive into the Learnings✨
Understanding the Funnel Instead of Just a Design Flow
Earlier, I cared about whether a flow was intuitive. Now I care about what happens after the flow.
🤔 Where are users dropping off?
🤷🏻♂️ Why are they abandoning onboarding?
✅ Which CTA actually converts?
🧐 Which feature improves retention and which one only adds complexity?
Understanding the entire funnel firsthand has fundamentally changed how I design. Every screen now has a measurable purpose tied to a business metric.
Design is no longer just about usability; it’s now also about solid outcomes.
I Build for What Matters, Not just What’s Interesting
When you’re spending your own time and money building something, priorities become brutally clear.
It’s tempting to build clever features. But users don’t pay for cleverness
They pay for problems being solved.
I’ve become much better at asking:
- Does this move us closer to product-market fit?
- Will this meaningfully improve the user’s experience?
- Is this solving a real pain point or just satisfying my curiosity?
Honestly, the fastest way to learn is to build, ship and listen.
I have Stopped Shying Away From Understanding the Business
As designers, we often hear words like CAC, retention, activation, churn, pricing, positioning and revenue.
Building a product forces you to actually live those metrics.
When I started getting feedback on my alpha version; which would add like “just one more feature” I naturally asked:
What does this cost?
What metric will this improve?
Is the engineering & QA effort worth it?
Understanding the business has made it much easier to say NO.
Not because I dislike ideas ; but because focus is one of the most valuable resources a product has.
Definition of UX has Naturally Broadened
One surprising change is that I no longer see design as an isolated function.
Every feature now comes with three questions:
- Should I build this?
- How do Iexplain it?
- How do people discover it?
Product, communication, onboarding, marketing, copywriting and design all feel like parts of the same system.
With AI Speed Has Become a Design Skill
I used to spend days polishing pixels. Now I’d rather validate an idea this week and perfect it next month.
Don’t get me wrong, shipping fast doesn’t mean lowering quality.
It means recognising that learning from real users is more valuable than debating assumptions internally (in my case, with with my mind).
Real Example :
Recently, during one of my user interviews, the very first person testing my product ran into several usability issues. Instead of taking notes and promising to fix them “in the next release,” I used AI to make the changes on the spot and pushed a new build while we were still together.
A few minutes later, the user refreshed the app and saw their feedback come to life.
The energy of the conversation changed instantly.
It no longer felt like they were testing someone else’s product, they felt like they were building it with me. Seeing their suggestions implemented in real time made them far more engaged, and they started sharing ideas and edge cases they probably wouldn’t have mentioned otherwise.
Finishing Design Is No Longer the End Goal
The biggest realisation for me was that beautiful interfaces just don’t build successful products.
Successful products solve meaningful problems.
Design is simply one of the tools that helps make that happen. Building my own product has made me less attached to pixels and more attached to outcomes.
And I think that’s what is making me a sharper designer.
Not because I’m better at Figma. But because I’m finally designing with the full picture in mind.
My first product “Supalink” will soon be up for tasting, it’s already on staging and going through some rigorous alpha testing.
