Design Led
Every Sunday, you'll get a new lesson about product, design & startups to your inbox. Researched, heavily user focused & without fluff.
Which Role Will AI Kill First? PM, Designer, or Dev (And How to Be the Last One Standing)
This week, I built a working prototype with Lovable. No code needed. Nice UI, working buttons, mobile friendly - all without writing any code. When I showed it to my client, one of the devs said: “Ok, we are doomed now!” He said it jokingly, but… The hard truth? AI is coming for all of us - designers, developers, product managers. Not a question of if, but when. And which role dies first. Don’t close this email thinking “not another AI doom post.” I’m not here to scare you. I’m here to help...
Why most dashboards suck (and how to build one that doesn’t)
Dashboards seem easy to design.But building one that actually helps your users? That’s a whole different story. In fact, I’d call it one of the hardest things to get right in product design. Let me explain why. Most dashboards are just data dumps Startups love to show off. “We’ve got all this data, let’s put it in one place!” But most of the time, that data is noise. Not signal. And when users land in a dashboard filled with irrelevant charts, guess what happens?They ignore it. Or worse......
The 3 Ingredients of S-Tier Designers
With most product designers getting started through courses and YT videos, the bar of entry is pretty low. Only a handful actually got a design degree. Which is fine. You don’t need it. But it for sure helps. As a founder and agency owner, I worked with probably 100+ designers so far. Either with clients, as freelancers, or hiring them for Grauberg. I soon recognized that it’s always the same 3 things that stood out to me at S-Tier Designers. So today I want to look at them from the...
Your Users Are Lying To You (And They Don't Even Know It)
Why Most UX Research Gets You Nowhere I’ve worked with over 30+ different startups now. I’ve watched so many designers do user interviews. And I’ve noticed one thing: Your users are lying to you. They don’t even know they’re doing it. It’s not on purpose. They want to help. But UX research as we know it is broken. It gets you polite lies, not hard truths. Here’s what I saw last week: Designer: “Would you use a feature that sends you daily metric updates?” User: “Oh yeah, that would be great!”...
Webflow vs. Framer: I Built the Same Website in Both to See Which is Better
Basically what the title says. Social media discussions about the best no-code tool for websites have been heating up more and more. And I can’t stand it anymore! So let’s clarify something… I’ve been designing websites for over 7+ years now, and after trying out almost every website builder, I got stuck on two: Wordpress Webflow Onepage Squarespace Wix Framer So I decided to build the same website template on both platforms and see how they compare with each other. The result might surprise...
The Only 5 Metrics You Need to Care About as a Designer (Everything Else Is Just Noise)
After 7+ years in product design, I’ve seen designers obsess over the wrong metrics. They track everything: time on page, scroll depth, click rates, heat maps, and dozens of other data points. Yet when the CEO asks how their work moves the business forward, they freeze. Here’s the truth: You only need 5 metrics to prove your design’s value and become indispensable to any company. Not 20. Not 10. Just 5. Let me show you which ones actually matter and why most of what you’re tracking is just...
How AI is taking over my design process (Goodbye Figma?)
The way I work has drastically changed in the last 3 months. AI is everywhere in my process now, spearheaded by Claude. And honestly… I might stop using Figma in the very near future. In this issue I’ll be sharing how my design process got impacted by AI (in a good way), how you can get better design results with tools like Claude, and what needs to happen for me to ditch Figma once and for all. How & where Claude took over my design process I never had the feeling AI will ever replace me. I...
Stop overpromising: How I fix your Website-Product Alignment for 40% Higher Retention Rate
Your website makes promises. Your product keeps them. Break this chain, and you’re f*cked. After launching dozens of products over 7 years (both my own and through my design studio Grauberg), I’ve witnessed a pattern so consistent it’s almost a law of nature: When a product doesn’t match its marketing website, users leave and never come back. Yet I’ve never seen a single article, course, or “growth hack” about this invisible thread between website and product. Everyone’s obsessed with...
User testing is easier than you think (Save 40.000$ in unnecessary features)
This will probably piss off some of you, but: Those 2-hour user interviews you’re doing? They’re killing your product. Last month I talked to another founder who was about to launch a new feature. The design looked clean. Developers already estimated 2 months of work. The stakeholders loved it in the design review. He told me he’s not convinced that this feature works, but wasn’t sure how to tell the team without a good reason. I suggested to do a short 15-minute user test together. Turns...
Why smart designers tackle onboarding (not new features)
After spending 7+ years designing products, I’ve seen the same stupid conversations within product teams after their first launch: The founder: “We’ll add proper onboarding later.”The Dev: “Users will figure it out.”The PM: “Let’s focus on building more features first.” Here’s the brutal truth: Without proper onboarding, you’re burning money. The key metric to look at here is “activation rate”, which is the number of signups compared to the number of users who finished the main task of your...
Every Sunday, you'll get a new lesson about product, design & startups to your inbox. Researched, heavily user focused & without fluff.