Product Design

What does product design include?

Everything between an idea and an interface people can use without instructions. We work from the problem outwards, so the screens are the last thing we draw, not the first.

• Research and user flows: who is using it, what they are trying to do, and where they get stuck
• Interactive prototypes you can hold in your hand, not static mockups
• Production UI with every state designed: empty, loading, error, success
• A design system with components and tokens your developers can build against

A product that looks good in a presentation is easy. One that still makes sense on a slow connection, with real data, at the end of a long day, takes design work most teams never get to.

How do you know a design actually works?

We put it in front of the people who will use it, early and often. For Final Table we tested the gesture pad with more than 100 poker players before launch. That testing changed the product:

• The snap zones on the bet slider were re-weighted towards the sizes players actually use
• The live table moved above the gesture pad, so players can see the game while they log it
• Undo stayed permanently visible, because a mis-tap at a poker table is inevitable

Static screens can't show what makes a product feel good. So we get something working early and design against that.

What does the process look like?

1. Understand. Interviews, analytics and your team's knowledge, turned into a clear problem and a short list of jobs the product has to do.
2. Map the flows. Every path through the product before any visual design, so nothing important is left to a developer to guess.
3. Prototype and test. Clickable or coded prototypes, tested with real users, then refined until the hard parts feel easy.
4. Ship the UI and the system. Production screens plus the components and tokens behind them, ready to build.

Why does it matter that the designer can build?

Because most of the quality in a product is lost between the design file and the code. When the same person designs and builds:

• Interactions are designed in the medium they will live in, not described in a handoff document
• Feasibility is checked as we go, so nothing is designed that can't ship
• What you approve is exactly what your users get

If you already have developers, we work alongside them and hand over components they can drop straight in.