This was originally published as a Linkedin post here

Prediction: The design process that I’ve advocated for for a long time may finally be close to broad adoption.

For the last decade or more (while I’ve been a design manager), the most accepted process for designing and building product has always involved a heavy upfront design tool exploration and prototyping/testing with mocks. Every designer I’ve managed (except exactly one) have worked that way — not their fault. It’s how you’re ‘meant’ to do it.

This has also mostly made sense in terms of velocity - most designers aren’t technical, engineers are busy and the work needs to be pushed forwards. To do anything else would mean adapting the entire product organisation away from convention.

But I hate it. Always have.

Honestly, it’s not how my brain works and has always felt at best inefficient and at worst misleading. I just cannot accept that we know the right answer based on a few pngs strapped together with mock data.

It also too often lets designers off QA, tanking shipped product quality as they fall out of the loop, directed to fresh Figma tickets.

But. We’re nearly there. We get to tear it down.

How about we build the damn thing. From nearly day zero. Layers of fidelity added to the product-in-progress. Not Figma-as-source-of-truth but Code-as-source-of-truth. Drawing tools for exploration around the edges, asset creation maybe, or quickly sketching something in your head. Designer and engineer in lock-step.

This isn’t a new idea, but as we start to be able to build UIs as fast as we can think with less need to code, I really think it will become the most pragmatic, enjoyable and highest impact way to get product shipped.

Given this, I’m bullish on designers being the drivers of product development more in the future.

But in order to do so, we need a mindset and skillset shift.

Designers (and engineers and PMs) will need to let go of their perfect handover and get comfortable with making decisions on the fly, reacting and iterating through playing in code. Designers involved until production release and beyond. More ownership over the finished product, not just the design phase.

The excuses for not doing this are falling away.

And those that lean in will find out, it’s so freaking fun.