Tuesday, 2pm: "Quick question - can you just look at our product?"
I know how this ends before they finish the sentence.
Not because I'm psychic. Because the question you ask in the first 30 seconds tells me whether you know what problem you're solving, or whether you're about to hire the wrong person to fix the wrong thing.
(Spoiler: usually the second one.)
Five questions come up most often. Here's what you're really asking.
"Can you just look at our product and tell us what's wrong?"
Translation: Can you own our entire product direction because nobody here is thinking about design holistically and we're not sure how to admit that?
Last month, founder asked this. I said "Describe the problem in one sentence."
Long pause.
"Well, it's not really one thing. It's more like... the whole experience is..."
Right. Not one thing. That's the problem.
You can't tell me which part is broken because the answer is "all of it, kind of." You have 0-1 designers, or a junior designer drowning, or developers making UI decisions between PRs.
What you're describing is product design - someone who owns design direction across your entire product. Not a consultant who gives you a report. Not a freelancer who makes screens.
A partner who figures out what's actually broken, then fixes it with you.
(Not for you. With you. Big difference.)
"We need someone who can do both the UX and the UI - is that you?"
Translation: We've been hiring people who do one or the other and it's been expensive.
PM told me last week they'd hired three people in two years:
First: Visual designer. Made things pretty. Users still confused.
Second: UX researcher. Delivered 80-page report. Nothing shipped.
Third: Frontend dev. Built everything. Looked like it was designed in 2003.
Now they're asking if one person can do both.
Yes. But you've been splitting the wrong job.
UX without UI gets you wireframes nobody can build. UI without UX gets you beautiful screens nobody understands. What you need is UX/UI design - someone who thinks through the experience AND executes the interface.
Most people do one well. Some do both.
Stop hiring half the job.
"Our product looks fine, but users keep getting stuck - can you help?"
Favorite question. Because you already know you don't have an aesthetic problem.
Your UI probably looks good. Someone spent time on spacing, colors, components. Maybe even a design system. But users are confused, support is drowning, and your activation rate is embarrassing.
Classic symptoms:
- Support answers the same question 50 times a week
- Onboarding completion rate: 30%
- People sign up, look around, never come back
This is a UX design problem. The interface looks professional. The experience is broken.
You need someone who can map where users get lost, why they get lost, and how to fix it without rebuilding everything.
Common wrong answer: "Can we just add tooltips?"
No. Tooltips are admissions of defeat dressed up as helpful. If your button needs a tooltip to explain what it does, your button is lying.
Fix the button.
"We're building a SaaS product - do you do that kind of work?"
Translation: We hired someone from consumer apps and it was a disaster.
Last year: team hired a designer with a beautiful portfolio. Consumer app background. Instagram-worthy work.
Completely wrong for their product.
Consumer apps optimize for delight. SaaS products optimize for "get work done and close the tab." Your users aren't opening your app for fun. They're trying to finish a task, often under pressure, often with their boss watching.
SaaS product design means understanding your user's success metric is "finished and left" - not "spent 30 minutes exploring features."
Their designer kept adding animations. Playful micro-interactions. Delightful empty states.
Their users just wanted to export the damn report.
Admin permissions aren't fun. Role-based access isn't delightful. Multi-user workflows aren't viral moments. B2B SaaS is a different psychology entirely.
Wrong designer = expensive lesson.
"Our marketing site doesn't match our product at all - can you fix that?"
Translation: Marketing and product teams don't talk to each other and prospects notice immediately.
Founder last month: marketing site promised "intuitive dashboard you'll master in minutes."
Logged into their product. Seventeen menu items. Four nested dropdowns. Tabs inside tabs inside modals.
"Where's the intuitive part?"
"Oh, users learn it eventually."
Eventually isn't what you sold them.
This happens constantly:
- Marketing site: Beautiful, aspirational, "transform your business"
- Product login: Looks like accounting software from 2010
- User reaction: "Is this the same product?"
What you need is SaaS website design that doesn't lie about what your product actually is. Match the interface language. Set real expectations. Echo your product's design system.
(Or at least stop contradicting it.)
The website should prepare users for the product they're about to use. Not promise something completely different.
The Question That Wastes Everyone's Time
"Can you just look at it and tell us what to do?"
No.
Last year: spent two hours writing detailed recommendations. They filed it away.
Six months later: "We're ready to work on this now."
Cool story. Your product's six months more broken. Your competitors shipped three times. Your users are more confused. Every recommendation I gave you is outdated because you built five new features on top of the broken foundation.
(Also: you're not ready. You just got desperate.)
If you want a report to ignore, hire a consultant. If you want to fix the problem, that requires actually working together.
Partnership, not homework.
What You Should Actually Ask
Don't ask: "Can you help with our design?"
Ask: "We have [specific problem]. We think we need [specific thing]. Is that what you do?"
Examples:
"Our product has no design leadership. Developers are making UX decisions. We think we need embedded product design."
"Users get lost in onboarding. We see where they drop off but not why. Is this a UX problem you solve?"
"Marketing site promises intuitive. Dashboard confuses everyone. We need these to match."
One sentence. Clear problem. Specific ask.
If you can say it in one sentence, I can tell you in 30 seconds if we're a fit.
If you can't say it in one sentence, you don't have a design problem. You have three problems wearing a trench coat pretending to be one problem.
The question you ask tells me everything.
Ask a better one.
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