6/6 shift #5: comfortable shipping ugly

not broken, not buggy

just not pixel-perfect

real design work happens after launch when you have data

v1 is hypothesis, v2 is reality

companies that figure this out in 2026 will lap the ones operating like it's 2019

which one are you?

5/6 shift #4: Hiring differently

not looking for "5 years SaaS design experience"

but actually hiring people who can code, understand funnels, run growth experiments

design became multidisciplinary here

4/6 shift #3: They measure everything, everywhere, all the time

every feature ships with tracking built in

they know within 48 hours if it works

you find out in quarterly review when nobody used the thing you spent 6 weeks building

3/6 shift #2: stopped asking "what should we build?"

started asking "what's the smallest thing we can ship this week that moves the metric?"

your roadmap has 47 items

theirs has 3

2/6 shift #1: They killed the handoff culture

designer finishes → engineer builds → QA finds problems → designer fixes → repeat

That's a DEAD model

Their designers and engineers are in the same room, shipping incrementally

From a design pov its basically just a dark pattern.

they want to make it so frustrating that u just give up and hang up. it’s not 'smart' design if the user can’t finish a simple task in under 5 mins..... it’s just lazy and anti-user.

Most products fail by mixing all patterns at once:

Sidebar+top nav+tabs+mega menu
It becomes navigation soup.
Pick one primary pattern. Stay consistent.

Findability test:

Give a user a task.
If it takes over 30 seconds, your navigation failed.
If users can’t find it, it doesn’t exist. (04/04)

Command Palette (cmd+k)

Works for: power users
Strengths: fast, searchable
Fails: when it becomes the only navigation

Mega Menu

Works for: e-commerce, content-heavy sites
Fails: B2B SaaS, users don’t browse, they hunt. (03/04)

Top Nav (horizontal)

Works for: marketing sites, simple SaaS
Strengths: familiar, balanced
Fails: too many items or complex sub-menus

Tabs:

Works for: switching between related views
Strengths: clear “you’re here” indicator
Fails: more than 5 tabs becomes chaos (02/04)

6/ THE REAL DESIGN ROI: Bad UX costs you:

$1.35M in lost signups
$75K in support costs
$25K in slower sales
$40K+ in preventable churn Total: $1.49M/year

Design investment: $80-120K Payback period: 3-4 weeks Year one ROI: 12-18x
Design isn't an expense. It's the highest investment you'll make.

5/ THE CHURN CALCULATOR:

Monthly churn rate: 6% (industry avg: 3-4% for good UX)
Extra churn from bad UX: 2% Annual revenue: $2M
Lost revenue from UX churn: $40K/year year one $120K+ by year three Cost to fix core UX issues: $40-60K

Break-even: 12-18 months. Then pure profit.

4/ THE SALES CYCLE TAX:

4.5 months With confusing product: +6 weeks (extra demos hand-holding 'let me check with the team') Cost per deal: +2.5 sales touches × $500 = $1250 per deal 20 deals/year = $25000 in extended sales costs Better UX = fewer questions = faster deals = more revenue per rep

3/ THE SUPPORT COST MULTIPLIER:

Current state:
1500 support tickets/month
35% are 'how do I' questions
$12 avg cost per ticket UX confusion cost: 525 tickets × $12 = $6300/month = $75600/year Better UX = 70% fewer confusion tickets = $52920 saved

2/ THE ONBOARDING LEAK:

Your signup flow:
- 1000 signups/month
- 40% complete signup (industry avg: 65%)
- $450 CAC per user Lost users: 250/month × $450 = $112500/month Annual cost of bad onboarding UX: $1.35M Cost to redesign onboarding: $25K ROI: 54x in year one