Presented with the "LinkedIn for AI" problem, the designer's first step isn't visual design. It's product strategy: clarifying the core objective (e.g., matchmaking, certification), identifying the target user groups (job seekers, employers), and defining what "a good match" even means in this new context.

Many founders hire UX help expecting a final "graphic design polish" on an already-defined product. The real value comes from a design partner who ideates alongside the core team from the beginning, ensuring the product's structure is coherent before it's built.

A common misconception is that user research involves asking customers to design the product. This is wrong. The process is a clear division of labor: customers articulate their problems and pain points. Your team's role is to then use its expertise and resources to devise the best solution.

Don't design solely for the user. The best product opportunities lie at the nexus of what users truly need (not what they say they want), the company's established product principles, and its core business objectives.

The objective of user experience design isn't to build a feature-rich interface, but to remove as many barriers as possible between the user and their fundamental goal. Using Uber Eats as an example, the app succeeds by making the interface disappear, returning the user to the simple act of "searching for food."

Design is often mistaken for aesthetics, like choosing a border radius. Its real function is architectural: defining the simplest possible system with the fewest core concepts to achieve the most for users. Notion's success, for example, comes from being built on just blocks, pages, and databases, not from surface-level UI choices.

Instead of siloing roles, encourage engineers to design and designers to code. This cross-functional approach breaks down artificial barriers and helps the entire team think more holistically about the end-to-end user experience, as a real user does not see these internal divisions.

AI and cataloging tools have compressed the competitive research phase from days to minutes. This frees designers from tactical UI comparison and empowers them to focus on higher-level strategic work: crafting product narrative and system architecture, a role previously reserved for senior leadership.

The true power of UX research is aligning the entire product team with a common understanding of the user. This shared language prevents working at cross-purposes and building a disjointed product that users can feel.