Published 19 July 2026 · Source dated 5 October 2025
One designer's account of how AI has shifted their process toward faster, rougher first drafts and more testing. It's a single anecdote, but it points at a real methods shift worth reflecting on.
This isn't a research study — it's one designer's personal account — but it echoes a pattern worth naming. Kazden Cattapan describes their workflow becoming 'less precious': rougher first passes, faster loops, more testing before committing to a direction. That's a methods shift, not just a tools one. If AI makes drafts cheap to produce, the bottleneck moves from 'how polished is my first mockup' to 'how well am I testing and iterating on it'. Worth reflecting on for your own process, especially early in your career when it's tempting to over-polish a first idea before you've actually validated anything with a real user or stakeholder.
Coach
On your next task, timebox your first draft to 30 minutes, then spend the time you saved getting feedback from one person instead of polishing further.
Continuous discovery — small, regular user touchpoints instead of big periodic studies — is now treated as established practice on product teams. You don't need a big research budget to start.
smashingmagazine.com ·
Established
Still true: 5 users find most of your usability problems
NN/g's classic finding — that testing with five users uncovers most usability issues — still holds and still gets ignored by teams who think they need a 'proper' sample size.
nngroup.com ·
Established
Heuristic evaluation is still your fastest fix
With AI tooling dominating design chatter, it's easy to forget the cheapest, fastest usability method still works: heuristic evaluation. It costs nothing but time and catches problems before you ever test with real users.