ux

Most AI products have terrible UX - not because the AI is bad, but because no one who understands both AI and design is building them. Here's what to fix.

Five years into product design at a fintech, the majority of my work is documentation, edge cases, and maintenance. This is what senior design actually looks like.

After 2 years at a Moscow agency and 4 years as sole designer at a fintech, here's what actually changes when you go from agency to product design.

What four years as the sole designer on a fintech product teaches you about depth, restraint, and the trade-offs agency work never prepares you for.

Lessons from implementing WCAG 2.1 AA compliance in regulated financial software - data tables, chart contrast, focus management, and the institutional sales reality.

How I redesigned Merlin by VALK for the Ledger Live integration - two audiences, two design systems, and a compressed timeline.

What I learned designing VALK's platform across 15 countries - date formats, RTL, regulatory UI rules, and how to structure Figma for regional variants.

How I designed Merlin by VALK - a DeFi analytics tool built for traditional finance professionals who don't speak crypto-native language.

Lessons from designing financial data tables for institutional investors - density, sorting, accessibility, and why every table becomes a spreadsheet.

What breaks when your fintech design system grows from 7 clients to 70+ institutions fast - tokens, variants, documentation, and saying no.

8 months into designing a fintech platform with zero financial background - how domain ignorance slows you down and unexpectedly helps you.

Six months into my first startup role, I rebuilt VALK's product from an engineer-built MVP. Here's what went wrong and what actually worked.

I joined fintech startup as sole product designer right before COVID. Working remote from Bali during quarantine taught me things about design process I did not expect.