UI/UX Design

Because changing a screen in design costs an hour, and changing it after it's been built costs days and can force a rebuild of what surrounds it. Designing first is where the unasked questions surface: what the user sees when the list is empty, what happens when a submission fails. Finding those on screen is cheaper than finding them in code.

UX is the order of the steps: how many steps until the user achieves what they came for, and what is asked of them and when. UI is how each step looks. A product with a beautiful interface and a bad path impresses in a screenshot and is abandoned in use; the reverse does far less damage — which is why the path is settled first.

A clickable prototype rather than images: screens wired together so the whole path can be walked before a line of code. Alongside it, a design system — colours, typefaces and named components with their sizes and states. That is what stops the recurring question "how much spacing here" and makes the built product match what was agreed.

Five people from your real audience surface most of what confuses, and that is far cheaper than people assume. The most important condition is that they are not from your team: whoever built the product cannot see it for the first time. And if testing isn't possible, the alternative is a staged launch and measuring where people actually stop — rather than assuming the path is clear.