It's no secret that early-stage startups hire engineers first.
After a while, they realize the need for “design” and rush to hire their first UX or product designer.
And the problem is not the designer itself.
In the end, it will summarize this more deeply: the product lacks design clarity.
Founders often assume that design is just about UI, or visuals, or the proper tools like Figma, but in reality, UX and product design are about defining how a product should work before it is built (or launched), not just how it looks.
At the end, it is superficial.
Without that clarity, even the best designer will set up to fail.
Instead of driving product decisions, they are pulled into:
Create templates randomly
Polishing interfaces without solving real problems
Fixing broken UX flows
Redesign features that were vaguely validated
The result: more screens, more iterations, visual explosion, but no real product progress.
The product design clarity framework
No matter the stage or the moment, before hiring a designer or opening Figma, startups need a clear product foundation.
This is where product design as strategy comes in.
A strong product starts with clarity across three layers:
User problem (UX foundation): It is important to have the proper answers to
What specific problem are you solving?
Is it frequent, painful, and worth solving?
And the process is important; most teams skip this step and jump directly into “solutions”, but without a clearly defined user problem, design becomes guesswork.
Product concept (design direction): This is not about features, it’s about focus; just as simple as the unique answer to
What is the simplest possible solution to that problem?
At the end, great product design removes complexity and defines what NOT to build.
User experience (UX flow): Where the solution forms by answering
How does the user move through the product?
This includes proper onboarding, intuitive key interactions, and proper moments of value. At this stage, tools like Figma are useful, not to decorate, but to prototype flows, test assumptions, and validate decisions.
When these three layers are perfectly aligned, design becomes a strategic function; without them, design is just reactive execution.
How to put it into practice?
Before hiring a designer, build a simple low-fidelity UX prototype in Figma and test it with five users.
In the exercise, focus on:
Clarity of the flow
Understanding of the value
Ease of use
In the development, this will expose gaps in your product thinking and will give your future designer a much stronger starting point.
So, have clarity first, then hire
Hiring a designer, even if this is the best one in its field, definitely won't fix a lack of product clarity.
But product design thinking early will.
In our next edition, we will break down the product clarity problem and why most startups struggle to define what they’re actually building before they start designing (or coding).
I have been working closely with founders, facing this exact challenge, where teams are moving fast, but without a clear product direction.
So, I am creating something to help to find this clarity.
A new way for startups to access product design thinking as a strategic function, without the need to hire full-time (yet).
See you at the next edition.