The deliberate design practice blog
Essays and playbooks on deliberate design practice: how to run design challenges, write UX case studies, and apply persuasion psychology to real product work.
Teardown: what Duolingo's streak actually does to you
The streak is not a reward. It is an asset the product lets you build and then holds. Here is the mechanism underneath it, why copying the number never works, and the exact point where it stops being fair.
Sep 4, 2026 · Flamel
The Fogg Behavior Model, applied to real product decisions
A behavior that is not happening is missing motivation, ability, or a prompt, and the three failures need three different fixes that cannot be substituted for each other. The Fogg Behavior Model is worth the hour because it forces a team to name which one is missing before anyone starts building the answer.
Sep 2, 2026 · Flamel
Brief an AI the way you'd brief a junior designer
The prompt that works isn't longer than the one that failed, it's shaped differently: it has the shape of a brief. Five fields decide the work, and if you leave one blank the model fills it silently and hands you a finished artefact instead of a question.
Aug 26, 2026 · Flamel
The product designer's AI workflow: what to delegate and what never to
Most AI workflows for designers are tool lists, and tool lists expire. This is the other kind: a division of responsibility that says exactly what the machine produces, what you decide, and which handover is the one that breaks everything when you get it wrong.
Aug 25, 2026 · Flamel
The new seniority ladder: what mid and senior mean now
The ladder everyone climbed measured volume and finish, and it stopped working the month competent output got cheap. The one underneath it measures how far your decisions reach — and it explains what mid and senior actually mean now.
Aug 25, 2026 · Flamel
What AI got good at, and what it still can't do
Most inventories of what AI cannot do in design are written to reassure, and they age badly. This one concedes the whole left column first, then draws the line where it actually falls: not at difficulty, but at the decisions somebody has to answer for.
Aug 23, 2026 · Flamel
How to compete with AI as a designer (you don't)
You cannot win a race to produce the artefact, and the prize is the input whose price is collapsing anyway. The position that is open is the one that says which of five directions ships, names the mechanism behind it, and carries the number that would prove it wrong.
Aug 22, 2026 · Flamel
The three design skills that appreciate as AI gets better
Future-proofing is not about finding the corner AI cannot reach. Three skills get more valuable every time the models improve: naming the mechanism behind a decision, defending it out loud, and directing the machine instead of racing it.
Aug 21, 2026 · Flamel
Will AI replace product designers? What it already replaced
AI has already automated first drafts, filler copy, variants, sample data and admin in product design, but not the judgement of which problem to solve, how to sequence, what to measure or what to cut; that is now the job.
Aug 20, 2026 · Flamel
Is it still worth being a product designer in 2026?
The honest answer is yes, but not to the same job. Here is exactly which part of design work disappeared, which part got scarcer, and the three skills that are worth more now than they were three years ago.
Aug 19, 2026 · Flamel
UX case study examples: what the strong ones actually show
Most UX case study examples teach the wrong lesson. Here is what separates a case study that gets you hired from a well-designed slideshow, with the structure to write one.
Aug 13, 2026 · Flamel
How to run a 60-minute design challenge (and why the timebox is the point)
A practical protocol for daily UX design challenges: how to split the hour, what to cut when you run out of time, and the four failure modes that make most design practice useless.
Aug 13, 2026 · Flamel
Where to find realistic design briefs to practice with
Design brief generators mostly produce prompts, not briefs. Here is what a brief needs to contain to be worth your time, where to get real ones, and a template for writing your own.
Aug 13, 2026 · Flamel
Figma practice projects that are actually worth your time
Most Figma practice produces tool fluency and nothing else. Six project types that build judgement instead, and the reason component-level exercises stop paying off so quickly.
Aug 13, 2026 · Flamel
The persuasion principles every product designer should know
Cialdini, Fogg, Eyal and the Heath brothers in one map: what each framework is actually for, which one to reach for when, and where each crosses into dark patterns.
Aug 13, 2026 · Flamel