Dan Mall

Your design isn’t ugly your spacing is off. Quick tip: Add more white space or negative space between elements. And to do that you’ll need consistent padding and spacing. Personally I use the 4 point system That just each space will be a multiple 4, 8 , 12, 16 , 24…. Follow for more!

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Scope creep isn’t a client problem. It’s a planning problem. I killed it with a 1-page scope I use on every white-label build. The One-Page Scope Page list — what exists at launch Modules — how each page is built Success criteria — what “good” looks like Definition of done — when we stop Example Pages: Home, About, Services, Contact, Legal Modules: Hero (video), 3-card Services, Testimonial, CTA bar Success: LCP < 2.5s, headline approved, GA4 firing, form delivers to CRM Done: CMS fields mapped, QA passed on 3 breakpoints, handoff Loom recorded This doc has saved partners from: – 6 weeks of dragged revisions – $10k+ in overages – Midnight panic and finger-pointing White-label success isn’t “great design.” It’s predictable delivery. I’ve shipped 20+ projects this way stress-free. Agency folks: what’s the #1 scope mistake you’ve seen blow up a project?

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Your UX is either closing sales or bleeding customers there's no in-between. Smooth UX is your silent salesperson. DTC customers decide in 3 seconds to trust you or leave. Confusing flow = they’re gone. Clean, easy flow = they buy and come back. Your website should answer questions before people ask. Trust comes from experience, not ads. If checkout feels like work, you lose the sale. Make it smooth. Make it human. Make it hard to leave. What's one friction point in your checkout flow you'd fix today? Drop it below. 👇 #DTC #ecommerce #UXdesign #conversionrate #customerexperience #shopify #DTCbrands #brandstrategy #digitalmarketing #CRO #productdesign #onlineshopping #customerjourney #businessgrowth #retailinnovation

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Jenny Wen from Anthropic was on Lenny's podcast recently talking about how design is changing & I've seen it shared a lot with very little pushback and lots of hyperbole so I want to add some balance. There are 3 things in here that are genuinely worth sitting with. 1) She puts numbers on the time allocation shift - she's gone from 60-70% of her time mocking & prototyping down to 30-40%, with the rest now spent pairing with engineers & shipping code directly. That's real data from her context & it marries with anecdotal evidence I see from others who've found genuine efficiencies in their personal workflow - but what you do with that reclaimed time is going to vary dramatically depending on where you sit, what you're building & who you're building it for. 2) She talks about vision horizons compressing - no more 2 or 5 year design visions at Anthropic, they're working 3 to 6 months out & the output is a prototype that points a direction, not a polished deck. 3) Her three hiring archetypes super interesting - the block-shaped generalist who's 80th percentile across multiple skills, the deep T specialist who's top 10% in 1 thing, & the craft new grad who learns fast & isn't weighed down by old process. That last one I'm a huge advocate of - the value of a graduate with strong foundational skills who hasn't yet been told how things are supposed to work is massively underestimated. However I think the conversation around this episode has been a bit uncritical. Jenny says the traditional design process is dead. But when it comes to what replaces it the answer is essentially... be flexible, pair with engineers, set short-horizon vision. And in my opinion she hasn't offered an alternative process with any real detail. I don't think she's claiming to, but the way people are sharing this you'd think someone just handed us the new playbook. She didn't. That vision compression, that faster prototyping all only works if your entire company is oriented to working this way and again, lets not fetishise the single domain product design/dev challenge. I think it's important to say - this is one designer's perspective from inside one of the fastest moving AI labs on the planet. If you're a design lead at a bank or an insurer or a healthcare company, where you've got regulatory constraints, slower release cycles and engineers who aren't running seven Claude instances... there is nothing in this episode that is going to dramatically change your Monday morning. The frontier is useful context. It is not a universal strategy. Take the main points but don't fall for the 'XYZ is dead' or 'XYZ role is no longer needed' The hard work of figuring out what the new process actually looks like for your team, your constraints, your product - that's still yours to do. You can dramatically shift how fast you move between value gates in your work. Saying that the double diamond is dead (not what she said) shows you never understood design in the 1st place.

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4 takeaways from PI Apparel this week- 1. External support is accelerating teams - Agencies, consultants, and partners are stepping in fast. - No onboarding. Just results. 2. AI is speeding up ideation - Small teams are moving faster than ever. - Tools like Midjourney and Vizcom cut hours down to minutes. 3. PLM is finally working for design -Platforms like Centric and Delogue now drive the process. Not just document it. 4. 3D is cutting time and waste -CLO and Browzwear are slashing sample timelines by 50%. -More speed, less material waste. The future is connected and fast. P.S. What are you most excited about?

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My opinion nobody asked for... Over the past month, I’ve had three separate chats with businesses struggling to make basic updates to their websites. The common thread? Custom builds layered with years of Band-Aid fixes — leaving their CMS clunky, confusing, or essentially unusable. The impact of this? Some pissed off internal teams. My advice? Shift to low-code platforms like Webflow or Framer. Not because it’s “easier,” but because it gives control back to designers and marketers — the people who need to move fast. Meanwhile, your developers get to focus on the deeper, more technical challenges that actually drive business value. If I were on an internal marketing team and fed up with the CMS, I’d seriously consider a ‘lift and shift’ — and start training the team to take back control.

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UX isn’t just about wireframes or visual design. It’s about outcomes. It’s a business function, first and foremost. Great designers know how to shift their perspective. One moment they’re deep in the details of the solution. The next, they’re zooming out to think about the broader impact, what success really looks like, and how to get there. To get #UX right, teams need clarity around outcomes. Those objectives are more than internal KPIs. They reflect real user needs as well as the business goals. When teams can move fluidly between those layers—user and outcome—they build better products and delivery outcomes to advance the business.   Here’s how we approach it:  - Start by mapping the desired outcomes - Build a brief that reflects those outcomes clearly - Map the broader system: constraints, external factors, success levers - Set short, medium, and long-term strategies - Borrow from adjacencies - Build with change in mind When you align design with real objectives, everything clicks. I'll be diving deeper into this topic at UXPA Boston this Friday, 5/9—hope to see you there! #UserExperience #HumanCenteredDesign #UXPABoston #UXPA2025 

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I used to measure progress by outcomes alone. Now I notice the quality of the process just as much. How something is built tends to shape what it becomes. Which is why we've put more process into our onboarding (set good expectations) and discovery tools like our Shopify Web Blueprint (to uncover and strategically plan unknowns) into our approach as a business for better outcomes.

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It’s time to get back to basics… When your head is down in a design business for more than two decades, it’s easy to become complacent and stick to what’s worked. Referrals, word of mouth, and previous clients coming back for more has always kept the work flowing and the bills paid. However... It’s time to make a shift from simply reacting to whatever offers are coming in to going out and finding only the work we want to do. This year, the plan is to… _ redefine our positioning to be laser focused on our ideal client _ craft a new portfolio including only the work we want to take on _ reframe what we say yes to and start saying no more often We do not progress without the intention to do so… The less we change the more things stay the same.

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For years I kept seeing the same pattern. A company would invest serious money into a rebrand. Beautiful identity. Thoughtful positioning. Clean component library. Everyone feels aligned. Six months later, the drift begins. Marketing builds one off landing pages. Sales modifies decks. New hires create their own templates. Vendors ask for assets over email. The “system” lives in a file that only design fully understands. Nothing is technically broken but nothing is fully aligned either. That tension is why I started developing BrandOS. Not because we need another guideline. But because we need an operational layer. I wanted something that behaves more like software than a document. Role based, permission driven, structured around how work actually happens inside growing companies. Marketing sees what marketing needs. Sales pulls approved narratives and decks without guessing. Vendors access production ready assets without interpretation. The goal is simple. Make the right brand behavior the easiest behavior. What surprised me was the response. Every time I describe BrandOS to founders, heads of marketing, or product leaders, the reaction is immediate. “We have this problem.” “Our assets are everywhere.” “Our team keeps reinventing the wheel.” “We are hiring fast and the brand is starting to stretch.” There is a quiet frustration in growing companies. They know brand matters. They have invested in it. But they feel the friction of scale. BrandOS resonated because it reframes brand as infrastructure, not decoration. The interest has come from Series A startups, mid size tech companies, and even more established organizations that are tired of brand living in silos. The common thread is growth. The faster they grow, the more painful inconsistency becomes. This is not about adding complexity. It is about removing friction. When brand becomes operational, alignment stops being aspirational. It becomes default.

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