UX Gaps

 You've been trying to start your mornings outside lately. With the weather finally improving, a short run before sitting down at a screen feels like an easy way to ease into the day. A small buffer before work starts. During one of those runs, you put on a tech podcast a friend had recommended. The conversation moves through the usual mix of tools and product updates until the topic of vibe coding comes up. The hosts give a quick explanation for listeners who might not be familiar. Building software through prompts and AI tools instead of traditional development. One of the co-hosts laughs and says they're not technical, but they used it over the weekend to build a website for their daughter's graduation. A few laughs follow, and then the conversation moves on. But you don't really move on from it. Not because it feels important in the moment. Because it feels casual. Like it didn't need much attention at all. You finish your run, and the day starts. La...

You’re on a discovery call with a new client when the conversation shifts toward AI. The meeting starts the way most do. You walk through their platform, their users, and where people tend to get stuck in the current workflow. Some steps feel repetitive. Some tasks are still too manual. Support requests keep circling the same questions. As you dig a little deeper, a few constraints start showing up in the conversation too. They don’t want to add complexity for users. They don’t want anything that feels confusing or “too technical.” At the same time, they want the experience to feel faster. More efficient. Less manual. Both ideas sit in the same sentence, like they naturally belong together. Then the client brings up AI. Not as something they’re exploring. More as something they already expect to include. They ask about your experience with it. You pause for a second. You explain that you’ve used tools like ChatGPT and Claude in your own workflow. Research. Thinking through...

 You’re checking your email for the day when a familiar name catches your eye. It’s someone you knew back in college. You haven’t spoken in years, so seeing their name in your inbox throws you off. The message starts light. A quick hello. A little catching up. Then it shifts. The company they’d been with for the past five years was acquired. Teams were merged. Roles were cut. They didn’t make it. They’ve been searching for months and wanted to know if you had any freelance or part-time design work while they continued looking. You wish you did. You’ve signed your next contract, but it hasn’t started yet. There’s nothing to pass along. So you offer what you can. You invite them to a networking event you attend regularly. You ask what kind of roles they’re looking for. And you ask them to send over their portfolio so you can see who might be a good fit to introduce them to. Later that night, the link comes through. You open it expecting to see five years of senior-level growth...

 A few people stay back after your talk. They ask about your work in edtech. How you made the shift. How you approach certain problems. You answer without much effort. A few months ago, these were the kinds of questions you had to think through carefully before responding. Now you don’t. The answers come out clean. Quick. Clear. Later that night, you think back on the conversation. The questions weren’t identical, but they felt familiar. Halfway through hearing them, you could already feel your answer forming. That’s what stands out. It’s not a bad thing. It’s what you were working toward. A clear niche. Projects that made sense together. Work that didn’t feel scattered. And now you have that. Which is why the next thought feels off. If it’s working… why does it feel flat? You notice it again while working. Decisions come faster. Nothing really slows you down the way it used to. You’re not stuck. But you’re also not being pushed. That’s when the thought shows up. Maybe it’s the nic...

A few weeks after updating your portfolio, another message comes through your inbox. It’s from the networking group you attend. They’re hosting their annual conference. You skim through the details—dates, location, agenda—and make a mental note to ask your friends if they’re planning to go. Later that evening, you’re at the usual meetup. About halfway through, the organizer gathers everyone together to make an announcement. They talk through the conference plans, then add that they’re still looking for sponsors and speakers. If anyone is interested, they should reach out before the end of the week. The room breaks back into conversation, but your table lingers on it. “You should sponsor,” one of your friends says. “It’s a good way to get your name out there.” You shake your head. “I can’t afford that right now.” “Then you should speak,” someone else adds, almost immediately. You laugh it off. “I don’t have anything to talk about.” They don’t drop it. “Come on. You’re always asking ques...

A few days after updating your portfolio, a message comes through your website. They mention they came across your work and would like to learn more about your projects. No job offer. No project brief. Just genuine curiosity. You’re not sure what to expect, but you respond and set up a quick 30-minute call. At the very least, it’s a chance to talk through your work with someone new. When the call starts, the conversation is easy. They ask about your recent projects. You walk through a few of them, explaining the challenges, the decisions you made, and how things evolved. It feels familiar and comfortable. Then they ask, “How do you usually approach your projects?” A knot forms in your stomach. It’s not that you don’t know how to do the work. Every flow, every test, every iteration was based on research, data, and careful decision-making. You weren’t guessing — you were following evidence and making intentional choices. But putting that into words — articulating a clear, repeata...

After finishing the updates to your portfolio, you sit back and look through the projects one more time. The work finally feels right. The case studies are clearer. The decisions behind the designs are easier to follow. Each project reflects real challenges you’ve worked through in EdTech. For the first time in a while, your portfolio feels like it represents the designer you’ve become. Naturally, you want people to see it. You open a new email draft and begin typing: Hi everyone — I just updated my portfolio and wanted to share the new work. You pause. Something about it feels off. It reminds you of the kind of messages designers send when they’re first starting out — broadcasting their work widely, hoping someone will notice. But freelancing has changed how you think about professional communication. The people in your network aren’t just names in a contact list. Many of them played a role in the work that helped you get here — offering feedback, trusting you with your fir...

 Lately, you’ve noticed a pattern. When you share your portfolio, the feedback is polite: the projects look good, the designs are clean. But unless you walk someone through them, no one digs deeper. And when you do explain your decisions and the challenges you faced, people finally understand your thinking — which is when it hits you: this portfolio doesn’t fully represent the designer you’ve become. The projects were useful once. They helped you break into EdTech and show that you could follow a process. But now, they feel novice . You have to be present to explain everything, and on its own, the work doesn’t communicate your skills or judgment. You realize you’ve outgrown this portfolio . Some projects were stretched to fit your niche. Others still read like bootcamp exercises. They’re holding you back rather than showing what you can do today. It’s time to replace the work that no longer serves you with projects that truly reflect your thinking and problem-solving skills. ...

 You arrive at the meetup feeling different this time. The last time you were here, you were trying to figure out the difference between being a freelancer and a contractor. A recent job had listed you as a contractor, and you weren’t sure what that meant for your work. You left with clarity and a confident response sent off in email. Tonight, you’re not here with questions. You’re here to see friends, connect, and talk about the projects you’ve been working on. The last few jobs made you think differently — not just about task flows or wireframes, but about outcomes, behavior, and what really matters for users. You’ve been noticing patterns, small things that improve performance, and results that come from paying attention beyond the surface level. During a break, a friend pulls you aside. “I might have something for you,” she says. She explains that an EdTech after-school program is expanding, adding programs and enrollment flows, and they need someone to review the system a...

I get a lot of questions about the Freelancers UX Immersion Workshop, so I put together a quick video answering the ones I hear most often. In it, I explain who the workshop is for, what you’ll learn, and how it helps you practice real freelance UX scenarios before stepping out on your own. Know a designer who’s considering freelance UX? Feel free to share this with them so they can learn more about the workshop. Watch the video below to get the full answers and see if this workshop is right for you! Enroll or learn more: workshop.uxgaps.com   Helping UX Designers bridge gaps and grow

You sit at your desk, reviewing the onboarding flow you just redesigned for the mobile app. Weeks of work went into this: consolidating unnecessary steps, clarifying confusing fields, and rewriting instructions that had caused users to get stuck in the past. The flow is smoother now, and most of the obvious pain points from earlier testing are gone. Your team has been watching metrics closely. The product manager and engineers are eager to see results. Now that the redesign is live, you feel cautiously optimistic. At first glance, the numbers look promising. Click-throughs are high. Users spend slightly more time on tutorial screens. Engagement seems up. It feels like the work paid off. But during the next team meeting, the product manager frowns. “Completion rates haven’t improved,” they say. “People are still dropping off mid-flow.” Your stomach knots. How can users be clicking through at such a high rate if they’re not finishing? You assumed the redesign addressed the major fri...

A designer gets an email from someone he hasn't talked to in years. They worked together once, long ago, before their careers went in different directions. The message is straightforward: "Hey—hope all is well with you. We're in the middle of a product project that's grown larger than we expected. We're looking to contract out 1–2 additional designers to help the team keep things moving. Would you be interested?" The request makes sense. The project expanded. They need more hands. But one word gives him pause: contract. He's been freelancing for years. That model is familiar. Contracting, though, is something he's never had to think too deeply about. He realizes he doesn't actually know how it would change his role or what would be expected of him on a day-to-day basis. That evening, he goes to his regular networking meetup. He ends up talking with designers working across agencies, product teams, freelance roles, and contract positions. When someo...

A designer has just joined a product team. They know the rules: research first, define the problem, map flows, test solutions. They’ve shipped work before, felt confident in their craft, and trusted the process. Now, they’re handed a project already in motion. The research is solid, but incomplete. As they read through it, it offers direction, not certainty. Some insights clearly point to user needs, while others raise new questions that were never fully answered. It’s usable, but it doesn’t provide the clarity they’re used to starting with. The foundation feels slightly uneven — and they notice it immediately. As they move into the design work, that feeling follows them. Some screens already exist. Some decisions were made before they arrived. Not everything is documented. The team is moving forward anyway. There isn’t a clean slate or a clear starting point — just a series of open threads that need to be picked up. For a designer used to defined sequences of steps, this is uncomf...