It looked like progress
The most impressive research project I’ve ever seen lasted months. Dozens of interviews. Sharp insights. Beautiful decks. The kind of work that makes everyone in the room nod.
Nothing shipped.
At the time, that felt reasonable. Calendars were full. Workshops kept coming. The process moved forward, slide by slide.
The product didn’t.
Today, building is fast. Prototypes appear in days. AI fills the gaps. Execution no longer slows teams down.
Indecision does.
I once worked with a well-known Spanish agency on a research project for a bank. They talked to customers across cities. Mapped behaviors. Highlighted pain points in careful colors. The presentation landed perfectly. Executives nodded. Notes were taken.
Then the room emptied.
The decks went quiet.
Nothing changed.
That moment stuck.
Not because research failed. Research did its job. It created clarity and alignment. What it didn’t create was commitment. No direction closed. No bet was placed.
Great design does not come from completing steps. It comes from deciding when to stop gathering evidence and start building. From choosing one path while others stay unexplored. From accepting that progress always costs something.
That choice is not reckless.
It is the work.
Intuition helps here. Not guesswork. Pattern recognition earned the slow way. You read feedback. You watch users struggle. You ship. You fix. Over time, you stop needing permission from another deck.
Users never experience your process.
They experience the result.
Design does not only solve problems. It creates emotions.
Relief when something finally works. Confidence when nothing fights back. Calm when the product disappears.
Those moments do not come from frameworks.
When building becomes easy, quality becomes rare.
Not because tools are weaker, but because choices matter more.
Processes support thinking. They surface risk. They create alignment.
They do not decide.
Progress is not what moves inside the team.
Progress is what changes for the user.
Everything else is motion.