Design in Real Life
You walk toward automatic doors and they open before you touch anything. What detected you?
A sensor / motion sensor
A user clicks “Submit” twice because nothing happens after the first click. What’s the problem?
Lack of immediate system feedback.
You ask AI to “design a banking app” and get a generic result. What is the first thing you should improve?
The prompt — add context, users, goal, and constraints.
Users keep missing an important button even though it’s visible on the screen. What should you investigate first?
Visual hierarchy / discoverability.
Which app lets users leave comments attached to a specific moment in a design, making feedback part of the interface itself?
Figma
A hotel puts the room key card next to the light switch to activate electricity. What behavior is the design encouraging?
Removing the card when leaving, reducing unnecessary energy use.
A checkout form shows: “Error Code 422” after the user clicks Pay. What’s the problem?
The error does not explain what went wrong or how the user can recover.
AI summarizes 50 user interviews and identifies a new pattern. What should the researcher do before using the insight?
Validate it against the original research evidence / transcripts.
You want to know why users abandon a checkout. Which is more useful: analytics or user interviews?
User interviews / qualitative research.
Which app is famous for showing a 🔥 when two people keep interacting every day?
Supermarkets often place everyday essentials like milk toward the back of the store. What behavior are they trying to encourage?
Getting customers to travel through more of the store and encounter more products.
A mobile app asks for access to contacts, location, camera, and microphone immediately after the user opens it for the first time. What’s the problem?
Permissions are requested without context or demonstrated need.
An AI travel assistant finds a cheaper flight and can rebook it for you. What should determine whether it acts automatically?
User permission, risk and impact.
A usability test participant asks, “What should I click?” What should the moderator do?
Avoid telling them and ask what they would naturally do.
Which app lets you collaborate on documents, chat with colleagues, join meetings, and manage team channels all in one place?
Teams
An airport replaces the sign “8-minute walk to Gate 24” with “Gate 24 → 600m.” Which version is likely more useful to most travelers, and why?
“8-minute walk” — it translates distance into information users can immediately use for decision-making.
Search results show “No results found.”
The page offers no suggestions, filters, spelling correction, or next step. What’s missing?
A recovery path / guidance for what the user can do next.
An AI feature is 95% accurate, but users still don't trust it. What might the team need to design beyond accuracy?
Appropriate trust — through transparency, control, feedback, and recovery.
90% of users complete a task, but it takes them twice as long as expected. Which UX measure is suffering?
Efficiency.
Which app made an entire generation develop brainrot from endless short-form videos?
Tiktok
A self-checkout machine asks, “Would you like a receipt?” only after it has already printed one. What type of experience problem is this?
A mismatch between the interaction and the actual system behavior.
A redesigned checkout is 30% faster and has fewer steps. After launch, customer support calls increase significantly. What might the team have missed?
Efficiency improved, but clarity, confidence, or user understanding may have decreased.
An AI assistant learns from user behavior and starts changing the interface differently for each person. What is this called?
Adaptive UI / Adaptive Interface.
Users successfully complete a task but consistently say they’re unsure whether they did it correctly. What UX quality is missing?
Confidence / clear system feedback.
This product became famous for a yearly personalized experience that turns your own usage data into highly shareable stories.
Spotify