🧠 Myth 1: “You need to know coding to be a good UX designer”
For the longest time, I believed that if I couldn’t code, I wasn’t a “real” designer. I spent hours trying to understand front-end frameworks and dev terms, thinking it would make me better.But I learned that the real skill isn’t writing code — it’s understanding how your design decisions impact code.Good designers don’t just hand over files — they think about how those files will come to life.
They:
→ Use auto-layouts to make handoffs smoother
→ Understand what’s hard or easy to build
→ Communicate with developers effectively, even without coding themselves.
I learned this the hard way when one of my designs didn’t translate well into development. It wasn’t because I didn’t know React — it was because I didn’t think about how my layout structure would affect responsiveness and implementation.The shift: from “I need to code” → to “I need to design with code in mind.”
🎯 Myth 2: “Good UX means more features”
I used to think adding more options meant giving users more control.
More customization. More power. More satisfaction.But in reality, users don’t want “more.”
They want clarity.More features = more confusion = more drop-offs.The best UX often comes from reduction, not addition.
→ Removing unnecessary steps
→ Making fewer things work really well
→ Saying no to “just one more feature”
Once, we almost added a “personalization dashboard” because it sounded impressive. But when we asked, “Does this help users get to their goal faster?”
The answer was no. We cut it — and the experience got better.
The shift: from “What more can we add?” → to “What can we remove to make it simpler?”
🔍 Myth 3: “User research means formal interviews and reports”
For a while, I thought “research” only counted if it came with a plan, a set of user personas, and a synthesis report.
But when you’re working with a lean team or a community project, there’s no time for six-week studies or budget-heavy testing.
I learned that research is any method that helps you make better design decisions.
Sometimes that’s:
→ A quick feedback thread in Slack
→ Watching a user interact with a prototype for 10 minutes
→ Reading through support messages to spot recurring issues
It’s not about how formal your process looks — it’s about how quickly you can learn and adapt.
The shift: from “doing research the right way” → to “doing enough research to move forward confidently.”
🌱 What Changed
Unlearning these myths didn’t make me less rigorous as a designer. It made me more realistic.Because the goal isn’t to follow every rule — it’s to solve real problems for real people, within real constraints.Sometimes that means:
→ Shipping without a polished report
→ Designing simple instead of sophisticated
→ Collaborating with developers instead of learning their job
The best designers I’ve worked with aren’t the ones who follow every “should.” They’re the ones who know which rules to bend — and when.
If you’re early in your design journey, don’t get caught up in doing everything “by the book.”
Design is not about perfection.
It’s about progress, empathy, and impact.
The rest will follow.
