As a founder or early employee building a digital product, design decisions significantly impact your product adoption and growth trajectory. Yet many startups struggle with when to invest in design, who to hire, and how to evolve their design practice as they scale.
Drawing from experience leading research and design at Fuego UX, this session provides practical frameworks for implementing effective design processes at each stage of your startup journey.
You'll learn:
- Essential design milestones aligned with funding rounds and business goals
- When to hire your first designer vs. leveraging fractional talent
- Cost-effective methods for testing designs with real users
- Strategies for developing design intuition (especially for non-designers)
- How to build and evolve your design system as you scale
For technical teams, we'll cover collaboration models that integrate design thinking throughout development, creating better outcomes without slowing velocity.
By the end of this session, you'll have:
- A stage-appropriate design roadmap aligned with your current growth phase
- Clear hiring guidelines for design talent based on your product maturity
- Simple but effective user testing methods that fit your budget
- Frameworks for cross-functional collaboration around design
We'll wrap up by applying these concepts to your real-world scenarios—come with your questions ready.
