Matt Przegietka

The longer you stay in the field,
the more you’ll wonder if anyone
actually knows what they’re doing. (𝘚𝘱𝘰𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘳: 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵.)

↓↓↓ Here are some truths about product design
I learned through the years.

✌️

P.S. Share your truths!

10 truths about product design only seniors understand.

The earlier you grasp them, the better.

The way we perceive our role changes over time.
Our focus shifts with experience.

In the beginning, we cherish technical skills.
How well we know a tool.
How proficient we are.

Then we start looking at others.

Collaboration becomes crucial.

Group dynamics, feedback loops...
Teamwork is our world now.

It's just the start of our journey.

With experience, our role evolves.
Our perception evolves, too.

We can see more clearly what matters in design.

What the reality is.

How it differs from our expectations.

Here are some truths I've learned along
my (15 years-long) journey of being a product designer.

I am curious how many of you share the same ones.

Do you have any unique ones?
Share them in the comments!

✌️

Just a reminder for UI Designers.

To be a good UI Designer, you need to be good at UX.

UI is a part of the user experience.
It should never be treated as a separate thing.

My advice,
if you're a designer who strictly focuses on UI, STOP.

Start learning UX. Become more of a T-shaped
product designer with a specialization in UI.

UI (only) Designer role is the first one that will fade away
in a quicker, simpler, more agile, UX-driven design world.

With AI, we are going in that direction faster
and faster every day.

It's not too late yet.

Invest in yourself.

✌️

10 truths about product design only seniors understand.

The earlier you truly grasp them, the better.

The way we perceive our role changes over time.
Our gained experience shifts our focus.

In the beginning, we cherish technical skills.
How well we know a tool, how proficient we are.

After gaining some experience
and grasping the design fundamentals,
we start looking at others.

Collaboration becomes crucial.

Group dynamics, feedback loops...
Working in a team is our world now.

But this is just the start of our journey.
Each of us has our own story.
A story in which our role evolves.

Our perception evolves, too.

The experience we gain opens our eyes.
We can see more clearly
what truly matters in product design.

What the reality is.
How it's different from our expectations.
HOW MUCH different it is—and how scary that can be.

In the carousel, I've shared some truths I've learned
along my (15 years-long) journey of being a product designer.

I am curious how many of you share the same ones.
How many of you have your unique ones?
Share them in the comments!

I've been vibe coding daily for about 2 years.

Here's my current vibe coding workflow.

You asked for it, so I've opened my favorite
deck-building app, Pitch, and prepared
a vibe coding playbook for you.
𝘐𝘵'𝘴 50 𝘴𝘭𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘴, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘗𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩 𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴, 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴,
𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘺𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘺.

The playbook covers:
• A full 6-phase workflow I run today (Idea → Shipped) 
• The prompt patterns
• Figma → Lovable workflow
• My view of Lovable vs Claude Code
• Traps I fell into so you can learn from my mistakes
• A 7-day vibe coding challenge for you
  
So if you
• are eager to start vibe coding,
• want to publish your own apps,
• or just use vibe coding in your 9to5
It's for you.

To get it:
1. Like this post
2. Repost (to get it faster)
3. Comment "Vibe" and I'll send it to you

Also, make sure we are connected
so I can send you the link.

𝘐 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭𝘴, 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘺 𝘷𝘢𝘳𝘺.

✌️

P.S. Pitch is the only deck app I open anymore.
I feel it is done by designers, for designers.
Check it yourself. Link in the pinned comment!

#vibecoding #pitchpartner #ai #productdesign

I stopped using AI throughout the entire design process.

It was a mistake. Now I follow the 10/80/10 rule.

There are two moments in any design project
where AI has no place for me:

1. When I'm defining the problem I want to solve
2. When I decide if the work is ready to be shipped

Both require something AI doesn't have:
• Judgment built from experience
• Taste
• The ability to be accountable for the outcome

Everything in between? Fair game.

I didn't follow this rule from the beginning, though.
It was formed when I noticed I'm getting lazy.
My creativity dropped when I defaulted to AI outputs.
Getting ideas became harder.

I was losing something I'd spent years building.
That's when I started using this rule. I'll never go back.

In this week's Full Stack Builder newsletter,
I discussed this rule along with four others
I always follow as an AI designer.

💬 Link in comments.

P.S. What rules do YOU follow when using AI?
Do you even have any?

I once hired a designer purely from a screenshot
and one sentence. Best decision I made that year.
No metrics anywhere, but huge impact.

The sentence was:
"Cut the signup from 6 fields to 2, and support tickets
asking 'how do I sign up' went to zero."

You'll rarely own the business metrics.
That was never the bar.

Impact is proof the work moved something.
You can show that in three ways.

Before vs after:
• The old flow took X steps. Yours takes fewer.
• The old screen failed a heuristic pass. Yours doesn't.
• Time-to-value dropped. Show both states side by side.

During the work:
• You caught the insight that changed the direction.
• You added the component the whole team now reuses.
• You made a handoff a dev could ship without a meeting.

After it shipped:
• A user said something specific. Quote them.
• The pattern you set became the default for others.
• Support tickets on that flow went quiet.

None of that needs a dashboard.
The designers who get hired can name what moved.
The rest hide behind "I don't have the numbers."

✌️

What's the one impact signal you trust more than a metric?

"Taste is our biggest asset now." We've all heard that.

But nobody tells you how to actually build the thing.

It takes time and effort.
Like everything worth something in life.

Before AI, nobody asked how to build taste.
It came naturally with all the reps you did by hand.
For every project, you searched the web for inspiration.
You stared at the hundreds of pages and apps.
Dribbble and Behance were your best friends.
You designed things, gave them to users, saw reactions, and learned.

Today, more and more design tasks are done by AI.
You do fewer reps yourself.
You spend less time looking for inspiration,
and often just rely on what the averaged result AI gives you.

So if you didn't build taste before AI became a thing,
you might be in a bit of trouble now.

You need to put intentional work into taste.
That's the only way to build it.

Here's how I would start:

1. Copy the work you wish you had made.
Rebuild it. Pixel for pixel. You feel a hundred decisions
you'd never catch just scrolling past it.

2. Say why out loud.
"I like it" teaches you nothing. Force yourself to name
what's working. The spacing. The hierarchy.
The one design choice that makes it sing.

3. Cut your inputs.
The feed is noise. Pick 20 people who are genuinely
great and study them on purpose.
(𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘟 𝘪𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬𝘦𝘥𝘐𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵)

4. Obsess over the last 10%.
This is where taste lives. The padding nobody asked for.
The copy you rewrote five times. The motion that took
an afternoon for half a second.

Do this, and your taste will build over time.

✌️

P.S. What's your favorite way to build taste?

Anthropic's Head of Design just dropped the 3 designer
archetypes companies actually want to hire right now.

Jenny Wen (𝘦𝘹-𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘋𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘢𝘵 𝘍𝘪𝘨𝘮𝘢,
𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘨𝘯 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘊𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘥𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬)
went on Lenny's Podcast and said something
that should wake up every designer:

"The design process that designers have been taught,
that we treated as gospel — that's basically dead."

Mocking went from 60-70% of her time → 30-40%.
The rest?

Pairing with engineers.
Implementing in code.
Shipping.

She broke down the 3 types
of designers she's excited to hire.

I added actionable tips
on how to become each one. ↓

✌️

What's your archetype?

A must-have for each design case study → impact.

No business metrics? No problem!

You don't need quantitative metrics to show it.
Often, you won't have access to them at all.
That doesn't mean you can't demonstrate impact.

You need to shift your thinking.
Think before/during/after.

Compare before and after:
• How did your design improve upon the previous one?
• How did you streamline the workflow? (fewer steps)
• How did you improve accessibility for users?
• Do a heuristics evaluation. How have they improved?
• How have engagement metrics changed? (time to value)
• How did your design reduce time-to-prototype? (hours vs days)

During the design process:
• How did you improve the handoff process?
• How did you contribute to the design system?
• What insights did testing reveal?
• How did you enhance design docs?
• How did you influence design culture?
• How did you use AI to improve your design process?
• How did you make sure AI outputs were validated?
• How did you turn Figma files into working prototypes?
• How did your prompts and specs become reusable assets?
  
After the project is done:
• What do stakeholders say? (testimonials)
• What did users think?
• How can your design accommodate future growth?
• How can the product learn and improve over time?
  
There are things only business metrics can demonstrate.
Even without them, you can show your work's impact.

P.S. Share your ways to show a design impact.

✌️

Pixel-perfect Figma designs in Lovable?

Here's how to do it.

Up until now, my relationship with Lovable
has been hit-or-miss.

The ease of use and the capabilities it gave me alone
made me move from designer to builder.
My mindset shifted almost instantly.
Just a few prototypes and I was hooked.

Over time, though, my designer nature caught up.
I needed more control over the output.
Especially when it comes to the UI.

For years, I worked in Figma, where the precision mattered.
I couldn't replicate that feeling in Lovable, though.

My process involved designing in Figma,
sending screenshots or exported PNGs to Lovable,
hoping it would implement the design 1:1.

It often did a good job, but let's be real,
it wasn't pixel-perfect.
And I wanted it to be pixel-perfect.

So bad that I created my own MCP server.
It was a bridge between Figma and Lovable.

I could pinpoint Lovable to any frame in Figma.
It replicated the design perfectly.
Following all parameters directly from Figma.

Now, with the Lovable native MacOS app,
you can do the same.

The setup is easy.
All you need is:
1. A design in Figma (prepped well, more on that below)
2. Figma desktop app with local MCP enabled
3. Lovable macOS app

And that's it.
You can reference any Figma frame in your prompts
and Lovable reads it directly.

Colors, sizes, fonts, paddings, auto-layout...
The whole file.

There is one caveat, though.

To get the best results, you need to prepare the Figma
file and prompt Lovable correctly.

↓ That's where this guide fits in.
Best practices I figured out the hard way,
so you skip the trial and error.

Enjoy!

✌️

New to Lovable?
I've got a referral link with a discount
pinned in the first comment 📌.

#vibecoding #lovablepartner

What do successful product designers have in common?

They know how to sell their designs!

I’ve seen it many times:
Excellent designs not getting buy-in from stakeholders,
Less polished ones - immediately praised.

Design skills matter, but they’re not everything.

The way you "sell" your design is often as important
as the design itself.

The most successful designers I've observed
used a specific tool to get stakeholders on their side:

Storytelling.

They've always drawn a compelling narrative.

It allowed them to:
• Contextualize their design decisions
• Highlight the way they addressed user pain points
• Paint a vivid and clear picture of the user experience
• Connect their design to business goals

They understood that stakeholders buy into stories,
not screens.

Craft your designs carefully and do the same
with the narrative when presenting to stakeholders.


↓ Here is a small guide with storytelling techniques
I use to get stakeholder buy-in.


✌️

I was tired of repeatedly pasting rules to AI.

So I taught it once and for all.

It started with a prompt library.
A pile of instructions I kept pasting:

• Ask before you build.
• Use my tokens, stop inventing colors.
• Every screen needs an error state.

That prompt library was a symptom.
It only existed because my tools had no memory.

There's a better way to do it in Replit, though.
Just place the rules in the Custom Instructions.

Replit will run all of them with every prompt.

All of these rules are crucial for me, but the one that
changed how I work fundamentally is about scope creep.

You know how hard it is to prevent it if you work alone.
You always want to implement new ideas.

"If I ask for something outside that goal, ask me
to confirm we're expanding scope before you build it."

This one reminder saved me so many headaches.
Just yesterday I almost added a third login option to my new app.

Not today, my friend :)

I wonder if these will help you as well.

So, I've placed a paste-ready version of this one
and the 9 remaining ones in the pinned comments.

Feel free to grab them and use them in your next builds.

Also, while you're in the comment section, look for a nice deal
I got for you from my friends at Replit.

✌️

What's the one thing you keep repeating to AI, project after project?

#vibecoding #replit #replitpartner #aiagent #aiassistedcoding

I made AI interrogate my design taste.

It found a rule I follow but never said out loud.

Most designers point AI at speed.
More output, same hours.
Business loves that. For now.

I don't do that. I use AI to become a better designer.
Go deeper, not faster.

Three use cases:

1️⃣ Reverse-engineer a competitor's strategy

Give AI your competitor flows and start asking deeper questions:

→ What metric is this screen optimized for?
→ What business model does this UI imply?
→ Where does it try to convert, retain, or upsell?
→ What A/B test did they most likely run to land here?

Save that as a skill.
Understand the reasoning and grow as a designer
whenever you use this skill.


2️⃣ Run heuristic critiques on your own work

Upload a screen or flow and ask AI to evaluate it against
a specific framework:

→ Nielsen's heuristics
→ WCAG
→ Cognitive load
→ Visual hierarchy

Get an AI critique before showing your designs to real
humans (stakeholders, other designers, users).

Push for specific notes.
A vague thumbs-up is worthless.


3️⃣ Extract your taste into a reusable instrument

Show AI a batch of designs. React honestly to each one.
Let it interrogate you until it names the principle underneath.

Don't be surprised if AI points at a rule you followed but never named.

Mine: if a card's internal spacing doesn't resolve
to the same unit as the gap between cards,
I reject the screen.
Nobody can see it. I can't stop seeing it.

Since 2010. I never had the sentence for it.
The spacing just felt wrong.

Compile those into a rubric or checklist you can run
on future work (yours or others).


One common thread across these:
Make AI help you think, not delegate your thinking to it.

✌️

What is YOUR favorite AI use case?

Why do some designers win stakeholder buy-ins easily?

They use this storytelling framework.

I've pitched stakeholders countless times.
At the beginning, it was very hard for me.

Rejection after rejection.

Always covered with head nods and delicate words,
but my designs never easily got greenlit for development.
Getting buy-in was always an uphill battle.
To the point I started doubting my design skills.

On top of that, I constantly saw other designers
win stakeholder buy-ins with ease.

Back then, I didn't know a thing about storytelling
and methods to talk with stakeholders.

Now, after a decade, I have my own framework.
I use it all the time with great success.

I've wanted to turn this framework
into a shareable deck for a while now.

But building decks always felt clunky,
until I found Pitch.

I easily recreated my style guide.
The UX feels like it was made by designers for designers.
And the AI features actually speed things up.
So I finally made the deck.

Ah, by the way, you can get your hands on it.

Just like this post, and comment "STORY".

I'll send you the link.

✌️

#storytelling #Pitch #PitchPartner #DeckDesign