Designing the next five years

In January 2025, I moved from Seoul to Berlin to broaden and reframe my approach to product design. This transition reflects not only on the past five years of my design career but also marks the beginning of a new chapter — one focused on deep problem solving, faster iteration, and delivering real value through shipping.

Phase one: Designing for Business Impact

From the moment I chose to become a designer, I saw design as a tool for solving problems. Early in my career, I was obsessed with identifying the “core” of a problem — a universal principle I could use to guide every solution. But I quickly learned that problems are context-specific, and that clarity often comes not from abstraction, but from asking the right questions.

Working at startups taught me the most powerful question of all: “Why does this problem need to be solved now?”

This question grounded my approach in business impact. It helped me align design efforts with the startup’s most urgent needs — things like increasing retention, improving conversion, or reducing churn. I started measuring design outcomes not just through user experience, but through tangible business results.

This mindset naturally drew me to B2B SaaS startups. I found that in B2B, problems are often more specific, tied to clear stakeholder needs, and impact is easier to measure. This clarity made it easier to design with confidence and focus.

The Tipping Point: Validating with Real Users

One of the most important lessons I learned in this phase was that early product validation works best when you are close to real, paying customers, not just running abstract experiments.

At the time, many playbooks were emerging: pre-type testing, fake door, landing pages with waitlists. These were helpful, but I came to believe that true product-market fit is found through usage—by shipping something real, collecting feedback, and iterating quickly.

That’s also why I was immediately drawn to the potential of LLMs. When they first emerged, I did not just see them as a trend—I saw a tool to help validate MVPs faster and more meaningfully, by giving real users something to interact with and respond to.

Phase Two: Becoming a Designer Who Ships

“Designers who ship have the power to serve users — not just ideas.”

— Soleio, Dive Club Ep. 78

This quote captures something I deeply believe: the ability to ship — to build and release — gives designers a unique kind of responsibility and leverage.

Early in my career, I felt this intuitively. I taught myself web programming before mastering vector tools. I did not want to just mock up ideas—I want to see them live, in users’ hands. I learned that the moment you put a product in front of someone, the feedback loop tightens. You see what matters. You discover problems you could not have anticipated.

Shipping turns design from theory into service.

The Next Five Years: What I am Focused On

“Forget job titles. Work on the thing together.”

— Ryo Lu, Dive Club Ep. 37

Looking ahead, I want to go even deeper. My next chapter is about designing in the real world — with real users, real constraints, and real outcomes.

Here is what that looks like:

1. Work closely with customers — to deeply understand their needs and identify moments of real value

2. Design by shipping — stay involved in the implementation process, iterate quickly, and make smart trade-offs between scope and quality.

3. Prioritize real products over polished mockups — deliver functional value early and improve through real-world use.