"Go Fix It Yourself" (The Best Thing A Senior Developer Told Me)

Product design is becoming more collaborative, more technical, and a lot harder to control.

In this episode, Tyler and Nick talk about what happens when your design work stops being “yours” and starts becoming a shared thing across designers, developers, PMs, stakeholders, AI tools, and codebases.

We get into the emotional side of design work too. Why product designers get protective, why feedback can feel personal, and why letting go might be one of the most important skills designers need to build.

What we cover in this episode:
🔸 Why designers get emotionally attached to their work
🔸 How to collaborate without losing control of the design quality
🔸 Why developer and PM ideas should not automatically feel threatening
🔸 The value of visual QA and why polish is not just “nice to have”
🔸 How design documentation helps protect decisions when teams move fast
🔸 Why designers need to think in skills, not just roles
🔸 What merge conflicts taught Nick about becoming more technical
🔸 How AI helps, but still cannot replace communication and decision-making
🔸 Why over-communicating might be the most underrated design skill right now

The big theme: collaboration is not about everyone doing your job. It is about knowing when to let people contribute, when to bring the designer back in, and how to protect quality without protecting your ego.

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MORE ABOUT TYLER AND NICK
Tyler: https://www.designtablepodcast.com/hosts/tyler-white
Nick: https://www.designtablepodcast.com/hosts/nick-groeneveld