Notes on design,
systems, and shipping.
One post every two weeks. Design systems practice, independent UX teardowns of public European SaaS products, and the process behind how I work.
All posts
Freelance product designer rates in 2026: hourly, monthly and per project
Hourly, monthly and per-project rates from the sources buyers actually see, what moves the number, and where my pricing sits.
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How to hire a product designer for your SaaS startup, and what it costs in 2026
When to hire, the four ways to do it, what each costs, and how to tell a good product designer from a pretty portfolio in ten minutes.
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Freelance product designer vs agency vs Toptal: what you actually get for the money
Same brief, three suppliers, three very different products. Who does the work, what it costs, and the cases where I would not be the right choice.
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How I built a production-ready Figma + Next.js design system for AI products
Everything that went into GliaKit, from Figma variables to shadcn and the Cursor rules file, plus the three mistakes v1 made and how v2 fixed them.
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SaaS UX audit checklist: 40 things I check on every product
The exact list I run on every audit, grouped by the eight places SaaS products leak users. Use it for a first pass before you hire anyone.
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How I run a two-week product sprint, step by step
No mystery, no agency theatre. Here is exactly what happens in the two weeks between a kickoff call and dev-ready Figma files.
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Pipedrive UX teardown: the pipeline view is the product
An independent teardown of the Estonian CRM that made the kanban pipeline the home screen: what works, where the friction sits, and what I would fix first.
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Tokens before components: how I start every design system
Most systems start with a button. Mine start with a naming argument. Here is the order of operations that keeps Figma and code from drifting apart.
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Design systems practice
Tokens, components, governance: how systems earn their keep.
SaaS UX teardown
Independent teardowns of public EU SaaS products.
How I work
The process behind the work, in the open.