What Not to Do When Starting a UX Project
Avoid the most common UX project mistakes. Learn what not to do when starting a UX design project, from skipping research to designing in a vacuum.
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7 min read
Start With the Wrong Problem
Here's the biggest mistake UX teams make: jumping straight into solutions before they understand the problem.
A client comes to you and says "we need a redesign" or "our app is confusing." So you start sketching. You start prototyping. You dive into the pretty stuff. Then halfway through, you realize the brief is incomplete. There are missing requirements. Stakeholders disagree on what success looks like. Users have completely different pain points than the team assumed.
Now you've wasted time and effort on a solution to the wrong problem.
The mistake: Treating the initial brief as complete and true. It almost never is.
The reality: Most briefs have gaps. Assumptions masquerade as facts. Teams confuse aesthetics with usability. A stakeholder thinks the problem is "the interface is outdated" when the real problem is "users don't understand how to accomplish their main task."
What not to do:
Do not skip early research and problem framing
Do not assume you understand the problem without talking to users
Do not treat design feedback as a substitute for user feedback
Do not confuse visual design with usable design
What to do instead:
Spend time up front. Ask hard questions. Talk to users. Observe them actually using the product. Understand what success looks like to them, not just to the business. Define the real problem before you touch a single design tool.
Yes, this takes time. But it's far less time than redesigning something that solves the wrong problem.
Avoid Skipping Research and Structure
Once you've actually defined the problem, the next mistake is skipping the discovery work that grounds everything that comes after.
What not to do during discovery:
Do not ignore user research. Do not assume you know what users want
Do not skip defining user flows and journeys
Do not design screen-by-screen without mapping the entire user journey first
Do not fail to align on priorities, timelines, constraints, and stakeholders early
Why this matters:
User research isn't optional. It's not nice-to-have. It's the foundation of every good UX decision. Without it, you're guessing. And guessing creates friction, creates frustration, and eventually creates products people don't use.
The same goes for structure. If you don't map out user flows before designing, you'll paint yourself into corners. You'll design a detail on screen 3 that contradicts something on screen 5. You'll miss entire flows that matter.
And if you don't align on priorities and timelines early, you'll discover halfway through that stakeholders wanted something completely different. Now you're redesigning what you already designed.
Common research mistakes:
Skipping interviews with actual users
Testing only with people similar to the team
Ignoring edge cases and different user contexts
Assuming analytics tell the whole story (they don't)
Not documenting research findings so the team can reference them later
Common structure mistakes:
Jumping to individual screens before defining the overall flow
Not creating a clear information architecture
Leaving user flows vague so everyone interprets them differently
Failing to document decisions so future decisions contradict earlier ones
The truth:
Good discovery takes time, but it saves massive amounts of time later. A well-researched, well-structured project moves faster and produces better work than a poorly researched one that needs constant revision.
Don't Design in a Vacuum
Now you're in execution. You've defined the problem, done the research, mapped the flows. Time to design, right?
Here's where teams mess up again.
What not to do during execution:
Do not over-focus on visuals at the expense of usability
Do not ignore how the design actually works in context
Do not skip testing with real users
Do not leave responsive behavior until the end
Do not ignore edge cases and error states
Do not design based on personal preference instead of user feedback
Why this happens:
Designers get excited about the visual work. It feels productive. It feels creative. So they focus on making things look beautiful and assume usability will follow. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't.
Usability is not a byproduct of beauty. It is separate. It requires intention. It requires testing. It requires asking "Can a user actually understand this? Can they complete their task?" Not "Does it look cool?"
Real mistakes we see:
A beautiful button that's too small to tap easily
A gorgeous interface that's impossible to navigate
A sleek design that breaks on mobile or tablet
Gorgeous error states that don't clearly explain what went wrong
A design that looks perfect in happy path but falls apart when something goes wrong
What to do instead:
Test early and often. Test with real users. Test on real devices. Test different scenarios and edge cases. Let that feedback guide the design, not ego.
Create responsive designs from the start, not as an afterthought. Define error states, empty states, loading states. Think about what happens when something goes wrong, when data is missing, when the user is confused.
Be willing to simplify the design if it makes it more usable. Be willing to question whether that cool animation is actually helping the user or just slowing them down.
The hard truth:
Good UX is not about how pretty something is. It is about whether people can use it, whether they understand it, whether it solves their problem. If you have to choose between beautiful and usable, usable wins every time.
Final takeaway:
What not to do when starting a UX project comes down to one thing: avoid assumptions. Verify. Research. Test. Iterate. Involve your users and stakeholders throughout, not at the end.
Good UX is iterative, collaborative, and grounded in feedback. Not in personal preference. Not in assumptions. Not in guessing.
Get these fundamentals right and everything else gets easier.
