Design for adoption — UX tactics for builders

I’ve been working in digital product design for almost 10 years, and in that time I’ve had countless conversations about how the industry can improve its user experience.

This isn’t a deep dive into every UX problem, nor a detailed roadmap for solving them. Instead, it’s a collection of practical techniques product teams can use to improve their UX, and in the process, drive adoption.

If you’ve ever launched something new, you probably know the feeling: you built the thing, showed it to a few friends, got a “cool”… and then weeks later, the dreaded question hits: “Why is no one actually using this?”

That’s the absolute gut punch every product builder fears. It’s also the clearest sign of a lack of user research and planning. But the good news is, it’s fixable. And if we get it right, we move closer to the vision we all share: building products that genuinely improve people’s lives and reach millions of users.

Quick disclaimer: the following techniques aren’t tied to any single industry or product type. They can be applied by anyone building something new, from early-stage startups to enterprise teams.

1. Locate Watering Holes

If you want to understand your users, start by finding out where they already hang out. Every community has its watering holes.

These are the places people naturally gather to talk shop, vent frustrations, or share hacks.

For many industries, these might be Slack or Discord communities, subreddits, professional forums, or niche online groups. The point is simple: don’t expect users to come to you, go to them.

By showing up in these spaces, you’ll quickly uncover:

• Pain points: What frustrates them? What’s broken?

• Language: How do they describe those frustrations in their own words (which is gold for product copy and onboarding flows)?

• Workarounds: What hacks or clunky solutions are they piecing together because no product solves it well yet?

Spending even a few weeks listening (and asking the occasional thoughtful question) can reveal more than months of guessing inside your own bubble.

2. Run Pitch Provocations

Once you’ve learned where your users hang out and how they talk about their problems, the next step is to provoke. Instead of slowly polishing one idea, test multiple bold, even extreme, versions of a concept through what I call pitch provocations.

This tactic flips the usual product validation flow. Rather than showing users a finished prototype, you throw out raw, sometimes wild pitches and see how people react.

The goal isn’t to sell them. It’s to learn how they interpret, compare, and stress-test ideas.

When running these provocations, share a short “pitch” (just a few sentences or a sketch), then ask:

• In your own words, what does this product sound like?

• Does this sound like anything that already exists? If so, what?

• Tell us about the last time you used a product like this.

• If this product didn’t exist, what would you do to achieve the same result?

• Imagine you tried this product and it sucked—what happened?

There are two big benefits to this exercise:

1. You get unfiltered language that shows how your idea lands with users (and whether it makes sense at all).

2. You uncover mental models. What people compare it to, how they’d normally solve the problem, and what failure looks like in their eyes.

The best provocations often sound slightly ridiculous at first, but that’s the point. By pushing ideas to their edges, you learn what resonates, what confuses, and where the real opportunity lies.

3. Don’t Test Everything

User testing is powerful, but it’s also a trap. If you try to test every flow, screen, or button, you’ll waste time and dilute your learnings. Instead, focus on the critical journeys, the ones that make or break adoption.

In most products, those come down to two moments:

• Acquisition / Onboarding: The first experience a new user has with your product. Do they understand it quickly? Do they feel confident enough to continue? If you lose them here, nothing else matters.

• Retention Indicator: The moment when a user first experiences real value, the “aha!” moment that predicts they’ll come back. In SaaS this might be creating a project, in a marketplace it might be completing a first transaction, in a design tool it could be publishing a first asset.

Everything else (settings menus, advanced filters, edge-case workflows) can come later. They may polish the experience, but they rarely determine whether someone adopts your product.

By prioritizing tests around onboarding and the first true moment of value, you ensure your limited research energy is directed where it matters most: turning new users into engaged ones.

Acknowledgements

None of these techniques are uniquely mine. They’re a collection I’ve picked up, borrowed, and refined over the years from conversations, mentors, and teammates.

A particular call-out goes to Tom Kerwin, author of Pip Decks’ Innovation Tactics. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Tom directly on projects, and a lot of what I’ve shared here comes from lessons I’ve learned under his guidance.

——

The best ideas start as conversations.