Let’s talk about something no UX designer admits out loud: our job is basically just doing laundry. Over. And over. Again.
You think you’re designing an intuitive experience? Nope. You’re separating the whites from the dark patterns, pretreating usability stains, and praying nothing shrinks in front of the CEO.
Welcome to UX Laundry, where the rinse cycle never ends and the permanent press is stakeholder feedback.
Phase 1: The Hamper of User Needs
It starts with a full basket of insights. Research sessions, heatmaps, session replays, competitor audits, analytics. It’s all there, crumpled into one big pile of maybe we’ll use this.
Of course, you were hoping for clean, clearly defined personas and journeys — but no. It’s a mixed bag of sock puppets, three stakeholders’ gut feelings, and one VP who wants the button to “pop more.”
Sorting begins.
You separate out the quick wins, the core flows, and the impossible dreams (like the CEO’s ask for “a TikTok-style dashboard for brokers”).
Phase 2: Pre-Treating the Pain Points
You spot them a mile away:
- Dropdowns with 47 options.
- Password rules longer than the Magna Carta.
- A “Reset Form” button right next to “Submit.”
Like ketchup on a white shirt, these usability stains won’t come out unless you act fast.
You bust out your pretreatment spray — also known as “user testing clips and internal Slack threads labeled 🔥HOT MESS.”
Some stains are stubborn. Like that insistence on asking for a fax number in 2025. Or requiring users to create an account before viewing anything. You scrub, you plead, you show the data. And sometimes… you cry a little into your Figma file.
Phase 3: The Spin Cycle (Stakeholder Reviews)
Ah yes, the part of the process where you put everything in the machine and hope it comes out intact.
The spin cycle is brutal.
One round with product, one with marketing, another with compliance, and oh—surprise! Sales wants a modal that blocks the entire screen for a discount that expired six months ago.
This is where things get tangled.
Buttons disappear. Padding shrinks. Copy stretches into awkward line breaks. Your clean design now looks like it fell asleep in wet clothes.
You try not to scream as someone says, “Can we make it more fun, but also enterprise-grade and HIPAA compliant?”
Phase 4: Folding (a.k.a. Polishing the UI)
Now it’s time to fold.
This is the UI handoff. Everything is beautifully laid out, pixel-perfect, nested in well-named frames (for once), and styled like a Martha Stewart closet.
But just like laundry — if you fold it wrong, it wrinkles later.
Are your CTAs clear and visible across breakpoints?
Is that animation snappy or janky?
Does your design system support this layout or are you inventing a new type of card for the third time this week?
Also, who keeps sneaking Comic Sans into the draft emails? We see you.
Phase 5: The Missing Sock (Post-Launch Surprises)
No matter how carefully you planned, something always goes missing.
Maybe it’s a user segment you didn’t account for.
Maybe it’s a bug in Safari (because of course it is).
Maybe the cancel button and confirm button switched places on iOS because someone used “display: flex” without checking mobile.
It’s the UX version of losing a sock in the dryer.
And yet, you ship. You learn. You iterate.
Because, like laundry, UX is never really “done.”
There’s always something in the backlog, something in the feedback loop, something stuck to the lint trap of Jira waiting to be cleaned up.
Moral of the Story?
Keep your UX fresh.
Rinse out the jargon.
Air out the assumptions.
And for the love of clarity, don’t hide the “Cancel” button like it’s a secret handshake.
Good UX, like a crisp, folded shirt, just feels right.