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AUGUST 25, 2026 - 06:17 - SEASON 4 EPISODE 7 PART 1

Naomie Curier, Senior Product Designer (Part 1) 🕵🏾‍♀️


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Guest profile

Naomie Curier is a Senior Product Designer specialising in B2B SaaS experiences, with over 7 years across multiple industries. She recently launched her freelance practice, helping businesses and product teams bring human-centred clarity to complex products.

Highlights, inspiration, & key learnings:

  • Design for reality. Great product design balances user needs, business goals, and what engineering can actually build right now. (00:31, 00:50)
  • Unlearn "don't push back." If your culture taught you to stay quiet, build the muscle to challenge priorities, a good mentor makes it easier. (03:35, 04:16)
  • Bring people in early. Don't design in a vacuum and reveal the finished work. Loop engineers in, talk feasibility, share the conversation. (01:19, 02:10)
  • Question the brief. Don't just execute, ask if it's the right thing to build. Disagree with evidence, and you'll be heard either way. (00:00, 03:35, 04:57)
  • Process is a guide, not a rule. The tidy linear process rarely survives real deadlines. Adapt it to the situation you're in. (02:50, 03:29)
  • Research is a team sport. Bring the whole team in as observers, shared empathy now means less convincing later. (05:22, 05:45)

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Where to find Naomie Curier:

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Where to find Lewis Kang'ethe Ngugi:

The Full Transcript

[00:00:00] Naomie: The best advice was about having the confidence to push back. As a designer, there can be a tendency sometimes to just execute on the brief that you're given and not really question if it's the right thing to build in the first place.

[00:00:17] Lewis: Welcome to the Seven Minute Product Master Series podcast. I'm Lewis, and today I'm joined by Naomi, a senior product designer.

[00:00:24] Great to have you, Naomi.

[00:00:26] Naomie: Thank you for, for having me.

[00:00:27] Lewis: Give me a brief definition of product design.

[00:00:31] Naomie: So I'll say that product design is a practice that sits in... at the intersection of user needs, business goals, and technical realities, and it's taking all three and crafting a seamless experience for users, and ideally, that will lead to desired business outcomes.

[00:00:50] Technical teams, they have the realities is that, you know, for example, they don't have the necessary resources or... It's based on what they're going through at [00:01:00] the moment. It's based on, on their current reality. So that's why I use that word. Yeah, feasibility is a, is a synonym, I would say. But yeah, it's just to, to enforce that we're talking about the real context of technical teams.

[00:01:14] Lewis: On to the next question. What's the biggest product design mistake you've ever made, and what did you learn?

[00:01:19] Naomie: I was working as a sole junior, joined a mobile app project. There was already an engineer that was working on that project by himself, and it, he really built it from scratch. It was his, his baby.

[00:01:31] So I took over the, the design, and I didn't really include the engineer. I just worked on my own and came to him when the design was done according to me. He got really upset about it, a little bit rude as well, I'm not gonna lie. But what I learned from that was even though the way that he, he addressed me and he approached this was all a bit wrong in the way that he expressed himself, but I also took [00:02:00] accountability because I was wrong for not including him and not discussing feasibility throughout the process and also not opening the communication between us.

[00:02:10] So that was a big learning experience when it comes to collaboration, and I never made that mistake again. There's a lot of expectations put on us, and we're kind of seen as like a bridge sometimes. The product team communication and, yes, the storytelling, like you mentioned, like it's, it's a big thing for us.

[00:02:31] I, I think- Everyone should have a, a part in that and equally be in charge of having open conversations in the team, but yeah, it's not always, it's not always the case.

[00:02:43] Lewis: Yeah. Next question. What's the one piece of common wisdom you disagree with, and why?

[00:02:50] Naomie: That idea comes from also, like, my studies of UX, and it's the idea that design process is linear.

[00:02:58] You don't [00:03:00] necessarily learn at the start that the, the reality that the design process can be a bit messy sometimes, and it can be due to short deadlines or lack of resources or, or many other reasons, but a product designer should be able to adapt their process to the situation that they're in. And yeah, I think the design process, like, you know, the linear design process that we learn should be used as a guide and not a rule.

[00:03:29] Lewis: Thank you. On to the next question. What's the best product design advice you've ever received, and why?

[00:03:35] Naomie: So the best advice was from my manager at Dice, and it was about having the confidence to push back. As a designer, there can be a tendency sometimes to just execute on the brief that you're given and not really question if it's the right thing to build in the first place.

[00:03:52] And she taught me that asking why and pushing back on certain priorities when necessary is part of [00:04:00] the job, and that also will contribute to making our voice heard, uh, as designers in the cross-functional teams, and it would contribute to advocating for the right direction. I'm literally from the culture where you do not push back.

[00:04:16] So, so yeah, it's, uh, it's something that you have to get used to, to do, and it's good when you have-- Like I said, that, that was an advice from my manager, so it's good when you have someone who work hierarchy that can mentor you when it comes to things like that and gives you that confidence. If you notice that, you know, something, like, uh, something that's being prioritized might not be for some reason, maybe s- uh, related to the user needs, and you feel like something else should be prioritized, I would say come with evidence and prepare your case.

[00:04:57] And, you know, like, that, that should give you a bit of [00:05:00] confidence to speak up and to share your, your thoughts. And even if not everyone does not agree, and it doesn't work out, at least you've made yourself heard, and you've shown that you're an active participant in, in the, in the process.

[00:05:15] Lewis: Thank you. On to the next question.

[00:05:18] What's working best in your product design process right now?

[00:05:22] Naomie: I would say probably the research and discovery phase. It's my f- favorite phase. And I think specifically around building empathy and understanding of users within the cross-functional team, because I like to involve the wider team in research and have them as observers and share the findings with everyone and communicate the findings.

[00:05:45] And I think that doing that also makes our job easier because it reduces the amount of convincing that we have to do in the future. So I think I've-- I'm doing a pretty good job at including [00:06:00] the, the rest of the team in research.

[00:06:04] Lewis: That's the end of part one. We'll hear the rest of Naomie's insights in part two of this episode.

[00:06:10] Thank you so much for listening, and see you next time.