Christian Almurr

This article is based on a talk I gave at UXCamp Amsterdam 2025. Huge thanks to the organizers, attendees, and the amazing community that showed up ready to share, challenge, and grow.

From Designer to Founder, and Back Again!

Over the last 12 years, I’ve gone from agency work, academic lecturing, consulting, designing products to founding (or co-founding) 3 ventures.

Each venture changed how I see, and practice design. Here are three lessons I took from the entrepreneurial loop that I carry with me every day:

1. If You’re Not in the Room, You’re Just Painting Someone Else’s Pivot

In my first venture, I joined late, as a founding designer. Wireframes had already been created by the technical co-founder, and I was asked to "make it look good."

And right on launching, it was clear that something was wrong.. No reservations, and low ratings were coming in.

The team looked at pivots, and meanwhile (as the non-business guy in the room) I questioned the underlying UX. Once we spoke to users, we identified a failure:

Setting expectations!

Users expected to receive their home-cooked meals the same day… But we could only reserve 3 days in advance. So we added a date picker on the homepage that clearly screamed advanced reservation.. And it worked! Things started to move forward.

Designers need to be in the room where direction is shaped.

You, the Designer, have the capacity to handle business challenges better than you may think. What you need is the mindset of unblocking, solution finding, and backed by enablement.

Avoid being in spaces that embrace a design culture of "just polishing"...

And if you are a Senior designer, and that "just polishing" culture resonates, then it is up to you to change that.

2. Motion Is the Default State

In my second ventures, we built Mend. It was a platform inspired my master’s thesis on the behavioral and attitudinal impact of excessive phone usage.

The solution was a simple trivia app that pushed users to meet offline…

We got the money, the office, and the team was ready...

We are redefining offline connections.. And then Covid hit!

And practically overnight, our entire value proposition evaporated. No one could’ve planned for it. Since then, I’ve become a strong enthusiast of Strategy. Not as a buzzword, but as a way to anchor vision in motion.

And it became clear that design does not, even cannot, sit outside volatility. It lives at the core of it.

At Doctolib, this has translated into actually meaningful Design Strategy work, that's always a WIP.

• The research & design team is better aligned, empowered, and shares a deeper understanding of our users.

• Within the company, it contributes to a contagious momentum, bigger ambition, and more meaningful ideas coming our way.

The catch is NOT to wait till the company's roadmap is defined.

Design strategy can be the starting point of product strategy. It gives us principles, insights, and a sense of direction

(Interested in a deeper dive? Ping me)

3. The Real Value of Design Isn’t in the UI

We’ve spent years refining our visual and UX craft. But here’s the truth: tools can now do a lot of what we used to take pride in.

What tools still can’t do is make sense of ambiguity.

The real value we bring is in how we synthesize complexity and translate it into something that just makes sense.

In my final venture, Jedo, we realized that we were solving the wrong problem.

After months of testing, we launched and got 0 bookings in 2 months. So we listened, real hard to what users were saying. That's where we realized that when we are helping users select what do to, the real challenge was in finding where to go!

You may think its irrelevant, but it made all the difference.

Once we focused on Where instead of What, we added more services to answer that question (Maps, local directories, etc..). And the rest was history afterwards. Our usage went up by over 60% and bookings actually started coming

I learned there that that our value isn’t in the output. It’s in the synthesis.

So yes, I’m inviting us to spend less time focusing on creating flows.. and more time on the underlying, rare power that makes it happen!

Design isn’t just what we want to show! But what we help the right people see.

In my product design IC responsibilities, this meant:

• More cross-functional workshops that end with clear action items for every participant

• Pushing for a hybrid dual track for Designers: 1 track for strategic research and vision design, and another for experiments and sprint releases. (Interested in a deeper dive? Ping me)

What About AI?

We’re living through a time when the role of a designer is shifting, teams are shrinking, and AI is gaining speed.

Everyone’s asking: where do we still fit?

AI brings abundance. It gives us fast, polished, confident answers.

But design has never been about answers. It’s about asking the right questions.

Design used to be about navigating the unknown. Today, it’s about navigating too many certainties.

Abundance, without aligned intent, is just noise disguised as clarity.

• If AI can answer faster, we need to ask better.

• If strategy keeps shifting, we need to shift with soul.

• If clarity disappears, we need to protect the unknown until meaning emerges.

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That’s our edge.

A Reflection for You

I ended my talk with a reflection. I’ll do the same here:

What’s one moment where a lot was uncertain, but you moved through it anyway? What did it teach you about your design instincts?

What’s one instinct you want to carry forward more boldly in your work?

That instinct is your compass. That’s the part of you no tool can replicate.

Thanks for reading, and for being part of this ongoing conversation.

If this resonated with you, I’d love to hear your take.