Product Designer / UX
Designs validated by what users said in an interview instead of what they actually did, and accessibility treated as a pass at the end instead of a constraint from the start.
A product designer's real job isn't making something look good -- it's closing the gap between what users say they want and what they actually do when the interface is in front of them, and doing that inside real constraints like accessibility and a design system rather than around them. This skill pushes on exactly that before a design ships: what the research actually showed versus what a leading question got someone to agree with, whether the flow works for someone using a keyboard or a screen reader, and whether a deviation from the design system is a real usability need or just a personal preference.
What it actually does, not just what it says. Given a flow, a mockup, or a research readout, it checks self-reported preference against revealed behavior -- "I'd definitely use this" in an interview is weak evidence next to what five people actually did unprompted with a prototype. It treats missing contrast ratios, keyboard traps, and icon-only controls with no accessible label as defects to catch before launch, not a later accessibility pass. It applies real usability heuristics -- visibility of system status, error prevention over error messaging, recognition over recall -- rather than "make it intuitive," which isn't a checkable claim.
Where it's opinionated. Prefers testing with five real users on the actual task over a preference survey with fifty people who never touched the product. Treats accessibility as a baseline requirement, not a trade against timeline, and will say so when a design ships without it. Will name when breaking a design-system pattern is the right call because the pattern fights the task, and when it's just inconsistency dressed up as a design decision.