One thing I’ve noticed in design is how quickly we fall in love with good solutions.
A polished interaction.
A clever onboarding flow.
A beautifully designed dashboard.
It’s natural to think,
“We should do something like this.”
Sometimes we should.
But not always.
Because not every good design is good for your product.
When inspiration becomes implementation
As designers, we’re constantly surrounded by inspiration. We browse products we admire, save screenshots, and analyse how successful teams solve problems.
The problem isn’t getting inspired.
The problem is applying a solution before understanding the problem it was originally designed to solve.
A lesson I’ve learned from design reviews
I’ve been in design discussions where someone suggested,
“Why don’t we do it like Product X?”
On the surface, it made sense. The interaction worked well and the product was successful.
But after evaluating it against our own users, business goals, and technical constraints, it became clear that the same solution didn’t fit.
Not because it was a bad design.
Because it was designed for a different context.
Good design is contextual
Every design decision exists for a reason.
It might be driven by user behaviour, business requirements, technical limitations, or regulations.
What we see on the screen is only the outcome of those decisions.
When we copy the interface without understanding the context behind it, we’re copying the result, not the reasoning.
The real value of inspiration
I’ve changed the way I look at design inspiration.
Instead of asking,
“Can we do this too?”
I ask,
“Why did this product solve the problem this way?”
Sometimes I realise the reason behind that design doesn’t exist in my product.
When that happens, copying it no longer makes sense.
Design the problem, not the pattern
Patterns are useful because they’re familiar.
Problems are important because they’re real.
If we focus on recreating another product, we risk solving someone else’s problem instead of our own.
The goal isn’t to make our product look like the products we admire.
It’s to design the right solution for the context we’re working in.
Final thought
I still look for inspiration almost every day.
But I’ve realised that inspiration is only the starting point.
Context determines whether an idea belongs in your product.
A great design isn’t great because it looks good.
It’s great because it solves the right problem for the right people, in the right context.
That’s why I believe designers shouldn’t copy interfaces and interaction flows.
They should copy the thinking that produced them.
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