Let’s find out
if I can actually help
Four questions, half a minute, and you get a straight answer on how I would work with you, or that I would not, which happens about a third of the time. Nothing is booked and nothing is sent.
Already know what you need? Skip to the brief. Or just email hello@sgualda.com — the four questions are for your benefit, not mine.
Do not hire me if…
Every one of these has happened, more than once.
I would rather lose the project in a paragraph than in month two.
You have already decided and you want it validated
Then you do not want a product designer, you want an alibi, and a cheaper one exists. I’ll read your plan, agree with the parts that are right, and say the rest out loud in front of whoever is in the room. If that sounds unpleasant, it’ll be.
Nobody is allowed to talk to your users
Then you’re paying me to guess with a straight face. I’m very good at sounding certain, which is exactly why it would be the most expensive thing I could sell you. I’ll not do it.
The person who can change the plan will not be in the room
Advice that has to travel through two people arrives as an opinion, and opinions lose to whoever is most tired. If your decision-maker cannot sit in it, this is theatre and we would both know by week two.
You want a designer, not an opinion
I’m not being modest — I would be a worse hire than the person you can get full-time. Cheaper, faster, closer to the product. Paying me to push pixels is paying a premium for friction.
Nothing is actually on fire
Then do not. Read the free things here, run the conversation, come back when something breaks. About a third of what lands in my inbox is this, and all of it gets the same reply.
You want to pay by the hour
Hourly billing pays me to be slow, and then we spend the whole thing quietly suspicious of each other. Fixed scope means we both want the same outcome: for this to be over, and correct.
You need it by Friday and today is Wednesday
Whatever I produced in two days would be confident, tidy and probably wrong, and you would act on it, because it would look like an answer. That’s worse for you than having nothing.
The things
people ask me.
How does this actually work?
It starts with a written brief rather than a call, because a brief takes you three minutes and a call takes us both an hour to discover something the brief would have said.
You describe what is stuck. I read it and reply within five working days with which kind of engagement fits, what it would involve and what it would cost. If none of them fit, I say that instead and point you somewhere more useful.
What is a product review, and what do I get at the end?
Five days on the product, the flows, whatever research already exists and the numbers, plus up to nine conversations with your actual users.
What lands is a short ranked document: the five things that matter, in the order to do them, with the reasoning attached so your team can argue with it. Then a ninety-minute session where they do exactly that, and two follow-up calls at two and six weeks, because plans need adjusting once they meet reality, and handing over a PDF and disappearing is not a service.
How much does it cost?
I’m not publishing prices at the moment. Send a brief and you will have a specific figure within five working days, along with exactly what is included.
What I can tell you now: scope and price are fixed before anything starts. No hourly billing, no open-ended engagements, and the number does not move depending on how well funded you look.
Do you really need to talk to our users?
For a review, yes, and this is the part clients resist most. Nine conversations is usually enough.
Without them I’m reviewing your product against my own assumptions. A guess delivered with confidence is more dangerous than no answer, because you will act on it.
What size of company do you work with?
Teams of roughly two to forty people building SaaS, mobile apps or internal tools.
Above about a hundred people, or in enterprise and heavily regulated contexts, the bottleneck is almost always organisational rather than a design problem. I’ll tell you that in the first reply rather than take the money and find out together.
Can you just do the design work?
No, and not out of principle. Execution-only work is better done by somebody you hire full-time, cheaper, faster, and much closer to the product than I can be from outside.
What an outside product designer is useful for is deciding what to build and being able to say why. That only works if the plan can still change.
What if we do not know what we need?
That’s the most common starting point and it’s a good one. Describe what is happening rather than what you think the solution is.
Working out which problem you actually have is most of the job. Getting that wrong is what expensive quarters are made of.
Will you sign an NDA?
Standard mutual ones, without argument. You own everything produced, including documents and designs.
One thing worth saying plainly: this site publishes decisions and mistakes, always my own. If I ever wanted to write about something we did together, I would ask first and you can say no.
How quickly do you reply?
Within a day, including to the people I turn down. If something is genuinely urgent, say so in the first line and I’ll reply the same day when I can.
Where are you, and how do we work together?
Barcelona, CET. Almost everything is remote and works across Europe without friction.
I use whatever your team already uses — I’m not going to make five people learn a new tool for a five-day engagement. For ongoing work I need access to the channels where decisions actually get made, not a new one created for me.
What happens after I send a brief?
You get a confirmation email straight away with a copy of what you wrote. Then I read it, every one, myself, and reply within five working days with which kind of engagement fits, what it would involve and what it would cost. Or that none of it fits, which happens about a third of the time.
That reply is an email. There is no call to book, no calendar link and no sequence behind it. If you never reply, nothing else happens.
Am I committing to anything by sending one?
No. A brief is a question, not a request for a quote you then have to turn down. Scope and price are agreed in writing before any work starts, so there is no point in the process where you are accidentally further in than you meant to be.
The most common outcome after a first reply is that we both decide it is not the right moment. That is a fine outcome and it costs you three minutes.
What if I am not ready to hire anyone yet?
Send one anyway if you want a second opinion on where you are. I will tell you what I would do next, and if the honest answer is “nothing yet, come back when X breaks”, I will say that instead of selling you a smaller version of something you do not need.
If you would rather not speak to anybody at all, the free checks answer a narrower version of the same question and ask nothing of you.