Early in my career, I had a work routine that looked very professional on the outside, but was actually a complete shot in my own foot. I’d get the brief, sit down at my desk, brainstorm dozens of ideas, do research, and flesh out initial drafts. Up to that point, it looked like a great design process. But my biggest mistake started right after: out of all those drafts, I would focus on the single idea that looked best to me, the one I felt most confident about. I’d polish that chosen draft into a final design and head straight into the presentation.

And what about the other drafts? I deleted them without blinking 🙂

In my mind, I was doing something logical: I wouldn’t confuse the stakeholders, wouldn’t look indecisive, and would present a strong, unified front by saying, “This is the single best solution.”

When I put that single option on the table, the meeting would instantly turn into a “Like / Dislike” arena. When questions like “Hmm, this doesn’t feel quite right…”, “What else could we try?” came up, I had nothing left to lean on.

Why? Because just yesterday, I had manually deleted 3–4 other approaches sitting in Figma and thrown them in the trash. On top of that, because I believed deep down that “this was already the best idea and we had to ship it!”, I would defend my design like a lawyer in a courtroom.

The result?

• Endless, exhausting revision loops,
• And worst of all; frantically trying to recall the ideas I had drawn and deleted earlier… (thankfully, Figma introduced version history!)

It didn’t take long to face the harsh reality: the problem was falling in love with a single idea and slaughtering every other solution before even stepping into the room.

The Turning Point: The Feedback That Hit Me Like a Reality Check

At Trendyol, one of the core pillars of our culture is open communication, regular feedback sessions, and immediately turning that feedback into action items. During one of those routine feedback sessions, a stakeholder gave me the exact wake-up call I needed…

“We know you try and discard a lot of things in the background. But tell us what you thought about, what you tried, and why you eliminated them so we can understand your design process and see why you gravitated toward this final concept.”

At that moment, a lightbulb went off in my head ⚡️

Until that day, I assumed stakeholders only wanted to see the finished, polished “final product.” In reality, they were curious about my thought process, the journey I took, and the rationale behind my decisions. They didn’t want me to make the decision in isolation and dictate it to them; they wanted to be part of the decision-making journey.

By deleting the alternatives, I was throwing away my biggest strength: my reasoning process.

Mindset Shift: What Is an “Alternative” Really?

After that meeting, my perspective on working with alternatives completely shifted. I realized that generating options wasn’t a “waste of time” or a sign of “indecision.” Instead, it was a lifesaver in three critical areas:

• Breaking the Choice Paradox (Escaping the Like/Dislike Trap): When you put a single solution on the table, the meeting stays stuck in surface-level “I like this / I don’t like this” comments. But when you present 2 or 3 different approaches, the question naturally changes to: “Which one fits our problem and our users best?” The conversation shifts from personal preference to strategy.
• Stretching Your Design Muscles: The first solution that comes to mind is usually the most obvious one — the one we’re most conditioned to produce. Forcing yourself to ask “How else could I approach this?” stretches your creative muscles.
• Built-in Risk Management: When a technical constraint pops up or a user flow hits a wall, instead of panicking that the “design is ruined,” you have the luxury of pulling a ready B-plan off the bench one that was previously set aside with a clear reason.

Finding the Formula: The 3 Musketeers of Alternatives

After that feedback, I knew I needed a system. Because drawing 3 random or nearly identical designs wasn’t going to solve anything either. Each design had to bring a distinct vision and hypothesis to the table.

That’s how the framework I’ve been using in my projects — and sharing with my team — was born: The 3 Musketeers of Alternatives.

1. 🛡️ Safe Bet:

• Logic: “Let’s minimize risk and optimize what we already have efficiently.”
• Features: Fully aligned with the existing design system, low effort for the engineering team, respects user habits, and represents the most intuitive initial idea.
• Role at the Table: Establishes a baseline. It’s the comfortable floor where everyone feels safe.

2. 🧙‍♂️ The Balanced:

• Logic: “Let’s innovate, but without reinventing the wheel.”
• Features: Combines fresh, engaging user touches with technical feasibility and business goals.
• Role at the Table: And surprise… This is usually the “Champion” version that wins over the room and makes stakeholders’ eyes light up! 🤩

3. ⚔️ The Disruptor:

• Logic: “What if we completely broke the rules?”
• Features: Bold typography, unconventional interactions, radical flow changes…
• Role at the Table: Triggers innovation. Even if it isn’t picked, it expands the team’s perspective, making them say, “Wow, I didn’t think of looking at it that way.”

Defining the Variables: How Do We Actually Draw This Many Alternatives?

Working with alternatives doesn’t mean designing everything from scratch three times. It means knowing which variables to tweak:

• Concept-Based Alternatives: The visual look of the screens stays the same, but the user flow to reach the goal changes.
• Information Architecture Alternatives: Where should each component live on the screen? Simply rearranging the visual hierarchy creates a completely different experience.
• Visual & Interaction Variations: The layout remains intact, but you experiment with scroll behavior, card structures, or different typographic weight.

When you pick the right variable, creating 3 alternatives doesn’t take 3x the time; it only requires about 20–30% extra mental effort. Plus, in the age of AI, we can reduce that effort even further. We move away from being a “pixel pusher drawing from scratch” to a strategist managing ideas.

The Art of Presenting Alternatives

Preparing alternatives is only half the battle; the other half is how you bring them to the room. Dumping three designs onto a screen and saying “Here you go, pick whichever you like” is a sign of indecision.

Here are 3 critical steps to master your presentation:

1. ☕ The “Decoy Effect”: Remember the classic marketing trick coffee brands use: they place a strategic “medium size” next to the small and large sizes just to make the large one look like the most logical deal. Design works the same way. Sometimes, one alternative exists simply to highlight why another option is the right choice. Side by side, the value of the intended design increases exponentially.

2. ⚖️ Being Honest with “Pros & Cons”: Grounding decisions in data and an honest Pros & Cons analysis is one of the most valuable habits I’ve built at Trendyol. The design process is no different: instead of saying “I think this looks prettier,” you should transparently lay out what each option gains and what it trades off.

“Using a card architecture in this flow offers smooth mobile swiping and high engagement (Pros); however, because it pushes the filter bar further down the page, it slightly limits search flexibility for the user (Cons).”

This transparency signals to stakeholders: “I’ve thought through all the technical and experiential consequences of this work.”

3. 🎯 Stating Your “Favorite” as a Designer: Don’t leave the conclusion passive after telling your story:

“For this flow, I recommend Option B. Option A collects all user data on a single screen, but the daunting form length drives up drop-off rates. Option C introduces a gamified experience that looks amazing, but the engineering effort is too high for this quarter. With Option B, we accept the minor downside of adding a second step to the flow, but in return, we simplify each screen and project a 15% increase in signup completion.”

Conclusion: What Changed When I Stopped Being My Own Executioner?

It’s been a long time since I abandoned my old habit of ruthlessly deleting my own drafts. What did this mindset shift actually change in my career?

• Shorter Meetings: Subjective “I think it should be red” debates ended; they were replaced by strategic conversations like “Which model fits our target audience best?”
• No More Revision Loops: Because my Plan B was already prepared, when a request came from the room, I didn’t have to start over — I just pulled out the other card in my pocket.
• Stronger Trust: As stakeholders saw the “why” behind my decisions, their trust in the design — and in me — grew exponentially.

And finally, a huge thank you to the stakeholder who stopped me in that meeting and said, “Tell us what you thought about and eliminated in the background.” Sometimes, the single thing that transforms a designer’s career and perspective is one honest piece of feedback delivered at the right time.

Becoming a better designer doesn’t start with falling in love with your pixels; it starts with sharing the journey behind your decisions. The story of how you got to the solution is just as valuable as the solution itself.

We’re hiring! Join a team that loves to build, share, and contribute back to the community. Explore our career opportunities to see where you fit in.

https://careers.trendyol.com/tr

How I Stopped Falling in Love with My First Idea was originally published in Trendyol Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Have you ever done research as a designer?

We designers often test ideas with users, collect feedback and iterate on our work. But the truth is, we don’t always have enough research resources. Our team faced the same challenge: requests for research were growing fast but our resources were limited.

That’s when our researcher friend Reyhan stepped in and created a 4-hour, intensive training just for us. The goal was simple: help designers run small but effective studies on our own.

If you’d like to read this process from Reyhan’s perspective, check out her article here.

Survey Basics in 4 Hours

In this training we didn’t just listen to theory, we also built our own survey step by step. We learned and practiced at the same time.

Topics we covered:

• Audience selection: choosing the right target users
• Question writing: non-leading, purpose-fit questions
• Question types: open-ended or closed-ended?
• Data analysis: turning numbers into insights
• Summarizing: making outputs easy to share

Building the Survey

This is where research and design finally shook hands in my workflow.

1. Clarify the project details:

Before starting the survey, it’s crucial to define the project framework. Answering the questions below gave me a clear and reliable starting point.

• Which product/page am I running this survey for?
• What is my problem statement?
• What is my goal?
• Who is my target audience and what are their behaviors?
• How will I use the data afterwards?

2. Create the question set:

This was truly the most challenging part. For every question, I asked myself, “What will this answer show me?” and removed anything that didn’t serve the survey’s purpose. The most critical point was using a non-leading tone to collect accurate and unbiased data. I reviewed the questions several times and fixed any that included leading language. In some places I saw that open-ended questions boosted discovery; in others, closed-ended ones sped up analysis. So both the question set and the analysis path became clear.

3. Do the analysis:

When we set the survey live in our research tool, the excitement was real. As responses started to come in, my first reaction was: “How am I going to make sense of this much data?”

I first exported everything to Excel and began cleaning the data. I split questions into separate sheets, read each response one by one and tagged them. Among 450+ responses, repeating patterns and shared themes became clearer and clearer.

Honestly, this step was harder than writing the questions. (Yes, AI could have sped it up but for my first research I wanted to truly experience the process.)
In the end I had not just numbers, but meaningful insights. Turning them into a short summary and sharing with the team was the most satisfying part.

What I Learned as a Designer

• Every question is a door: a wrong question puts you in the wrong room; a right one reveals real user needs.
• Reading data is a design practice: behind the numbers are feelings, needs and behaviors. You have to turn them into a story.
• Writing good questions: it’s as critical and as hard as writing a good brief.
• Data analysis: it’s not only analytical; it also trains your empathy muscle.
• Summarizing: storytelling turns research outputs into decisions.
• Research isn’t only for researchers: designers can run small, meaningful studies too.

Closing

This experience took my design practice to a more meaningful place. Now I know that stepping into the research process as a designer:

• Helps me build a stronger connection with users.
• Grounds my design decisions in real data not guesses.
• And reminds me that human-centered design is a continuous learning journey.

My first research wasn’t perfect but what I learned became a valuable compass in my career. With support from my researcher friends, I’ve run surveys across different projects and my process is much clearer now.

In design, the biggest power isn’t to assume; it’s the courage to discover the truth.

Thank you Reyhan Ikan and Beste Tanrıverdi for guiding me through every step of my research processes and Neşe Kına for her wonderful mentorship. 🚀

Join Us

Do you want to be a part of our growing company? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions from the links below.

Home — Trendyol Careers

We believe in the power of an inclusive workplace. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. Each and…careers.trendyol.com

From Designer Hat to Researcher Hat: My First Design Survey Experience was originally published in Trendyol Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Does Making Users Physically Feel Errors in Mobile Apps Improve the Experience? — A Micro-Level Haptic Feedback Test

Do error messages really grab attention?

Imagine you’re filling out a form. You complete one input and move to the next.
Then… a red outline appears. Maybe a small warning text or even a toaster message that pops up for a few seconds.
Sounds familiar?

In most mobile apps, error messages are usually shown in these ways. Starting from this point, I decided to take a closer look at how we show errors in our own seller panel mobile app.

In one of the most important flows, coupon creation, I noticed something: we weren’t showing the mandatory fields in advance.Instead, when sellers tried to continue without filling them, they received error messages one by one through toaster notifications.

To solve this issue, I implemented a few changes:

• Marked the required fields with an (*)
• Added helper text to explain the limit on coupon quantity
• Introduced error states for each specific input field when an error occurs

But is this enough?

The changes I made were functional, yes. But were they attention-grabbing enough? That’s the question that kept circling in my mind.

Inspiration from Duolingo

While I was thinking about this, one day I was practicing on Duolingo. When I gave a wrong answer, an error visual appeared on the screen but this time, something else happened: my phone gave me a slight vibration, a physical feedback.

I realized that this little notification made me focus more on the error. It wasn’t just a visual warning, but also a physical touch.

This experience made me wonder:

“Would adding a physical feedback alongside a visual one create a meaningful impact on the experience?”

Let’s put it to the test!

With this curiosity, I designed a small test. My goal was to both validate the improved design and observe how physical feedback would affect the user experience.

💡 My Hypothesis:

If an user receives not only a visual but also a physical feedback when they make a mistake, they will perceive the mistake more clearly. This could improve the overall experience.

🧪 How I Tested It?

As an UX/UI designer, I carried out this test with the aim of improving user experience. I built the scenario around the coupon creation form in the seller panel.

​​The Scenario:

Participants were asked to complete this task:

“Enter 5 TL in the minimum spending field in the coupon creation form.”

(This field is mandatory and shows an error if the value is below 10 TL.)​​

Why this scenario?

Since the field is required and the error message contains a critical warning, it provided a good context to observe the effect of adding extra feedback like vibration.

Who were the participants?

19 people, aged between 22–35, all iOS users working at Trendyol as Product Managers, Developers, or Category Managers.

The Test Flows:

I asked each participant to experience both flows and then answered open-ended questions.

• Flow 1: Without haptic feedback: Red input error + a short toaster message (new design)
• Flow 2: With haptic feedback: Same setup + device vibration at the moment of error (new design + ISO-standard failure haptic)

📊 Test Result:

A few user feedbacks:

Some users found the vibration helpful, while others preferred to turn it off.

This clearly showed me one thing: physical feedback does not create the same impact for everyone.

• “I emotionally felt that something was wrong.”
• “The red border was enough for me, even without the vibration.”
• “I liked the vibration more, but I could still understand the error without it.”
• “The vibration feels too strong, can I turn this feature off?”

​​ 🧠 What I Learned from the Test?

• The new design improved clarity. Making visual feedback more explicit helped users notice errors more easily.
• Visual + physical feedback can be a strong combination. Especially in critical moments (payments, security, mandatory form inputs), it helps the user focus on the error more effectively.
• Context and dosage matter a lot. Too many alerts may cause alert blindness. That’s why haptic feedback should only be used where it really matters — and the same goes for visual feedback. Showing an error in input fields is usually enough; many participants found toaster messages unnecessary, and some didn’t even notice them.
• Not every user will enjoy the experience. Haptic feedback should always be offered as an optional setting.

Quick notes for designers:

• Identify the critical moments: Where is haptic feedback truly necessary?
• Test the dosage: Use meaningful, occasional feedback instead of repetitive alerts.
• Give users control: Always make haptic feedback optional.

👉 This small test taught me that my new design made errors more understandable and helped users focus on the right point. Physical feedback reinforced this clarity and made the experience more effective. But it’s important to remember, it’s not a magic solution. Used in the right place and in the right amount, it can cut through visual clutter and help users focus on the error itself.

Join Us

Do you want to be a part of our growing company? We’re hiring! Check out our open positions from the links below.

Home — Trendyol Careers

We believe in the power of an inclusive workplace. Our platform is for everyone, and so is our workplace. Each and…careers.trendyol.com

Does Making Errors Feel in Mobile Apps Improve the Experience? A Micro-Level Haptic Feedback Test was originally published in Trendyol Tech on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.