“I’d reuse what works for the parts that are already legible to people, and innovate only where you can point to a real problem the familiar pattern fails to solve. At Sundial, we ship experimental stuff fast, but I’ve also seen too many redesigns of popular products perform worse because they ignored how much users rely on muscle memory.”

“I reuse what works until the research tells me it doesn't. At At-Bay, our design system let us ship three platforms fast, but the 0-to-1 security product needed its own language because brokers and underwriters were not the same customer.”

“I spent too long at LinkedIn trying to make LinkedIn Learning feel brand new when users just needed the patterns they already trusted from Lynda.com. Reuse what works for the core jobs people came to do, then innovate only where it actually changes the outcome, not where it flatters the designer.”

“I’ve learned to treat reuse as the default and innovation as the exception you earn. At Slack, we rebuilt new-user education around contextual triggers instead of the standard tooltip parade, but only after the old pattern kept failing us in research.”

“I met Jakob Nielsen in San Francisco and I still think about his tension: familiarity gets users through the door, but the products that win are the ones that make a familiar thing feel newly obvious. At OS Maps we reused patterns people already trusted, then redesigned around what actually slowed hikers down. Reuse the interaction, innovate the moment that matters.”

“I reuse what works as a default, then innovate only where the data says users are actually stuck. At BOLD, we A/B tested a familiar checkout pattern against a flashier redesign and the familiar one converted better, so we kept it and spent our novelty budget on the recommendation flow instead.”

“I start by reusing what already works, especially when speed matters, but I leave room to break the pattern once I understand why people still struggle. At Jars, we leaned on familiar UX patterns to get 100K MAU fast, then innovated where the prompt-to-show flow kept failing.”

“I default to reusing what works when it gets the idea into users' hands faster, then innovate where the friction actually shows up. At HotPads, we reused the mobile web foundation for native apps because consistency shipped; at Gridspace, we had to invent Flow from scratch because no patterns existed for AI agent call flows.”

“At Eightpoint I started as an iOS UX designer and inherited a lot of patterns that already worked; my job was to know which ones were worth keeping and where the research said users were still dropping off. Reuse buys you speed and trust, but I only innovate where the data shows the familiar pattern is failing.”