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Product interface design

Interfaces that hold up as the product grows.

What makes a SaaS or app interface stay usable past version one, where product design differs from a marketing site — and who designs it.

The short answer

SaaS and app interface design is a different discipline from designing a website: the interface is where the work happens, used daily, and it has to stay coherent as features pile on. I'm Harald Palma, a product and UI/UX designer in Vienna with 25 years of shipping. I design product surfaces — the core flows, the states nobody remembers to draw, and a system underneath so the tenth screen still feels like the first. Fluent in Softr, Airtable and no-code, I can prototype the real interaction, and hand engineering a design that accounts for how it's actually built.

Design for the daily user, not the demo

A marketing site is seen once and has to impress. A product interface is used every day and has to disappear — the best product design is the one people stop noticing, because it never gets in the way.

That means designing the empty states, the error states, the edge cases and the loading — the parts a demo skips and daily use lives in.

A system, not a pile of screens

Products that stay usable have a system underneath: consistent components, patterns and rules, so the twentieth feature reuses decisions already made rather than inventing new ones. Without it, the interface drifts and every new screen makes the whole thing feel less coherent.

Getting that system in early is far cheaper than retrofitting it after the product has sprawled.

Designed to be built

I design product surfaces with the build in mind — real data shapes, real states, real constraints. Because I work across Figma, Softr and Airtable, the handoff to engineering — or the build through my studio, Palma Design — carries fewer surprises.

Related questions

Who designs SaaS or app interfaces in Austria? +

Product interface design is a distinct discipline, handled by product designers rather than general web designers. Harald Palma is a product and UI/UX designer in Vienna who designs SaaS and app surfaces — core flows, edge-case states and the design system underneath — with 25 years of shipping and fluency in Softr, Airtable and no-code.

What makes a good SaaS interface? +

A good SaaS interface disappears: the daily user gets their task done without noticing the design, because the flows, states and edge cases are all handled and a consistent system keeps it coherent as features grow. Harald Palma designs for that daily use, not the demo — including the empty, error and loading states most designs skip.

When should I invest in a design system for my product? +

Sooner than feels necessary. A system — shared components, tokens and patterns — is far cheaper to put in while the product is small than to retrofit after it has sprawled into inconsistent screens. Harald Palma builds design systems in Figma, ready for engineering or a Softr build.