Most designers want to make things. Javier Díaz Pajarito wants to make sure the right things get made. After years in advertising agencies – JWT, Wunderman, Dentsu – working with global clients like Ford, Diageo, and Claro, he shifted from craft to strategy.
Today his focus is on creating the conditions for great design to happen, not just producing it himself. In this interview, he shares what UX strategy actually looks like in practice, why alignment is harder than design, and what AI will really change about the field.
"If your design is clear, people don't need help using it."
From advertising to UX strategy – what the shift looked like
Javier started in advertising. What drew him in wasn’t the pixels – it was the strategy behind them. Figuring out how a layout could shape what people noticed, how they felt, and what they chose.
Over time, his focus moved. He’d seen too many talented designers get stuck in environments where UX is an afterthought – where decisions are made by people who don’t understand it, and the budget goes somewhere else. That experience pushed him toward product design strategy: not just doing the work, but creating the conditions for it to actually happen.
UX strategy signals: when do you know a design is working?
The clearest signal Javier looks for is when the questions stop. When users don’t need to ask what to do next – they just do it. When stakeholders stop requesting changes because the solution makes sense on the first try. And one metric most people overlook: support tickets going down. If your design is clear, people don’t need help using it. It’s one of the most honest signals in UX strategy, and one of the least watched.
Why alignment is the hardest part of any design process
Javier’s biggest workflow bottleneck isn’t design. It’s getting everyone on the same page about what they’re solving and why. Especially in agency environments, where the pressure is to produce something flashy instead of something functional.
The hardest part of good UX strategy isn’t designing the solution – it’s convincing people who don’t understand UX that the process matters. That research isn’t optional. That a beautiful interface that doesn’t solve the real problem is just decoration.
How to decide visual priority – start with the user’s goal, not the business’s
When it comes to visual hierarchy, Javier’s approach is direct. Start with what the person actually needs to do right now. That gets priority. Everything else supports it. Then strip away everything that doesn’t serve that goal. Most design problems, in his view, are actually clutter problems. If something isn’t helping the user move forward, it’s noise. Remove it.
A loyalty platform, a mental model problem, and what UX strategy can’t fix alone
One of Javier’s clearest examples of design that didn’t perform as expected was UPPA – a loyalty platform where customers could turn invoices into points and redeem them in an online store. The design was clean, the flows were logical, the tech was solid. Adoption was slower than expected.
The lesson wasn’t about the interface. It was about behavior. People weren’t used to thinking of invoices as currency. The design was good – but the mental model wasn’t ready for it. Since then, he always asks one question before shipping: is this solution intuitive, or do we need to educate first?
What AI will actually change about design strategy
Javier’s take on AI cuts through most of the noise around the topic. Yes, the tools will make production faster – generating screens, variations, prototypes. But that’s not the real shift. The real shift will be in who gets to call themselves a designer.
If AI handles execution, the value moves to the people who can frame the right problem, ask the right questions, and connect design to business outcomes. UX strategy becomes more important, not less.
The risk he sees: companies rushing to implement AI without training their people – the same mistake agencies made when they hired ATL designers for digital work and wondered why it failed.
Knowing what you’re not good at – the most valuable habit in design
The mindset that has shaped Javier’s growth most is simple: brutal honesty about where he actually adds value. He’s decent at designing solutions. But he knows there are people much better at it.
His real skill is creating the conditions for those people to do their best work – removing blockers, aligning stakeholders, protecting the process. That’s why he moved from pure design to strategy. He’d rather enable a great designer to build something extraordinary than be the average designer on a mediocre project.
About the designer
Javier Díaz Pajarito has spent his career moving between advertising and product design – from global agency work at JWT, Wunderman, and Dentsu to a focus on UX strategy and product growth. His work is built around a belief that great design doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when the right conditions exist: clear problems, aligned teams, and a process that people actually trust.
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