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Four years of agency work across education, banking, food, hospitality, retail, legal, healthcare and more: what carries over from one industry to the next, and what doesn't.

Draft: full write-up coming.

Agency work means switching worlds every few weeks. In four years I've designed for universities and exam review centers, a bank and a pawnshop and money changer, a restaurant chain, an ice cream brand, a café and bakery, hotel groups, a fashion retailer, malls, an Australia-based law firm, an Australian job board, a pharmaceutical company, a child sponsorship nonprofit, a trucking company's user and driver apps, a news agency, and an IT and BPO industry association. The clients were in the Philippines, Australia, Germany and the US.

People sometimes ask whether that range spreads a designer too thin. In my experience it does the opposite. You quickly learn which parts of the job are the same everywhere and which parts you have to relearn each time.

Context: one process, many rooms

My process doesn't change much between projects. I gather requirements with the client and our system analysts, map the users and their tasks, wireframe, design, hand over to developers, then QA the build against the design. What changes is everything inside those steps: the users, the regulations, the vocabulary and what "trust" looks like.

What carries over

People expect familiar patterns

Jakob's Law says users "prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know" (Laws of UX). This is the most portable rule I know. A hotel booking flow, a job application and a pawn loan inquiry are different businesses, but they all rely on the same patterns: forms, steps, progress, confirmation. When I reuse well-understood patterns, users spend their attention on the decision, not the interface.

Clear prices and totals, everywhere

Whether it's a cake order, a hotel night or a money changer's rate, people want to know the real cost before they commit. Baymard's research finds that 40% of shoppers who abandon a cart (excluding those just browsing) cite extra costs, and 12% say they couldn't see the total up front (Baymard Institute). That applies far beyond retail.

Mobile is the default audience

For Philippine clients especially, I assume the phone comes first. DataReportal counted 97.5 million internet users in the country in January 2025, and 90.8 million social media user identities (DataReportal). Restaurant menus, mall maps and exam reviewer apps are all used on the go.

Information architecture before visuals

Every large site I've worked on, from a university to a news agency, lived or died on its structure. Grouping, labels and navigation come before color and type. Nielsen Norman Group's guidance on mega menus applies just as well to a mall directory or a pharmaceutical product range: group things the way users think, show each option once, and use plain labels (Nielsen Norman Group).

A design system pays off on every project

I build and maintain design systems and team templates at the agency. A solid base of components, spacing and type scales means each new industry starts well ahead of zero, and the time saved goes into the parts that are actually unique.

The patterns travel. The context never does.

What doesn't carry over

Tone and trust signals

Trust looks different in every industry.

  • Banking and pawn services: calm layouts, visible rates, clear requirements and no playful copy near money.
  • Legal (defense and military clients): discretion, clear practice areas and an easy, private way to make contact.
  • Healthcare and pharmaceuticals: careful wording, clear separation between information for patients and for professionals, and content that must pass review.
  • Nonprofit child sponsorship: honest stories and a clear account of where the money goes.
  • Food and beverage: appetite and personality. A wine and beer site I worked on included a personality quiz, which would be absurd on a bank site and was perfect there.

Users with very different days

The trucking project was a good reminder. The customer app and the driver app served the same business but completely different people. Customers want to book and track. Drivers want big buttons, few steps and screens they can read in a moving vehicle at a glance. One design language, two sets of priorities.

Payment habits

Payment expectations vary a lot by market. In the Philippines, Xendit's 2026 report found that cash on delivery still makes up 23% of e-commerce transaction value, and 41% of shoppers who abandoned a purchase cited a missing preferred payment method (Daily Tribune). An Australian or German client's checkout looks very different.

Regulation and review

Some industries have rules that shape the design before I draw anything. Finance and healthcare content needs approval steps. Philippine online sellers have to show prices and business details under the Internet Transactions Act of 2023 (Forvis Mazars). I've learned to ask about compliance in the first meeting, not the last.

How I get up to speed

Each new industry means a fast learning curve. My routine:

  • Ask the client to walk me through a real day. Not the brand deck, the actual workflow.
  • Read the competitors and the regulators. What users already know comes from other sites in the space, and what's allowed comes from the rules.
  • Learn the vocabulary. Using the client's terms in requirements, and the users' terms on screen. Those are often not the same.
  • Use AI as a research assistant. I've built custom Claude Skills for UX research, user journey documents and wireframing. They help me draft research summaries and first-pass structures quickly, which I then check and shape myself. It speeds up the start without replacing the judgment.

Trade-offs

  • Breadth versus depth. I'll never know banking as well as a designer who's spent ten years in a bank. I make up for it by asking more questions and leaning on the client's experts.
  • Reuse versus fit. A shared design system saves time, but it can make every site look alike. I keep the structure shared and let type, color, imagery and motion carry each brand.
  • Speed versus discovery. Agency timelines are tight. I protect a short discovery phase even on small projects, because skipping it always costs more later.

What I'd do next

  • Document industry playbooks. A short internal guide per industry: key users, trust signals, regulations and common pitfalls.
  • Build a pattern library by task. Booking, applying, paying and tracking show up everywhere. Well-tested versions of each would make every project faster.
  • Test more across markets. I'd like to run quick usability sessions with users in Australia and Germany, not just review their competitors.

Working across industries has made me less attached to any single look and more attached to the basics: know the user, respect their time, and be honest about what things cost.

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