Oksana Kovalchuk – Why Design Research Matters: Standing Out in Red-Ocean Markets

When UI/UX designer and longtime developer Oksana Kovalchuk returns to The Builders, we shift from her personal journey into the foundation of her design philosophy: research. Not the academic kind… the practical, roll-up-your-sleeves understanding of markets, users, and constraints that separates products that work from those that fall apart under real-world pressure.

Oksana walks us through how her roots in development shaped the way she thinks about design. Writing code at age five, building early iPhone apps with tiny screens and strict guidelines, she learned quickly that great design is never guesswork. Back then, if you missed a detail, you didn’t just ship a flawed app—you lost six weeks waiting for a new App Store review. Those constraints taught her the same lesson today’s teams still need: research saves time, money, and whole cycles of revision.

That focus surfaces again in one of her most striking stories—a weather app project derailed because the designer delivered twelve icons when the U.S. market required more than fifty. A perfect example of why design fails when the domain isn’t understood. Research isn’t extra. It’s the job. And in crowded red-ocean markets, where thousands of products look identical, understanding the space deeper than your competitors becomes your real advantage.

We explore why ideas are cheap, why competitors are “free data,” and why differentiation rarely comes from reinvention. It comes from clarity, context, and the willingness to understand how people actually use the things you’re building. This conversation pulls design back to first principles—grounded, real, and focused on what actually moves a product forward.

Key Takeaways

• Research is the foundation of good design. Without understanding users and markets, design becomes guesswork.
• Competitors are a research resource, not a template. Study what works… don’t clone it.
• Constraints drive clarity. Early mobile dev shaped how Oksana strips design to what matters.
• Ideas are cheap—execution is market-tested reality. Research turns ideas into viable products.
• Differentiation doesn’t require novelty. It requires doing one thing better than the weakest competitor.
• Reality matters. Even big visions must align with physics, budgets, timelines, and user behavior.