3 October 2026 · 9 min read

Tatiana’s Hexagon: a framework for design decisions

A decision-and-diagnostic model for digital product design: six forces, two natures, one moving centre. It doesn’t tell you how to make each part better. It tells you how much each part needs, so your effort goes where it pays off.

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00 — PremiseOne figure, the whole field

Most frameworks describe a single slice of design: the forces around a product, or the layers of craft, or the steps of a process. The Hexagon holds them in one figure and asks a single question: are you holding all six forces well enough, for the stage you’re in, to land the product?

Every project has its own ideal version. You can keep improving UX until you’re blue in the face, but does this project actually need it? A SaaS tool and a bespoke landing page need very different amounts of UX and UI, and the Hexagon makes that difference visible before you spend the time.

I built it from years of designing B2B and B2C products, where every decision answers to a business, a user and an engineering reality at the same time. It applies to digital product design — software, apps, platforms, websites — and it’s meant to be drawn on a whiteboard and used to make real decisions.

01 — StructureTwo natures, not six items

The six points are not a flat checklist. They split by who controls them, and that border is the whole point of the model.

External forces are givens you must always weigh but never get to set: Business, User and Developers. You can shape them; you cannot author them. They are the reality a designer doesn’t assign.

Craft levers are the instruments you set directly: Strategy, UX and UI. They are the tools a designer uses to answer that reality.

External forces say what must exist. Craft levers decide how it gets made.

02 — The six verticesWhat each point means in practice

For a force, you find out what’s true. For a lever, you decide how much of it the project needs, and the force opposite tells you.

03 — The diagonalsEach force meets its lever

Across the centre, every external force sits opposite the craft lever that most directly answers it. This is the model’s diagnostic spine.

Two rules keep the diagonals honest.

Dominant channel, not a wall

A diagonal names the strongest feedback loop between a force and a lever, not the only one. The whole field is connected, and every force touches every lever. Feasibility presses on UX too, just less directly than it presses on UI. The diagonal is where the conversation is loudest, not a fence.

Authorship, not immunity

The designer authors the levers; the forces constrain them. Developers don’t write the UX, but feasibility limits how far the UX can be pulled. A six-month flow against a two-week deadline will change, and that is the model working, not engineers trespassing. You own the instrument, but you’re never immune to the forces.

A problem rarely lives where it shows. A weak UI may be a feasibility problem; a failing UX may be a research problem. Read the diagonal, not the symptom.

04 — The centrePerfect design is not universal

The centre is perfect design, but perfect belongs to the product, not to the field. Each product has its own ideal configuration of the six.

A bank app, a mobile game and a startup MVP each have a different healthy hexagon. The model doesn’t chase one universal balance; it finds the right balance for the context. Perfect design is the configuration that fits this product at this stage, which is why the centre is never a fixed point. It moves.

05 — PostulatesSix things that hold the model together

1. All six always exist. You can lower a force’s weight for a stage, but never delete it. An ignored force doesn’t vanish — it bites later.
2. Two natures, not a flat list. What you must always account for, and what you set directly. Erase that border and it becomes an ordinary wheel of skills.
3. Perfect design lives only in the overlap. You can’t reach it by maxing one axis. A flawless UI nobody needs and a brilliant strategy that never shipped are failures, not “almost”.
4. The centre moves. There is no single correct weighting; the right mix depends on the stage and the context. Balance is continuous re-weighting, not a point of rest.
5. Craft must answer the forces, or it’s decoration. The moment a lever stops responding to a force, it has stopped being design.
6. You can only balance what you can see whole. Holding six forces takes literacy in all six, including the non-design ones. Partial vision guarantees a lopsided product.

06 — DecidingHow to make a call with it

1. Locate the stage. It tells you where the centre sits now. Discovery leans on Strategy, Business and User; build leans on UX and Developers; release leans on UI and Developers.
2. Run the decision through all six — what it strengthens, what it ignores — and through the three diagonals: are you lifting one end at the cost of its partner?
3. Choose the option with the least total slack for this stage. Not “which is prettier”, but “which best holds the six”. The decision comes out of the model, not out of taste.

07 — DiagnosingReading a product’s health

Score each vertex from 1 to 10 against a target that fits the stage. Health means fitting that target, not a high total.

A weak vertex has a signature failure:

And a weak vertex starves its diagonal partner. User 9 with UX 3 means you understand people, but your flows don’t answer them, and that gap, not the higher number, is the priority fix.

08 — Your turnScore your own product

Pick one product and one stage. Set a target for each vertex first, then score where it is today. Look for the biggest gap, then check its diagonal partner.

09 — LineageA synthesis, not a new physics

The parts are known; the combination is not. That is how most working frameworks are born.

IDEO’s lenses give the three forces, but no craft and no time. The UX Honeycomb rates product quality, but skips business and engineering. Double Diamond maps the process, but not the forces. Garrett’s layers describe craft, but stay static. The Hexagon’s contribution is the integration: forces and craft and time on one surface, plus the diagonals that link a force to the lever that answers it, so you can locate a problem instead of only naming it.

covers it partly not its focus

10 — Scope & honestyWhat it is, and what it isn’t

It’s a lens for digital product design, not a universal theory of all design: service, industrial and graphic design carry different sets of forces. And it’s an authored methodology, not yet a validated one. Its full credibility is earned by applying it to real projects and showing that it changed decisions and outcomes. The bones are sound; the proof is in the using.