Member-only story
Designer to developer ratio in 2026: what AI changed on my team
Our designer to developer ratio went from 1:3 to 1:6. Engineers now wait.
How this was written: the numbers, stories and opinions are mine. AI helped me shape my notes into prose and fix the grammar.
Sprint 69 was going well. Four days before the end, my team had 49 of 57 items done. 86%.
Then we looked at what was ready for the next sprint. Not much.
We hadn’t managed to do much discovery. The design wasn’t polished yet. And the developers were left without work.
That wasn’t a one-off. On my team, it’s a common problem now.
So when someone asks me about the designer to developer ratio, I don’t start with a survey. I start with that sprint.
Short answer: one designer for every two or three developers. And by 2027, I’d like no gap between them at all.
Here’s how I got there.
Most of what you’ll find on this question is old. The best-known number comes from Nielsen Norman Group’s 2020 survey, where the most typical researcher to designer to developer ratio was 1:5:50. One researcher, five designers, fifty developers. That’s one designer for every ten developers.
