Designing Under Fire: How We Built Malanta's High-Stakes UX

TL;DR

• The mission: Moving beyond static mockups to build a high-stakes UX that helps cybersecurity teams act faster under pressure.
• The workflow: I traded "final designs" for constant iteration. My Sunday Morning Rule: if it can be improved for the user, it gets changed.
• The tool: I mastered Cursor to bridge the gap between Figma and production.
• The result: In 30 days, I moved from "just a designer" to building five functional pages and a live design system, allowing our team to test real-world usability before a single line of official frontend code was written.
• The takeaway: When designers embrace code and AI, the distance between a "vision" and a "product" disappears.

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When I joined Malanta as Lead Product Designer, I didn't just inherit a startup; I inherited a single, vibrant page and a massive vision. We weren't looking to build just another dashboard. We wanted to create a front end that transforms chaotic cybersecurity data into actionable intelligence, a tool that empowers users to see, understand, and neutralize threats the moment they appear.

I began by diving deep into how security teams actually operate. I analyzed their decision-making cycles and the specific data they need in real time. I designed every dashboard, graph, and interactive flow to shave off friction and prevent the kind of errors that happen under extreme pressure. My goal is simple: give our users the certainty to act decisively.

The Sunday Morning Rule

For me, design is never "finished." I walk into the office every Sunday morning telling the team, “Something is going to change today.” I let user feedback and new product discoveries constantly reshape the interface. This relentless iteration allows us to refine interactions and tackle complex challenges with a level of creativity that static designs just can’t match. Every feature I build reflects Malanta’s core purpose: protecting our users’ digital surface while making their workflows faster and more precise. The front end doesn’t just display information—it guides the user through high-stress situations.

From Figma to Cursor: Getting My Hands into the Code

I’ll admit, when I first opened Cursor, I felt overwhelmed. The interface was dense with code, and I wasn’t sure where to start. But that challenge sparked a sense of excitement. I saw an opportunity to build live, interactive designs myself. By working directly in the code, I experienced the system exactly as our users do - uncovering barriers and pain points that I never would have caught in a design tool like Figma.

As Malanta's first employee to work with Cursor, I asked my colleagues for guidance to help set up the basics. I taught myself to use Cursor to turn Malanta’s designs from 'one beautiful, colorful page with an amazing vision' into the fully functional product users rely on today. This journey transformed Cursor from a coding tool into a UX testing methodology. It allowed me to validate complex interactions, perform usability testing on live data flows, and uncover 'invisible' barriers long before the designs reached the formal engineering stage.

Within a month, my experimentation turned into tangible results:

• Five complete pages built from scratch.
• Interactive flows and modals that previously only existed as ideas.
• A live design system that the frontend team could pull directly into production.

Using Cursor allowed me to show the entire team exactly how the app would look and function before we officially implemented the front end. It provided a level of fidelity and "feel" that static mockups simply couldn't visualize.

Bridging the Gap Between Design and Code

By working directly in Cursor, I  found a way to make design and code work in harmony. It allows our developers to contribute to design decisions while I experiment with the logic of the code. This shared workflow helps us move faster, solve harder problems, and stay aligned on the outcomes that matter.

While AI tools like Cursor accelerate our daily work, I still rely on my design intuition and critical perspective. I monitor every result and validate every output to ensure that every interaction solves a real-world problem and delivers measurable business value.

By combining design intuition with coding precision, I’m ensuring Malanta’s front end never stops evolving. We aren't just building software; we are building a shield.

About the Author

Sigalit Mualem is the Lead Product Designer at Malanta, where she blends design intuition with technical execution to solve complex cybersecurity challenges. A firm believer that design is a living, breathing process, Sigalit recently expanded her toolkit from Figma to Cursor, allowing her to build interactive design systems and functional prototypes directly in code. When she isn't refining Malanta’s user experience, you can find her in the office on Sunday mornings, ready to make the world a better, more user-friendly place.

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