TH

01. Coming Full Circle

Before I shifted to an engineering role, I used to be a full-time UX/UI Designer.

I admired simplicity, and it showed. My designs were simple. That was the point though – the simplicity is what allowed it to be understood all the way from design → development → end-user.

My intentions as a designer were clear until I became a full-time software engineer.

Why is that? It’s not like I forgot what I learned – I was still working directly with design. So what went wrong?

Well, the answer is also simple.

The end-user shifted for me; I became the end-user.

When people tell you that you don’t design for developers, you design for users – they’re correct; but what about developers being the end user?

In order to be competitive in the software engineering space, it’s important to be up to date on the latest technology and other services people are using. After all, discovering new services, languages, libraries & frameworks is all part of the job. Passion does play a significant role as well.

Some services I’d come across would strike a ⭐ wow ⭐ factor for me. Take a second and browse godly.website…beautiful, right?

These websites are built with the latest technology; featuring a full-stack Next.js, serverless database through Google’s Firebase, and deployed straight to Vercel.

Developers and Designers alike are getting gitty looking at this. Beautifully designed & developed – a hit for the portfolio; but re-read that sentence one more time.

We’re the target audience.

In the last two years, a lot of these tools and trends have clouded my head of what a typical user is, and what a typical user expects. Remember that we are not the target audience we’re typically developing for, and things like design and tech trends matter significantly less outside of our circle.

I was so caught up in chasing that wow factor for myself and the developers that could appreciate the effort, that I forgot who the end-user was.

HINT: It wasn’t developers.

A good user experience is subconscious

When do you appreciate a good user experience? When you experience a bad one. Design trends often lead to unexpected behavior for the typical user, this can really only open bad doors.

Locomotive Scrolling is an example of a design and development trend that I’ve never seen used outside of the “tech” sphere successfully. Yet, it’s a trend that continues to surface in places it doesn’t need to be. Even as someone more technically inclined, I find a lot of these sites to be clunky. I could scroll a little too fast and miss out on important information. Also, why can’t I scroll using the middle mouse wheel? Is this progress?

What about blogs like this one? Why the hell are personal blogs becoming bloated with JS and vender-locked?

With rapidly changing trends, we should take a step back and understand that these are tools we use to solve problems. Having a blanket answer for tools and design choices seems counterintuitive and undermines your position as someone who’s paid to solve problems.

So…that’s what I’ve been doing this year.

I’ve taken a step back and learned to appreciate the simplicity like I used to. Sure, I can’t say I used Next.js, Firebase, a Headless CMS & a Glassmorphism theme for this site on my portfolio – but I have the gratification of a simple design and a simple developer experience for a simple project. There’ll be a time where that stack is more appropriate.

Hugo is what I used for this site. While it can be used for larger sites, having this one markdown-based content folder is really all I need to get my point across as a personal blog and bio.

Fablefront is my slightly more complicated project, using Laravel, Inertia, and React. This stack allowed me to utilize MVC alongside a modern UI library in one codebase, two things that have significantly improved my efficiency as a solo developer.

My saying going forward will be “If it’s too complicated to reason, it probably wasn’t the right choice.” It’s time to disconnect from what makes sense for others and jump back into what makes sense for me and my projects.

Enough rambling, here’s some key points:

Thanks for reading.