Designing is Difficult for an Engineer
My moonshot build requires much more preparation than my usual side project.
One of the pitfalls of being singularly focused on getting an “engineering” job and being good at “engineering” would be the lack of attention in being able to create products for businesses that they would like to use. Everyone tells you to avoid feature creep, but when it comes to building any business platform, you not only need a solid set of features but for it to look professional on the get go. Most of my brilliant moonshot ideas are some sort of platform, but I end up getting too frustrated at to even continue building because I didn’t think through the product well enough.
Adeline’s guide to building something that you surely won’t finish:
Get crazy idea to build a b2b AND b2c platform
Think that you could just build as you go
Realize that to make it marginally useful to that business, build the 1000 features they need which will make page inevitably look cluttered, have to refactor your entire db, rollback everything, reorganize pages and flows, and more.
I am on day 3 of Figma templating, and I am realizing all the details I would have missed and would have been annoying to have to refactor and rebuild. Good design on the UI leads to good product decisions, a good foundation for code, and less overhead during moments of low motivation. The hard part for me is not building the product — the hard part is to get the motivation because I now know it is going to be brilliant.
Unfortunately, I have no talent in design. Why does my product look so…unprofessional? How do I get it past the “side project” looking stage to something that is polished, uncluttered, and conveys all the important information my client needs?
I wish I had more opportunities to design things during my tenure in big tech. I often get delegated to just building what designers give me, and can’t say I’ve made any improvement in the years I worked there.