How makers stay productive

From a dev point of view:

I used to start with a raw design that I pieced together in something like Figma. And then incrementally improved sections. But I've never considered myself a good designer in general.

Since the release of TailwindUI it's my starting point for each design decision.

So for something new, I'd first think about the types of content / sections I think the page should have. Maybe drawing some inspiration how other (similar) websites structure their content. Then I look what TailwindUI pieces fit the description. I stitch them all together and look at the whole picture.

Then there's usually some things that I don't like and I'll iterate on those. My biggest problem is most of the time that I know THAT I don't like something but I don't know WHAT about it I can't stand. So, for this step I often go to Dribble and search for the specific part I don't like. Usually there's enough inspiration for me to eventually realize what's bothering me. Then I'll try to improve on that 🤷‍♂️

It's working for me but abviously YMMV

Hi Marin !

From my "designer" point of view. I usually make raw sketches on paper, designing the principal sections I want to appear on the website. A kind of MVP. Then, you should consider switching to a design software such as Figma or Sketch to reproduce your wireframes. If you think that you'll not be able to design something that looks great quickly, you can choose a template from the Internet and maybe mixing some to have something that looks cool for you.

To not waste too much time on this part, I encourage you to only design the most-viewed screens of your project.

Then in the development, try to do your best to follow your designs. However, as Felix said, you can use solutions like Tailwind to reduce your waste of time.

At the end, you'll for sure make some adjustment but by reducing the number of pages you have to design, you'll save a lot of time ! ;)

Hope this might help you ! Have a very good day !!! ;)

I think the 'incremental' vs 'big chunk' approaches are good for different things. It's more important to ship something than to iterate on the design a hundred times. So I think it's important to optimize overall for best but least effort design.

I think it does help to design the overall structure and UX as a large chunk first, as rewriting that code takes more effort and ideally you don't iterate on the entire page layout that many times.

Things like fonts, colors, spacing are super quick changes though. That stuff I always approach iteratively and am always tweaking.

From a designer and developer point of view:

Forget about static screens. It's a thing of the past. Start thinking with interactive prototypes and focus on usability testing. Good designers design by listening. And listening comes from frequent usability testing with your audience, friends and family.

What I do is I sketch something on paper just to visualize my ideas a bit and then I design dirty prototypes on framer.com or Figma. Both do the job. I spend a few hours designing the user flow and then I send this prototype to a friend or to my girlfriend and ask them to use it and think out loud.

This way I observe their thoughts and I learn how they think and what's confusing to them, in a few hours not days. I have discussed with many indie makers and many of them design in code which is not wrong but is way too time consuming.

The core problem is that people perceive as design only the visual aspect of it. Design is how it works that's why you should focus imho on building fake dirty prototypes.

I wrote an article that can help you on this https://gumroad.com/jimzarkadas/p/ux-bytes-1-the-lean-and-productive-design-process

Hope I helped!

For me it is a evolution process, I have been working on many projects and each one takes inspiration from the last and improves on the last. I also use simple google searches for specific ideas or there are a couple websites that show you landing pages and then i take bits from each. What i think is important is to have a style/brand, develop your own way (maybe its not great but you can evolve it slowly).