2 jobs for the price of 1

After 10 years working as a designer (4 of which have been at Smartbox), I recently took up the opportunity to scratch a development itch by working 2 days a week with the technology team. Many thanks to all on the UX, Product, and Tech teams for facilitating the move. It’s proved a fascinating switch so far, with lots learnt and plenty more to learn!

While working as both a designer and a developer is a bit of a balancing act, the split does come with some definite perks. As a fairly prolific procrastinator, it has always been a bit of a boon to be able to put off one piece of work by doing another. I’ve also found that tricky problems have a habit of working themselves out when approached by a clear mind, so the cycle of swapping between roles means you stay fresh, engaged, and committed to the challenges ahead.

After working on a number of side projects to kickstart some up-skilling, the Beneficiary squad have very kindly helped guide me on the winding/confusing/mind-boggling/fun road to getting started as a developer.

There’s been a ton of great learnings so far. Working as a developer, I’ve really enjoyed having authority over the detailed interactions of the application. As a designer, you can provide plans, drawings, and designs, but it is always the responsibility of another role to actually implement the final version. There is a real joy in the detailed craft of fine digital experiences that comes to the fore when working on the actual interface that a user will interact with. In a strange way, it feels more connected to the end user than creating a design in Figma, as there isn’t that layer between what you are making and what is going to be used. There is a pride in not just the code you write, but the product that’s built; as a developer, it feels necessary to relentlessly consider the person using your application, as the micro-interactions across the interface have a direct and lasting influence on a user’s experience.

I’ve always felt that design and technology share a core skillset, and that has been reinforced throughout my learning. Both roles require great problem solving, logical thinking, and creative expression. While the nature of the problems is different, the approach is ultimately the same: research, ideation, building, testing, and learning. The goal is also the same: build a fantastic product that people love to use. Being thoughtful and mindful about approach is also essential in both spaces — it’s easy to create things the lazy way, be it skipping thorough research, not fully testing something, or building something outside of a system. Both designers and developers build components to be reused across the team, and doing so takes time and care.

There’s an interesting maturity to the technology space that is still coming to the design world. UX Design is a younger practice than software engineering, which comes with both good and bad things. On the plus side, there’s less legacy to deal with in terms of tools and approach. It means things are generally more modern, easier to use, and easier to maintain. However, less maturity means design still doesn’t handle some things very well, like version control or asset management. There still isn’t really a way for a designer to export all the icons and images needed for a developer in a handy package — it leads to confusion, mistakes, and lost time. I’ve also found things like document structure are far more important than I realised — as a designer, I can definitely help ease the handover process by keeping a clear, concise, and obvious structure to design documents so the technology team can very easily look at it and see what needs to be built.

Overall, the experience so far has shown how beneficial it is to have design and technology working as a tightly knit team. We learn and grow with each other, and empowered, engaged people lead to better products.

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