> _“Humanity is not a state of being, but a continuous act of becoming — through our stories, our struggles, our creations, and most importantly, through how we treat one another.”_ This fundamental truth shapes how we should approach both engineering and design. While engineering often focuses on the “creations” aspect of humanity, design teaches us to consider the full spectrum of the human experience — our stories, our struggles, and our relationships. As an engineer venturing into the world of design, I’ve discovered that this transition isn’t just about learning new tools or principles; it’s about understanding the fuller canvas of human experience we’re designing for. # The Common Ground Both engineering and design are, at their core, disciplines of human becoming. Engineers create infrastructure and systems that enable new possibilities for human achievement. Designers shape experiences and interfaces that help people tell their stories and connect with one another. Together, these disciples: - Solve real-world problems - Require systematic thinking - Value iteration and improvement - Seek elegance in solutions The difference lies not in the goals, but in the approach and emphasis. Engineering often asks “How can we make this work?” while design adds “How can we make this work _for people_?” # Breaking Down the Engineering Mindset As engineers, we’re trained to think in systems, algorithms, and measurable outcomes. We optimize for performance, efficiency, and scalability. This foundation isn’t wrong — it’s just incomplete when it comes to creating products that truly resonate with users. Our engineering mindset brings valuable assets to design: - Analytical problem-solving - Attention to detail - Understanding of technical constraints - Ability to break complex problems into manageable components But to grow as designers, we must learn to embrace new perspectives. # The Design Layer: What Engineering School Didn’t Teach Design introduces crucial elements that engineering education often overlooks: - Emotional resonance & Sensory Experience - User psychology - Visual hierarchy - The power of ‘negative-space’ - The importance of narrative The elements aren’t soft skills — they’re fundamental to creating products that users love and trust. Every successful product tells a story. At the heart of every great product lies a core promise — an essential truth about how it will improve the user’s life. This core isn’t a feature list or performance metric; it’s a deeply human value proposition that answers the question: “How will this make my world better?” Good design isn’t just about making things look pretty; it’s about making them feel right. # Engineering Blindspots: The Hidden Patterns As engineers, our structured thinking patterns are both our greatest strength and our most significant limitation. These patterns while powerful for solving technical problems, can create blindspots in how we approach design. Just as optical illusions reveal the limitations of our visual processing, these blindspots expose the boundaries of our engineering mindset: Common patterns I’ve discovered in my journey: - **The Completion Bias**: We tend to focus on what can be measured and completed, potentially missing the intangible elements of user experience. A feature might be technically complete but emotionally incomplete. - **The Expert Blindspot**: Our technical expertise can make us forget what it feels like to be a beginner. We assume users understand the mental models that have become second nature to us. - **The Control Fallacy**: We often design systems that prioritize control over trust, creating interfaces that restrict rather than empower users. - **The Data Trap**: We can become so focused on quantitative metrics that we miss qualitative insights about how users feel and why they behave as they do - **The Consistency Paradox**: While technical consistency is crucial for system reliability, too much interface consistency can make experience feel mechanical rather than human These blindspots aren’t flaws to be eliminated, but patterns to be aware of. By recognizing them, we can make conscious choices about when to apply our engineering instincts and when to seek different perspectives. Sometimes, the most elegant solution requires us to see what we’ve been trained not to see. # Learning to See Differently The hardest part of transitioning from engineering to design isn’t learning new tools — it’s learning to _unsee_. To question every assumption, every pattern, every “best practice” I’ve accumulated through years of engineering. As engineers, we’re trained to see solutions. But as designers, we must first learn to see problems in their purest form, untainted by our technical biases. The Japanese concept of “Ma” (間) teaches us that meaning often lives in the spaces between things. It’s the pause between musical notes that creates rhythm, the white space in an interface that creates focus, the silence in a conversation that creates understanding. As I study design, I’m learning that what we choose not to build is often more important than what we do build. Every feature we add doesn’t just solve a problem — it asks for our users’ attention, their time, their cognitive load. This reminds me of the Zen Garden principle where the essence of water is expressed more vividly through its absence — represented only by patterns in sand. In design, sometimes the most powerful way to represent something is not to show it at all. Like how the best notification system might be the one that knows when to stay silent, or how the most helpful interface might be the one that requires the least interaction. This new way of seeing requires us to: - **Look for what users don’t do**. Their hesitations, their abandoned actions, their workarounds — these silences speak volumes about our design’s shortcomings. - **Observe without solving**. When a user struggles, resist the engineering impulse to immediately fix. Instead, understand why that struggle exists and what it reveals about their mental model. - **Feel the weight of each decision**. Every button, every menu, every interaction carries cognitive weight for our users. Good design isn’t about adding possibilities — it’s about carefully curating them. - **Study the emotional landscape**. Users don’t just use our products; they develop relationships with them. These relationships are built not through features, but through moments of relief, delight, and accomplishment. - **Welcome discomfort**. When something feels “obviously right” from an engineering perspective, that’s precisely when we should question it most deeply. The most profound insights often come from watching users interact with products in ways we never intended. These moments of surprise — when users discover uses we never imagined, when they struggle with what we thought was obvious, when they delight in what we considered mundane — these are the moments that teach us to truly see. To build products people adore, we must learn to see through their eyes, feel through their emotions, and think through their experiences. This requires us to be simultaneously more analytical and more empathetic, more systematic and more intuitive, more critical and more appreciative than we’ve ever been as engineers. But perhaps most importantly, we must embrace wabi-sabi — the beauty of imperfection. Perfect code can create sterile experiences. It’s in the small imperfections, the human touches, the subtle deviations from rigid patterns that users often find the most delight. Just as a handcrafted ceramic bowl carries more character than a machine-pressed one, software can carry traces of the human care that went into its creation. Sometimes the most elegant solution isn’t about achieving perfection, but about finding beauty in the natural flow of human interaction, even with its occasional awkwardness and imperfections. # Conclusion The journey from engineering to design has taught me something profound: every line of code we write and every interface we craft ripples into someone’s life. It’s easy to get lost in technical specifications or design principles, but at its heart, our work shapes how people connect, work, and navigate their daily lives. I used to think building great products was about finding the perfect algorithm or the cleanest design pattern. Now I understand it’s about something more fundamental: understanding the humans on the other side of the screen. When we blend our engineering precision with design’s human focus, we create something greater than the sum of its parts — tools that not only function flawlessly but feel like a natural extension of human capability. As I continue learning both disciplines, I’m excited not just by what we can build, but by how we can build it better. Better not only in terms of performance metrics or aesthetic appeal, but in how meaningfully our work fits into people’s lives. _This essay is a work in progress. I’ll keep updating it as I get new insights, and some of the wonderful people in life keep illuminating my blindspots._ _Here some resources that might be useful as you begin your own design journey:_ - [“The Design of Everyday Things, by Don Norman”](https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654) - [https://hackdesign.org/lessons](https://hackdesign.org/lessons) - [https://figma.com/resource-library/](https://figma.com/resource-library/)