Things designer/developer hybrids do daily but nobody talks about

This is for everyone who thinks that a designer is just someone who draws pretty shapes and fills them with purple gradients all day 🙄

Database design

Having a holistic view of the business side of the product as well as usability best practices; designing the database and it’s relationships is something nobody can do better than a designer who actually implements the design. But since it isn’t a part of the design journey it is often overseen by potential clients.

Endpoint implementation on-the-go

as a designer, my primary and natural role as a developer is frontend development but since some of my products’ backend is on Airtable, Supabase or Xano I frequently need to create endpoints to allow front and backend to talk to each other.

But do people care about that when you’re a designer? no.

Planning product refactors

Especially in products built by large teams; things get pretty messy pretty fast. So a refactor is planned by the designer + developer since changing how a feature is implemented can have an impact on product behavior and so the designer must be included.

Whipping up many actual live POCs for new lead negotiations

not every lead becomes a deal, it can’t be shared in a portfolio and so the effort here gets ignored by everyone. Thank God for Figma make, Google stitch and Claude.

Integrations management

payment gateways, third-party apps and keeping up with AI quotas and API keys. Yet the only way we can show that in an interview or portfolio is through showing the integration in the UI design (if any).

Squashing bugs like nobody’s business

I’m human and I make mistakes, not to mention the joys of global code in big teams so bugs always show their ugly faces in my perfect product 😪 but its ok because solving problems is my favorite sport. I wish it didn’t break any NDAs to make a time-lapse video of how I burn through the bug-board in the morning as if my life depended on it…alas, clients will have to take my word for it 🤷🏻‍♀️

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Really, how do you show your identity and work as a designer-developer hybrid? it isn’t easy. We’re much more than mindless people following the same design methods and strategy again and again.