On Glibness

I made myself comfortable in a small cafe, coffee in hand, and prepared to meet with someone who had reached out to me on an online networking platform the previous week, requesting some guidance related to UX Design.

From his introduction, it became clear that he was someone who had mastered many technical languages, had the experience of managing a team of developers and was keen to grow in his career by acquiring supplementary technical skills. After exchanging pleasantries, he buttoned down to the point, "I am building a web application from scratch as a self-learning exercise: to design and then follow it up with development. I want to learn what colours and fonts would make the UI of my application look slick and modern.” The request felt harmless enough—a technical lesson in aesthetics, but I couldn’t help but thinking that his assumption, like so many in the world of development, was that design was a box to be ticked, something to “figure out” quickly, not so different from learning a new programming language or optimising a codebase.

Design was a box to be ticked, something to “figure out” quickly, not so different from learning a new programming language…

What followed was the kind of conversation you’d expect between two people who see the world through wildly different lenses. He expected me to just tell him the right shade of blue, recommend the appropriate fonts and icon libraries that would transform his amateur UI to a professional looking interface. I wanted to explain that at its best, Design is a conscious act that requires fundamental understanding of hierarchy, visual rhythm, colour theory, context that taps into human psychology and behaviour etc. He wanted a magic potion; I wanted to tell him there was no such thing.

We think if we can drag a button here or tweak the kerning there, we’ve designed. But design isn’t decoration.

I suppose this tension isn’t new. It’s the classic misunderstanding of design as surface—an add-on rather than an intrinsic element of the product’s soul. There’s this quiet arrogance in assuming that if you can master the surface details, you’ve got a grip on the craft. And perhaps this is a particularly modern delusion. The proliferation of design tools has made it so easy to believe that proficiency in Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, or even Canva can replace an understanding of the deep human behaviours that good design anticipates. We think if we can drag a button here or tweak the kerning there, we’ve designed. But design isn’t decoration. It’s not simply about making things pretty or choosing between Helvetica and Bodoni. It’s a language, one that requires fluency in human needs, not just pixels.

So, I showed him how to apply a colour scheme to his UI. I explained font pairing, discussed weight and scale, and the role they play in legibility. I asked him to experiment with grids so that he may pick up on what causes good layouts over cluttered interfaces. He was eager and quick to absorb these details, making me wonder if, in some distant future, he might actually come to see design for what it is—more than just a skin we lay over code. But in the moment, he was content to focus on the technicalities, confident that it would give him the license to add another skill to his resume.

At the end of our meeting, I could tell he felt accomplished. He’d learned something tangible, something he could apply the very next day. And, to his credit, he had. The UI he was building probably looked better than it had before our meeting. Maybe, in a few months, he’d be able to choose the right fonts and colours himself. Maybe he’d even push for better-looking apps.

It was like watching someone learn a few phrases in a foreign language and confidently proclaim themselves fluent.

But something about the interaction still felt hollow. It was like watching someone learn a few phrases in a foreign language and confidently proclaim themselves fluent. Sure, they could say “hello” or order a cup of coffee, but they’d miss the nuances, the idioms, the beauty of the language itself. And that’s what design is: a language that speaks to the core of human experience. It’s not just about the way things look but the way they make you feel, the stories they tell, the journeys they create.

While I nursed my strong south-Indian filter coffee, I wondered if he’d ever return, curious not just about colours and fonts but about why those choices mattered in the first place.

Reposted from Substack.