Many of you know I’ve always had a fascination with gadgets. In my earlier days, another obsession ran alongside it which was installing software, experimenting with it and then uninstalling it just to try something new. I had stacks of CDs and DVDs each one carrying a different piece of software, like a treasure chest waiting to be opened.
Those endless experiments gave me something I didn’t realize at the time, a natural instinct for how software should feel. It became second nature, almost like breathing. When I eventually stepped into software development, I found that placing UI elements and thinking from the customer’s perspective came more easily to me.
But here’s the surprising part: what felt natural to me was not natural to everyone else. Many people struggled to see software through the user’s eyes. They could write code, but they couldn’t always predict how a user would react to a button, a menu, or a flow. That realization was eye-opening for me.
Over the years, I’ve come to believe that instinct in software development is not magic. It’s the result of immersion with the technology. The more you expose yourself to different tools, the more you sharpen your sense of what feels intuitive. Yet instinct alone isn’t enough. To build software people love, we must combine instinct with experience, observation and humility.
Great software is not about what the developer finds natural. It’s about what the user finds effortless. And that requires us to step outside our own reflexes and into the shoes of others.
In the end I want to say instinct is a gift, but it’s also a responsibility. It’s shaped by experience, but it must be refined by listening. If we want to create software that feels like breathing for the user, we must first learn to breathe in their world.
What other habits can developers cultivate to sharpen their instinct for user experience? -Let me know in the comment section.
image credit: chatgpt
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