My 5 work principles
Now that I’m close to having 20 years of experience (shhhh 🙊) as a designer and front-end developer, I’m realizing that I’m constantly operating based on a few principles. Here there are — in no particular order — in case you’re looking for inspiration.
1. Use the right tool for the right job.
A good tool is designed to be good for a few use cases only. That means:
- don’t try to use the same tool everywhere just because it works wonders in one instance. From Sketch to React, you will only exhaust and distort this resource if you keep on using it over and over (oh hello jQuery!).
- a tool that tries to do it all will ultimately fail. Did you know that you can write HMTL files in Microsoft Word???
- if you don’t think much of a tool, maybe it’s because you’re not its targeted audience. Finding the right tool for your next project doesn’t mean that you have to issue a death sentence to everything that’s not 100% perfect for your specific need.
2. Don’t stare at a screen and you’ll be more creative.
Whether I’m designing or developing, a good practice is to start simple: paper and a (mechanical) pencil. No distractions, no notifications and no how would I bring to life this idea that I have in mind with this tool? Maybe if I check this website…you know where this ends.
It helps to focus on the essential and not dive into details at the start.
3. Spend more time learning the basics.
The more I advance in my career, the more I’m only interested in the design principles and programming languages and less by learning tools and frameworks. Why, you ask?
- Because tools and frameworks change all the time, but the principles and languages behind them stay very much the same.
- Because you better and more quickly understand those tools and frameworks when you know what they’re built upon.
4. Follow the rule of least power.
Check out the Wikipedia article if you need a definition. I see so many developers rushing out to find powerful frameworks to reinvent the wheel when it was already included in simple semantic HTML tags and CSS properties.
5. Beware of trends.
So many things to learn, so little time. When is it wise to invest time and pay attention to a new tool/methodology/framework? There’s a sweet spot when it starts to be used and before it’s so popular that it’s becoming problematic to not know it. I would argue that if you’re like me with minimal free time (i.e. have other interests in life), you need to keep an eye on all those things, but really invest time when you might be using them in an actual professional project. They come and go so fast.
Also — and this is particularly true in Silicon Valley — don’t be afraid to be uncool by using an older framework when you need little things like speed of execution, reliability and stability in production.
I hope you found these helpful. What are some of your work principles?
