Design decisions rarely fail at the moment they are made. They fail later, when they have to live inside a real system.
Most of the problems I have seen over time were not caused by bad visuals or weak ideas. They came from designs that were difficult to translate into structure, behavior, and rules once they reached implementation. When that happens, engineers are left to infer intent, and the system slowly drifts.
Because I work closely with design systems and code, I approach design decisions with implementation in mind from the beginning. Not as a constraint, but as a way to make decisions more durable.
I design for structure before appearance
When I design a component or layout, I am thinking less about how things look in isolation and more about how they will be structured and reused.
That means being deliberate about:
- What the root element is
- What is interactive versus decorative
- Where spacing actually lives
- Which parts of a component are flexible and which are fixed
Many designs look clear visually while remaining structurally ambiguous. That ambiguity shows up later as one-off overrides, inconsistent behavior, or fragile implementations that only work in a specific context.
I try to remove that ambiguity early by designing components in a way that mirrors how they will exist in code. If I cannot clearly explain how something is structured, it is usually a signal that the design itself is not finished.
This also applies to system variables. Colors, spacing, and sizing should be applied intentionally and consistently. If a design relies on custom values that cannot be expressed cleanly within the system, that is often a sign that the decision needs to be revisited, not documented away.
I treat behavior as part of the design
A lot of designs assume ideal conditions. Real products rarely operate under those conditions.
I spend a significant amount of time thinking about behavior:
- How layouts reflow as space changes
- How content wraps when it grows
- How components behave when there is more content than expected
- How states change as elements scroll or overflow
These situations are not edge cases. They are inevitable outcomes in mature products.
In design reviews, some of the most important conversations are not about how something looks, but about how it behaves once assumptions break down. Those discussions often surface hidden dependencies or accessibility implications that are easy to miss in static mockups.
Designing behavior explicitly reduces the need for engineers to make interpretive decisions late in the process, and it leads to systems that feel intentional even under stress.
I think in rules, not screens
Responsive design is often framed as a set of breakpoints. In practice, it is about defining rules that hold up across a range of conditions.
I try to express layouts in terms of logic:
- What has a max width and what does not
- What stacks versus what stays aligned
- What wraps versus truncates
- What is constrained and what is fluid
This mindset shifts the work away from designing individual screens and toward designing systems that can adapt without constant adjustment.
It also makes tradeoffs clearer. When a design decision affects accessibility, semantics, or long-term consistency, those implications are easier to reason about when the design is framed as a set of rules instead of a single visual outcome.
I optimize handoff for clarity of intent
I do not think of handoff as delivering a finished file. I think of it as reducing unanswered questions.
Before something is implemented, I try to make clear:
- What changed and why
- Which decisions are intentional versus flexible
- How this fits into existing patterns
- How it behaves across states and layouts
I often document reasoning alongside visuals, especially when decisions involve tradeoffs between visual polish, accessibility, or system consistency. This gives engineers context rather than just instructions.
Some of the most productive design and engineering conversations happen when intent is explicit and assumptions are surfaced early. My goal is to create space for those conversations before implementation forces them.
Constraints reveal whether a decision actually scales
Working within existing systems, platforms, and governance has shaped how I design.
Constraints force prioritization. They expose hidden assumptions. They make it clear which decisions are foundational and which are cosmetic.
In many cases, what initially looks like a simple visual change ends up touching accessibility requirements, platform conventions, or shared components. Those moments are not failures. They are signals about how the system is structured.
I enjoy working in that space because it rewards clarity over novelty. The strongest solutions are usually the ones that fit cleanly into the system and can be maintained over time.
Design systems changed how I approach everything else
Working on design systems has changed how I design features and layouts.
I move faster because I am not re-solving the same problems. I think more deliberately about sizing and variants. I account for platform differences earlier. I understand components closer to how they exist in code, not just how they appear in isolation.
Most importantly, I design with the assumption that someone else will have to extend and maintain this work later. That perspective changes which decisions feel worth making.
The principle I design by
When I think about design decisions engineers actually have to implement, I come back to one principle:
If a design decision cannot be explained as a set of rules, it will not scale.
My goal is not to eliminate complexity, but to make it explicit and manageable. Designs that translate cleanly into structure and behavior are the ones that survive real products, real content, and real constraints.
That is the standard I design against.
