Software Developers Can Build Beautiful Software: Here's How

Software developers rarely design the most aesthetically pleasing software.

These principles can help you and other developers change this narrative.

Keep it simple.

Simplicity is a principle to follow in design. Overcomplicating your design won’t make it better in most cases. Beautiful designs can be created from the simplest ideas. Sometimes, good ideas become useless due to over-complication.

People like beautiful things that aren’t complicated. It does not matter how good your software is if the users cannot find their way around it. A simple and beautiful design is more beneficial than a complicated design.

Keep things simple and functional. Your clientele will thank you for this.

Avoid Reinventing the Wheel

Reinventing the wheel is re-creating something already created, tested, and proven effective. It harms overall development and often leads to unnecessary complexity. It's better to use existing and proven solutions.

An underrated tactic is gaining inspiration from another creation and making it your own with your twist. We have used this principle to enhance the aesthetics of Goleko. We took inspiration from MacOS, customizing our buttons and features using it as a guide. We plan to take some inspiration from Windows and incorporate it into the design, creating a fresh and unique outlook that is Goleko.

We’ll make designs similar to Windows and MacOS, allowing users to experience a theme familiar to their machine. It is okay to steal designs and add your flare to them. You can steal such designs from other websites or get them from themes.

Our designs are simple and functional, conforming to design best practices. We don’t do too much. We improve where necessary to improve user experience (UX), but we do not try to change what has been proven to be efficient.

Avoid Tunnel Vision.

It’s not rare for designers to get engulfed in their designs. Tunnel vision makes it hard for designers to see the holes or weaknesses in their design. The result is a design that’s pleasing for them but not for their target clientele.

Focusing on completion instead of other effects is detrimental to your design. Take time to determine what works well for your design and what your users want. Design something that incorporates the two.

This will help you avoid tunnel vision, allowing you to create something that works well for users.

Consistency Over Fanciness

Creating a fancy product is a good thing, and it’s highly recommended. This does not mean you ignore its consistency. Clients prefer a product that remains consistent in delivering what they need. Design a product that works and delivers as advertised.

You can incorporate consistent paddings and margins into this as well. It helps to make a site appear clean and easily readable.

This also follows the law of continuity. This law states that we tend to see continuous patterns and lines. These create a sense of flow and hierarchy in designs by using continuous lines or color gradients, creating a sense of movement. These guide the user's eye toward important information.

Such simple solutions promote consistency for your products, making them viable and usable by your clients.

Proportions

Excellent designs have elements of different sizes that fit nicely together to create coherent proportions. Here is an example:

Websites can display different content types, such as articles, videos, and images. Highlight the most crucial content and guide the user's eye toward it. A good example specific for me is making the article section livelier than the other sections. I do this when articles are the most pivotal content on a website.

Implement different proportions to create emphasis. You can use smaller proportions for less critical content, such as images or videos. This creates a hierarchy of importance and guides the user's eye to the most crucial elements of the website.

Color Adherence

The best designers understand how to combine different colors that complement each other. This mere statement sounds simple, but is a science. Flatuicolors has numerous color palettes showcasing different colors that accentuate and complement each other.

A successful product is both functional and visually pleasing. Picking the best color scheme goes a long way in making your product beautiful and enjoyable to use by everyone. Colors brighten everything, and pairing them with their ideal partners is the first step to creating a masterpiece.

Conclusion

Software developers focus on designing a product that works well. Designing the aesthetics isn’t a concern for them. This makes it easy for them to create software that’s not easy on the eye or welcoming.

These principles can help bridge this gap between development and design. It shouldn’t be rare for a developer to design a pleasing product. This piece can help start this trend.

FAQs

Are software developers creative?
Contrary to popular belief, software developers are creative beasts. Writing good code requires logic as you need to get things done properly, but you also need the creativity to make a good solution. Software developers combine these two skills with excellent drive and efficiency to create software that solves issues and improves the lives of people.

Can you learn to build beautiful software?
Yes, you can. You practice your coding, learn from your mistakes, and improve your application - this is the same for design. It takes time to develop these skills and to perfect them. Be patient with yourself and work on your skills. It helps to note your lessons and improve upon your mistakes. Doing this will help you build beautiful and elegant software.

Is software development an artistic field?
Yes, it is. It incorporates the style of a savant with the imagination of a visionary to create software that works as expected. It's like interacting with a wine connoisseur. They take in every part of the process, analyze every detail, and put it together to create the best software for people to use. They put effort into the user interface, the user experience, and functionality. The outcome is elegant software that works well and gives the users what they want.

Is building software a hard thing to do?
Yes, it is. It takes a lot of time and effort to build elegant software. Software developers hone their skills and practice their coding to create elegant software. They learn from their mistakes and implement their skills to create better software to help people in society. They learn to use different coding tools and methods to create elegant software. They give everything to make the world a better place one code at a time.

Are software engineers creative?
Software engineers are creative. They work well and remain on topic. They have valuable insight they use to enhance their ideas to improve code and applications. They use their creativity to implement visual and structural changes to the programs. They make software that benefits the users and helps the community at large.

Is creativity essential to software development?
Yes, it is. The software developers are like other professionals. They take in feedback, analyze it, and creatively formulate solutions. Their decision-making and dedication make them excellent workers with cool insights. They generally follow a routine but have complex processes to solve team and community problems. They are creative and effective in their work.

Are there services that need software developers?
Yes, there are. Software developers are needed in web development, app development, and specialized coding. They are needed in marketing, programming, and various projects. A software developer's skills are diverse and needed in almost every industry.

For these and more thoughts, guides and insights visit my blog at martinbaun.com