What do you do if you are a developer who cant design?

As a developer, you have the technical know how to implement each component. You have built entire systems from the ground up. However, when it comes to design - you cant design to save your life.

Do you ship it ugly?

That doesn’t seem like the right thing to do. You know enough about design to know that things like the user experience, white space and visual elements are important. You just need direction on how to visualize things.

You have considered using an existing framework - but you know that existing UI frameworks all blend together and look the same. You can identify a Bootstrap or a Material UI project the second you land on their page.

What about just taking the dive and learning UI yourself?

Let’s be real - you dont want to spend months or years getting familiar with UX and UI basics. You have work to get done.

Have you thought about outsourcing?

Hiring a UI(user interface) designer is as tricky as hiring a developer. Its a bit of a gamble to find a good one. Then come the questions. How much budget do you allocate to the design? Where do you even look to find a designer? What terms should you be using? This also takes time.

So what do you do?

Use a UI design template. This is the best balance between originality and done for you work that I have found. The good news is - there are thousands of design templates out there. Everything from landing pages, to mobile delivery service designs. If there is a use case, there is a design template out there.

You can also take design templates and pull out the parts you need. You do not need to build out each screen or component they have.

Here is the best UI design template shop that I have found so far.

UI8. They have over 4,700 curated design resources for you to use.

Search the available templates for the type of project you are working on. Purchase the template. Implement it.

Don’t ship another project where the first sentence you start with includes nervous laughter and apologies for the way the design looks. Use a design template. Make your work look good.