When I Designed for Myself Instead of the User

There was this one dashboard I worked on that felt like my magnum opus. A dark mode theme, neumorphic UI, gradient charts, animated toggles — the whole visual orchestra. I was obsessed. It looked stunning on my Figma artboard. It was the shot I imagined posting on Dribbble. I even pre-wrote the caption.

But here’s what actually happened:
No one could use it.

The client’s users were older professionals in finance. They didn’t care for gradients or shadowed cards. They wanted simple tables, fast-loading data, and no fluff. I had created a work of art — but it failed as a product.

That was my wake-up call.

I had fallen into the trap most designers hit at some point: designing for ourselves instead of designing for the user.

We love clean grids. They want clear flows.
We obsess over typography. They just want to find the damn “Download” button.
We polish pixel-perfect visuals. They just need it to work on their 5-year-old Android.

What I Learned

I went back to the drawing board and rebuilt the whole UI.
No trendy shadows. No visual experiments. Just hierarchy, usability, and clear call-to-actions.

The result?
The new dashboard wasn’t as pretty — but task completion went up. Bounce rate dropped. The client was happy. More importantly, their users were happy.

The Real Lesson?

Good design doesn’t scream “look at me.” It whispers, “you’re in the right place.”

Don’t design to impress other designers.
Design to make the end-user’s life a little easier.

Because that is the real flex.