Role: Product Designer Duration: 3 months Tools: Figma Platform: Desktop

A developer friend approached me to collaborate on a project to test their engineering skills and needed a designer to shape the experience. The brief was open: build a social platform that developers would actually want to use.

We agreed on a tight scope: skip onboarding, focus on the core experience, and respect the dark-mode preference most developers default to.

Design a social platform where developers can share, discover, and connect without the noise of general-purpose networks.

I designed around how developers actually behave online: they skim code, follow tech stacks, and discover projects through peer recommendations. Every decision was filtered through that lens. Visual Direction: Dark by Default

I chose a dark-first UI because:

Developers spend hours in dark-themed IDEs and terminals, it's their native environment

Light mode feels like a consumer app; dark mode signals "this is built for us"

Reduced eye strain for extended browsing sessions

Dark as default: Not an afterthought toggle, but the foundational experience

Content-first: Code and projects over hot takes

Identity by stack: Communities and profiles organized around technologies

Security as default: 2FA, privacy controls, secure logout

This was a collaboration-first project; my partner brought the engineering challenge, I brought the product thinking. It taught me that designing for developers means meeting them where they are: dark mode, minimal fluff, and respect for their time.

If revisiting today, I'd add:

Search UI: Currently reads as light mode, breaking the dark-first immersion. I'd redesign it to blend seamlessly into the dark palette

Logout dialogue: Needs visual consistency with the dark theme; currently feels like an afterthought

GitHub integration for auto-pulling repos

In-app code execution (Replit-style embeds)

Web3 auth wallet login for the crypto-dev overlap