I feel great with the recent progress on Cushion. I have a very basic version of the Client and Project API finished and the frontend successfully sending requests. Technically, this is gratifying, but it’s a departure from my work on Cushion over the past few months, when I was only focusing on design. I can definitely sense my concerns shifting from the actual usability of the app to its technical challenges—when narrowing in on one of them, I lose sight of the other.

This is just how it goes when tackling both design and dev. I think I just need to plan my time better and designate specific days or moments throughout the day to revisit design. With every technical achievement, I should stop and assess its effect on design. Does this help or hinder me? Now that this code is done, should I give equal time to design?

In the past, I’ve been able to work well by getting the design to a certain point, then switching to dev and designing the rest through code. This has its ups and downs—it helps in seeing how the design will actually work, but it prevents any grand departures from the original design. Scrapping everything and starting from scratch is easy in design flats, but not in code. Straying that far would require a certain level of confidence that it’s not a waste of time.

Considering all of this, I will design more next week. There are several sections of Cushion that still need a thoughtful look and feel, so I will give each the time it needs.