A solitary figure stands on a mist-covered path leading toward a glowing rectangular portal in the clouds, its reflection mirrored in still water beneath a pastel sunrise.
November 6, 2025

The Human Interface

What management taught me about designing for people, not products.

An essay on the invisible art of designing for humans. On teams, in leadership, and within ourselves.

I know, the internet doesn’t need another list of management lessons.
This isn’t that. It’s a field report from someone who’s been the overworked senior, the middle manager trying to stop the bleeding, and the founder who couldn’t pay rent when management went wrong.

I’m not a manager right now… unless you count managing myself and the occasional existential crisis.

But I’ve run my own businesses where mistakes hit the bank account directly, and I’ve logged a few years in corporate settings learning what not to do from people whose key leadership skill was pairing a blazer with dad jeans.

Now I’m between chapters, keeping my skills sharp and writing pieces like this one, not because I’ve got it all figured out, but because I’m still obsessed with figuring it out better.

For years, I lived in the trenches of Figma, Sketch, and Adobe CC while my bosses mastered the ancient art of performative busyness.

Eventually, I found myself managing contractors, freelancers, and small teams. Realizing that management isn’t authority, it’s exposure.
You trade execution for empathy, clarity for chaos, and your biggest job becomes designing the human interface between people and the system they work in.

The irony? I became a version of the boss I used to roast. Just with better fonts.

MICRO-CONTRIBUTING BEATS MICROMANAGING

I used to think being “involved” meant hovering. Turns out, the sweet spot isn’t micromanaging, it’s micro-contributing.

When I managed teams, I’d pick up the small things that unblocked everyone else: tweak a layout, design a quick template to simplify repetitive tasks, annotate designs so developers didn’t have to guess.
It wasn’t about control; it was about momentum.

A good leader doesn’t stand over the team, they move quietly beside it, smoothing friction without stealing the work.
That’s management at its best: invisible UX for humans.

A glowing white fissure of light cuts through dark mist, winding like a river across shadowed clouds in a monochrome landscape.
Every team has a current. Your job isn’t to control it, it’s to keep it moving in the right direction.

YOUR TEAM’S NOT LAZY, THEY’RE OVER IT.

If your team’s burned out, you’re not leading, you’re extracting.

Healthy teams share early and argue kindly; unhealthy ones orbit perfection and disengage.
Designing for people means noticing when motivation drops long before metrics do.

You can’t get velocity from fear, you can only get compliance.
Team health isn’t a vibe check; it’s a performance metric for trust and creative velocity.

LETTING GO IS THE HARDEST SKILL TO MASTER

I delegated like a toddler shares toys: reluctantly. Eventually I learned that delegation isn’t a checklist, it’s a design system for trust. Leadership is knowing when to solo and when to drop out of the song.

IF IMPACT IS HIGH AND SKILL IS LOW, CO-PILOT. IF BOTH ARE HIGH, COACH FROM THE SIDELINES. IF IT’S LOW-IMPACT, DISAPPEAR—GO EAT A SANDWICH.

Great managers design autonomy the same way designers craft flow, clear entry points, graceful exits, minimal friction.

The real trick? Knowing when your absence creates more value than your presence.

WHEN HELPING TURNS INTO HOARDING

I once had a boss who said, “I’ll take care of it,” and then vanished into email purgatory. And yes, there were times I caught myself doing the same thing. Pride hides in competence. You tell yourself you’re “protecting quality,” when really you’re hoarding relevance. I saw this play out once when I was in middle management. The executives adored one senior designer because they stayed until 11 every night. What they didn’t see was that they took all the work for themselves. The juniors went home at 5, not because they lacked drive, but because there was nothing left to do. They couldn’t grow, couldn’t learn, and eventually couldn’t care. That team ran out of willpower long before it ran out of tasks. The execs thought they had a rockstar. What they really had was a system that rewarded burnout and punished delegation. That experience stuck with me. It’s easy to idolize effort and miss the cost it hides. So I started documenting what I could, handing off the small wins, and letting go of the illusion that being needed equals being useful. Delegation isn’t losing control, it’s scaling judgment.

YOU’RE NOT THE HERO. YOU’RE THE BANDWIDTH.

Leadership is mostly janitorial.

You clear debris (unrealistic requests, vague briefs, shifting priorities) so the people doing the real work can see daylight.
Executives speak in outcomes, designers hear in effort; good managers translate before the interface breaks.

Sometimes that meant pushing back on leadership. Sometimes it meant coaching my team through ambiguity. Always, it meant absorbing tension so others could focus.

THE TEAM GETS CLARITY. YOU CARRY THE CHAOS.

A bright golden doorway carved into a dense green mountainside glows against the surrounding shadows, with a faint path leading toward it.
When you stop hoarding the map, people start finding their own doorways.

PROCESS SHOULD HOLD YOU UP, NOT HOLD YOU BACK

Too little process and everything burns. Too much, and the spark dies. I learned to design systems that fail gracefully, enough guardrails to guide, enough gaps to improvise. Every layer of process should compound trust, not bureaucracy. My favourite design-review opener: “What would you decide if it were fully up to you?” That single question reveals whether you’ve built thinkers or operators.

DESIGNING WITHOUT A TEAM (AND WHAT MANAGEMENT TAUGHT ME ABOUT MYSELF)

Working solo again has been humbling. There’s no one to delegate to, no one to blame, and no one to course-correct my late-night overthinking.

But management taught me how to be my own manager, how to set boundaries, protect my focus, and call myself out when I start hoarding the work I love. It turns out self-management is just people management with less applause and worse snacks. Even alone, you’re still designing the interface, between your focus, your energy, and your expectations.

LEARNING TO LIKE THE BACKGROUND PROCESS

Design used to give me instant gratification, pixels, prototypes, dopamine. Management’s high comes from watching others compound. When someone I coached shipped something brilliant, that was the hit. When a freelancer I mentored landed a full-time gig, that was ROI. You stop chasing outputs and start investing in outcomes.

CULTURE IS SERIOUS BUSINESS (EVEN WHEN IT’S FUN)

When I work with clients now, I try to make them laugh. Not “boss funny”—actually funny.

It’s something management taught me: if you can make people feel good about showing up, even the hardest days get lighter. Be someone people enjoy working with, not someone they tolerate between stand-ups. Humour isn’t just morale, it’s shared oxygen for trust.

WHEN I GOT IT WRONG

Once, I over-structured everything, checklists, approvals, status docs, you name it. I thought I was creating clarity; I was manufacturing permission.

One of my designers finally said, “I don’t need a manager. I need an unblocker.” That line hit me like a UX audit.

Now, even as a solo designer, I remind myself: my job isn’t to narrate progress. It’s to remove friction.

THE FLYWHEEL OF CREATIVE CONFIDENCE

Safety → Early sharing → Better work → Leadership trust → More autonomy → Back to safety, stronger.

That’s the loop I try to build, and it applies even when you’re managing yourself. Break it once, and you’ll spend quarters rebuilding what trust could’ve compounded.

A solitary human figure levitates above still water at sunrise, their reflection mirrored perfectly in the surface below.
Self-management is weird. You’re both the manager and the managed, and somehow, the mirror between them.

Before I Close the Tab

Management is a mirror, you see your worst habits in HD. It’s not the next level of design; it’s a different craft entirely.

You stop designing pixels and start designing systems, people systems, trust systems, culture systems. Maybe the trick was never becoming the boss I used to roast, but the one I needed back then.

Every decision, every trade-off, every moment of trust, it’s all interface design. Good management is just good design, with humans as your interface.