Scale as a designer with custom apps

I’m a ux designer at Voyado by day. Freelance videographer, designer, and noob-coder by night. Like most Swedes, I have a need to work efficiently – it’s in our milk, in our dna. But running a side business while maintaining a full-time job? That’s where things quickly start to crack.

The problem isn’t the creative work. I love the travels, shooting outdoors, mountains, hunting, sports, and telling my clients stories. The problem is everything else: accounting, proposals, client deliveries, admin, and the endless to-do lists. All those shitty, mundane tasks that eat into the time I’d rather spend creating.

A 20 year stint finally pays off

Two things have been bothering me in the back of my head for the last 20 years. First, the «Shall a designer understand code» debate back in 2010-ish. Most said «Designers shall design, coder shall code.» I was in the «Hell yes!» camp screaming «Do both ffs!». Secondly, at the Fuse Conferance in San Fransico 1998, designers Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland from LettError nonchalantly stated:

If the tool you need doesn’t exist, build it. Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland from LettError

I’ve always loved that, not the technology itself, but the audacity of how to use it.

But as a designer, I could only come halfway to the finish line, I always had to rely on a developer, a third-party product, or, in some cases, spend 1000+ hours noob-coding my ideas.

Now that Ai is here, it has clicked for me. 20 years of fumbling in the dark is over … but it’s getting late early. Very late. As Maria Montazami says «Nu måste jag tänka snabbt, jättesnabbt.»

The reality check

Let me be brutally honest: I’m not a programmer. I can understand php a bit, I can set up a web server, and on a good day, fumble my way through JavaScript. But I just haven’t had the time or skills to properly learn programming and app development.

The aha-moment

I realized I was thinking about this all wrong. I’ve been banging my head against the code wall, spending hours on Stack Overflow. Trying to learn programming first, then build things. What makes me childlikely excited is that my career-long quest to understand tech, code and development now pays off, in a big bloody way! I have the understanding.

Now, with Ai, I can confidently reverse the process. I wireframe what I want, I outline the purpose, goal and output, discuss, specify, oversee, and build it together with Claude.

So I don’t need to become a programmer anymore … or as LettError also puts it:

Programming is too important to leave to the programmers. Just van Rossum and Erik van Blokland from LettError

My Ai toolkit

I’ve settled on Claude as my primary Ai tool, partly because I like their logo (shallow, I know), but mostly because it’s less aggressive than chatgpt. It feels more like having a patient Swedish colleague than an overeager American intern.

My setup is Claude Desktop, which makes it possible for me to alternate between working with the Claude app and my local files and folders. I have even given Claude access to some of my most essential apps like Notion, Figma, and Spotify to be even more productive.

It’s like having a master craftsman who doesn’t just hand you a finished piece of furniture, but walks you through every cut, every joint, every decision along the way.

The Swedish advantage

There’s something quintessentially Swedish about this approach – pragmatic, efficient, and slightly obsessed with optimization. We don’t build things to show off; we make them because they solve our problems. Såäre förståru!

In a couple of posts, I’ll walk you through exactly how I think and structure my custom-built tools that:

• Generate client proposals in 45 minutes instead of 8 hours.
• Replace WeTransfer with a custom image banks for my clients.
• Automates the most tedious and soul-crushing parts of accounting.

Next up: The surprisingly simple building blocks that make any app possible – even if you’ve never written a line of code in your life.