The uncomfortable truth is that I rarely think about UI/UX until I’m forced to use it and realize there’s no way around it. Nothing pushes you to improve something quite like experiencing its flaws every single day. When you depend on a tool and its interface constantly gets in your way, the motivation to fix it becomes very real.

I’ve always been more drawn to backend infrastructure than frontend development. That’s where I feel most comfortable. But it’s precisely when you’re stuck using a clumsy or poorly designed interface that you start caring about the user perspective. Frustration becomes fuel.

I’ll probably need to spend more time reading through the codebases of projects like Elk or Phanpy to better understand alternative ActivityPub UI patterns and design choices.

There’s a lot to learn from how others approach the same problems. My current self-hosted ActivityPub reader works, technically.

But from a UI perspective, it’s still rough around the edges and that’s something I want to throw some energy & focus to improve.