Not every team has a designer and not every ticket gets a Figma file. Sooner or later, you're the one deciding where the button goes, what the error message says, and whether that flow makes sense, and you've gotta get it right without a design review.

This talk is a practical toolkit for exactly that moment. I'll share heuristics engineers can lean on to make solid UX decisions independently: how to spot a confusing flow before your users do, when consistency beats creativity, how to borrow patterns instead of inventing them, and simple ways to sanity-check your own design instincts without needing a design degree.

At the end of it, you'll walk away with a mental checklist you can apply the next time you're staring at a blank screen with no one to ask, and need to ship something users will actually understand.