I’m writing this from a noisy café in Medellín, Colombia. Last week it was Lisbon. Next week, who knows? Maybe Bangkok, maybe back home to my parents’ place in Chennai for a while. I’m a UI/UX designer with a Figma account, a VPN, and an unhealthy addiction to Google Fonts. And I haven’t had a permanent address in 27 months.

When people hear “digital nomad,” they imagine beach laptops and influencer filters. The truth is far more chaotic, occasionally lonely, and somehow still the best decision I’ve ever made.

Designing from the road isn’t about working less — it’s about working differently. I’ve designed interfaces in airport lounges, conducted user interviews in cramped hostel rooms, and presented wireframes over shaky hotel Wi-Fi. I once rebranded a fintech startup from a bamboo hut in Bali while a rooster crowed aggressively every 15 minutes.

But here’s the weird part: my design intuition has gotten better. Much better.

You start noticing things most people overlook. The way signage works across cultures. How Korean apps feel hyper-optimized and dense, while Scandinavian apps breathe with white space and restraint. You get curious about local patterns — not just in interfaces, but in behavior. How people navigate, how they wait in line, how they expect feedback. You realize UX isn’t universal. It’s cultural. And the best interfaces quietly respect those differences.

I’ve worked with clients I’ve never met and mentored junior designers across time zones. I’ve had to get good — really good — at async collaboration. Tools like Notion, Loom, and FigJam have become my second brain. But so have handwritten notebooks filled with sketches from park benches and train rides.

Of course, there are downsides. Visa stress. Time zone math. Client calls at 3 a.m. Being the only person on a Zoom call who doesn’t know what the weather’s like outside the office. And you miss things — weddings, birthdays, all the little anchor points of a stable life.

But I stay for the moments. The breakthrough ideas scribbled on paper napkins. The design feedback from a fellow nomad in a Moroccan coworking space. The sudden, ridiculous clarity that hits when you’re standing in a market in Oaxaca, thinking about error message copy for a SaaS dashboard.

Design is about empathy, attention, and perspective.

Living this way? It sharpens all three.