I’ve designed onboarding flows in Bulgarian train stations and crafted wireframes in Malaysian food courts. My most productive design sprint happened in a remote village in Portugal where the Wi-Fi only worked if you sat near the chickens.

I’m a UI/UX designer. I’m also a nomad. And no, not the glamorous “working-from-a-yacht” type. Think more “editing prototypes at midnight in a shared hostel room while someone snores two bunks away.”

I didn’t set out to live like this. I just couldn’t do another year of fluorescent lighting, forced birthday cakes, and standups that accomplished nothing. So I left. Sold most of my stuff. Kept the laptop, headphones, and a good neck pillow. That was three years ago. I haven’t looked back.

The best and worst part of this lifestyle? There’s no routine.
One day I’m sketching ideas in a Berlin café with oat milk lattes and ambient techno. The next, I’m fighting time zones and Google Docs lag in a Nepalese guesthouse. But through it all, design remains my anchor.

Travel has made me a better designer — not in the “I’m inspired by sunsets” way, but in the gritty, practical sense. You start seeing how people actually use tech. Not your carefully curated Dribbble versions, but the messy reality.

In Vietnam, I watched an old woman use a delivery app with gestures I didn’t know were possible. In Brazil, I saw people rely on voice notes over typing because data was expensive. In Eastern Europe, minimalism wasn’t a design trend — it was a necessity because connections were slow.

You can’t unsee these things. They reshape your defaults. They humble you. They challenge every assumption you made back in your clean, air-conditioned WeWork.

Sure, there are trade-offs. I miss office banter. I miss stable internet. I miss having a chair. But I’ve gained something else: perspective. Real UX isn’t what we present in pitch decks. It’s how someone’s grandma manages to send money through an app with a cracked screen and zero onboarding.

I live on the move, but my goal is always the same:
Design things that help. Design things that work.
Even when your hands are full and your signal is weak.