Right now, I’m hunched over a laptop in a hostel in Split, Croatia. My desk is a wobbly table, my coffee is lukewarm, and the guy across from me is loudly Skyping his mom. In five hours, I have a client presentation. My Figma file is open. My shirt is questionable. Life is good.
I’m a UI/UX designer without a permanent address. I design for startups, SaaS platforms, fintech apps — all while hopping from city to city with a backpack, a sketchpad, and the occasional portable charger I deeply regret forgetting.
Most people think this lifestyle is about freedom. It is — sort of. But it’s also about discipline. You don’t coast when you live like this. You get lean, fast, and surprisingly ruthless about your priorities. I don’t have space for extra monitors, and I don’t have time for eight rounds of pixel-perfect revisions.
What I do have is exposure. To people. To problems. To patterns.
Design inspiration doesn’t just come from Behance — it comes from watching someone in Budapest struggle to scan a QR code on a government app. It comes from noticing how Koreans expect gesture-based navigation, or how older Italians trust buttons that look like buttons. Every culture has its own interface logic. I get to study it in the wild.
When you live in motion, your understanding of UX becomes deeply human. You stop designing for personas and start designing for real people. And you learn fast that your beautiful, minimalist modal might make zero sense to a user in a different timezone, language, or mindset.
Also: timezone math is a design skill. So is learning how to present a pitch with a 2-second audio lag and a cat meowing outside your window. My current skill stack includes Figma, Adobe XD, empathy, and mild jet lag.
Sometimes I miss having a team lunch or a whiteboard. But then I remember I once ideated an entire checkout flow while hiking in Georgia, voice-noting ideas between mountain turns.
This life isn’t for everyone. But for me, it’s the perfect paradox:
Constant movement. Constant focus.
Chaos outside. Clean design inside.
No desk? No problem.