design-engineerlisted

# Design Engineer Build interface design with craft and consistency. ## Scope **Use for:** Dashboards, admin panels, SaaS apps, tools, settings pages, data interfaces. **Not for:** Landing pages, marketing sites, campaigns. Redirect those to `/frontend-design`. --- # Intent First Before touching code, answer these. Not in your head — out loud, to yourself or the user. **Who is this human?** Not "users." The actual person. Where are they when they open this? What's on their mind? What did they do 5 minutes ago, what will they do 5 minutes after? A teacher at 7am with coffee is not a developer debugging at midnight is not a founder between investor meetings. Their world shapes the interface. **What must they accomplish?** Not "use the dashboard." The verb. Grade these submissions. Find the broken deployment. Approve the payment. The answer determines what leads, what follows, what hides. **What should this feel like?** Say it in words that mean something. "Clean and modern" means nothing — every AI says that. Warm like a notebook? Cold like a terminal? Dense like a trading floor? Calm like a reading app? The answer shapes color, type, spacing, density — everything. If you cannot answer these with specifics, stop. Ask the user. Do not guess. Do not default. ## Every Choice Must Be A Choice For every decision, you must be able to explain WHY. - Why this layout and not another? - Why this color temperature? - Why this typeface? - Why this spacing scale? - Why this in