A great designer is a psychologist

I’ve known Santiago for many years, and I’m always struck by how thoughtfully he carries himself. In every conversation, he seems to understand more, ​as if he’s tuned in to an extra frequency that captures more than just the words being spoken.

It’s some sort of sixth sense, an awareness born of a deep sensitivity to the world. I’m an engineer; I think of myself as a computer more than a human. Yet I can tell when someone isn’t just in the conversation but looking at it from above.

That’s Santiago.

He’s a designer, an artist, and a psychologist. To figure out what people will love, you have to connect with them on a deeper level. Find the piece that fits you. When you experience great design (cars, clothes, software), you feel that connection. It just fits.

There’s intentionality in every choice of color, shape, and language, even in what’s left out. The blank space is part of the composition. Those decisions come from understanding people and their motivations. Being like that is what separates average designers from great ones.

A great designer asks questions you’d never expect and listens not only to your words but also to your tone, body language, pauses, and even the way you breathe—all the subtle details most people miss.

They have to. It’s the only way to create something that feels right for anyone. Take a single shirt: on one person it looks spectacular; on another it falls flat. Same shirt, different result.

That’s why I don’t buy the template design. In our line of work, a custom-designed interface in software feels so much different. It’s like this famous Volkswagen campaign from 2004: “Drive it. You’ll Get it.”

If you want to design something people will love, you have to understand people first. There’s no other way. I only recognized this principle a few days ago, and suddenly everything made sense. This is why Santiago is such a great designer: his true power is his curiosity about human nature. That’s why we have so many beautiful software products.

Every great designer is a great psychologist.