Farming Taught Me More About UX Than Design School Ever Did

You want to understand UX? Try waking up at 5am and feeding goats before the frost hits.

Try fixing a busted irrigation line while the sun rises. Try watching an entire season’s work fail because you didn’t rotate your crops.

Out here, there’s no room for ego. Only systems. Only outcomes. Only what works.

I’ve spent 30+ years in tech. I’ve built apps, intranets, brand systems, and workflows for Fortune 100s and nonprofits alike. But nothing taught me more about UX than my own little patch of land in Damascus, Oregon.

Here’s what design school won’t tell you:

1. Every Experience is Rooted in Systems

You don’t get fruit without roots. On the farm, the soil is your foundation. In product design, it’s your infrastructure.

I’ve seen gorgeous interfaces fail because they were built on broken systems. That’s like planting seeds in sand. Looks good, grows nothing.

2. Timing is Everything

Design has a season.

Ship too soon? It’s immature. Ship too late? It’s spoiled. The wisdom isn’t in speed, it’s in knowing when.

Farming humbles you real quick. There are consequences to impatience. Design is no different.

3. Tools Don’t Matter If You Don’t Maintain Them

On the farm, a busted shovel slows you down. In your team? It’s a broken workflow, a misaligned brief, or a tool no one understands.

Designers who ignore process are like farmers who forget to sharpen their tools. Eventually, the work gets harder, slower, and more painful.

4. Mindset > Methods

Great farmers don’t just follow instructions; they watch, they adjust, they know. Same with design.

Stop looking for a 10-step Figma template to save you. Start developing the awareness to see the problem before the client does. That’s where value lives.

5. Real Design Feeds People

At the end of the day, nobody cares how clever your navigation bar is. They care if it helps them do something. Solve something. Live better.

Just like nobody praises a tomato. They praise the sauce. The meal. The experience.

Good design, like good food, disappears into the background… and makes everything else better.

So, what’s the real lesson here? Design is not a sprint. It’s not a hack. It’s a quiet practice of building systems that serve people.

And if you’re not ready to wake up early, get your hands dirty, and tend to it every damn day. You’re not ready to be a great designer.

See you in the fields.

LinkedIn Post: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/farming-taught-me-more-ux-than-design-school-ever-did-scott-ellis-vxlsc