Programming

1. Write down who your customers are.
2. Write down what problem your customers have, which can be solved with your product.
3. Write down how your product can solves the problem.
4. Figure out how you can achieve that goal (this needs to be separate to step 3 - you're essentially tackling the same thing from a different perspective... helping you see things that might not be visible from the other one).
5. Anything that does not bring your product closer to the goal(s), remove it from your product.
6. Anything that would bring you closer, but isn't achievable (not enough resources, going to take too long, etc), remove those as well.

Those are not singular items. You have multiple customers (hopefully thousands). Your customers have multiple problems your product can solve. Actually solving all of those problems will require multiple things.

If that list sounds functional, that's because good design is functional. Aesthetics matter. Why do you choose a black shirt over an orange shirt with rainbow unicorns? Take the same approach for the colours on your app icon. Why do you choose jeans that are a specific length? Take that same approach for deciding how many pixels should separate two buttons on the screen.

You said you struggle with looking at a blank page. Everyone does. If you follow the steps I outlined above, then you won't be working with a blank page.

A controversial suggestion, but you could read up and maybe take a few courses. While I love UX/interaction design you might want to start with UI design and design patterns. Once you get a basic UI and know when to implement different patterns you can move on and work on the UX.

I would suggest the same here, some learning is needed. There’s a reason you hire UX designers and not just more programmers.

As a user myself, I just design it the way I think is best if I was using it because 9 times out of 10, I'm making it for myself in the first place.

You can start by using plain, semantic HTML and grabbing a classless CSS with a license you like. (Check out this list.)

It's good enough for a simple app or site, and it's honestly impressive how good something can look with just this. It's the "plain t-shirt and jeans" of web design.

We just point a backend developer at it and hope.

Maybe also look ip a good component library, for C# I use MudBlazor, which has great documentation that helps a lot to pick the right component for the job, and a lot of the hard work is already done in terms of styles/themes.

For my apps I use the MVVM pattern and write all the backend logic first, then that helps me narrow down the right way to display it.

I’m the kind of person who buy 10 plain black t-shirts and 5 pairs of plain jeans so I never have to think about style.

I'm far more stylish. Some of my tshirts are gray...

I'm terrible with UI design as well. Mostly I try to copy from others and modify as needed. After all - “good artists borrow, great artists steal.”

It's actually not that hard, because the web is mature, and there are some conventions you must follow so users know how to use your site.

Start with a framework like bootstrap (general websites) or AdminLTE (backend panel type sites) or whatever your prefered frontend libary is. Look at all the example pages and components the framework gives you. Think about which components you need for your system, and how you want to present and interact with the information.

There are some bootstrap visual builders out there, so you can experiment and try different layouts and ideas to give you a feel for layouts, sizes, propotions before you commit and code a layout.

Then think about the general structure of the website, and what the user knows and expects from other sites. Look at other sites with a similar topic, then think about what you like and dislike about this site, and how you would make it better. Go with a common, basic and understood structure and navigation, which in most modern sites is generally:

-> Homepage (latest/interessting stuff)
-> Index/Category (all items of the same topic, all posts in a blog category, all products in the category "phone" etc.)
-> Detail page (a single blog post with it's comments, a single product with all its pictures and properties etc.)

Design as simple as possible. Make sure the user can accomplish your business goal (ordering a product, fill out a contact form, ...) with as little input, clicks and efford as possible. Make sure your business goal can be reached from everywhere on your site by placing a big link in the main menu that is always visible.

You can also throw your ideas into chatGPT and ask it to design a bootstrap portfolio template for your personal blog, and then build and expand on that.

I am a complete disaster, sometimes errors slip in even when I have a UI done by a designer because I am totally "blind" to certain aspects.

In my personal projects I try to follow guidelines and best practices for dimensions/typography/colors/placing of elements/etc but the results are "meh" of course, since apart from my layout-blindness I am more tolerant to small sins, since it's not work after all.

If the project gets to be used by a few people (of course not the faint of heart) I collect feedback and iterate over it to improve the UX.

Just gaslight the client into not needing better ux ui

One suggestion - if you get 10 plain black t-shirts, then implement your style!

I am a dev who was focused on design and ux early on (this has changed as the needs of my work changed).

@abhideckert's suggestion on how to analyze the needs is great. Now on to the implementation.

Similarly to development, you start out with some requirements - you need to show an input box, a history of inputs, and a sidebar with categories. You work out the layout (with wireframes, pencil drawings, etc.). Then comes visual style, which I guess is the thing you struggle with?

In both layout and visual style, you need to apply design principles, but ultimately the goal is to guide the visitor's eye to the right places. This is where rhythm, repetition and contrast play a role. Basically highlight important elements, make the order of elements logical and not boring, avoid large empty areas but leave sufficient "breathing room" between elements, etc.

For visual style, you should make your own "style guide" that you apply to all personal projects. You can vary it a bit for each, if you are worried about them looking the same. Make that into a css file with a dummy html page to test. Add an input box, a textarea, select, unordered lists, etc. and style all of them to your liking. This guide will capture a lot of visual ideas, colors, spacing, which you can paste straight into your project. Do not sweat too much about stealing other people's ideas - it's an intrinsic property of art, and anyway it will probably not look 100% the same even if you copy it.

Edit: PS: spend some time just looking at the design and thinking.

Copy designs you like, and keep a couple of CSS files +/- web components that you can carry along with you from project to project. Tweak then as you go.

Like everything else, getting good at making designs that you like will take time and effort, so if you want you get good at it, do it! I find it fun, and my designs aren't to everyone's taste (I too like black tshirts), but whatever.

Plus, getting good at making designs that i like has made me better at making designs clients/projects will like, so, win/win.

If you’re using web stuff, just use a framework. Whatever has the easiest to use components for your workflow. As long as your app doesn’t look like total ass, people will forgive an uninspired design in favor of functionality.

UX is not primarily about how your project looks like, but about how easy it is for humans to interface with it.

On the other hand, user interfaces that are difficult to read or have misleading layouts can seem ugly.

I can recommend the book “the gamer’s brain” by Celia Hodent. Maybe this blog post of hers can give you a rough idea what the book will cover. Although she focuses on games, the lessons are universal.

I don’t want my projects to get skipped over because they’re ugly and I don’t want to copy other designs pixel for pixel.

Just build your ugly thing then look up some designs and copy the parts you think are a good fit for you project.

Honestly, I love figma for this. For make a simple layout that I can turn unto HTML code later, figma is killer.