You're already on the right path, merely by caring you give your project the chance to have good design, it rarely (never?) happens by accident. A common probl

You're already on the right path, merely by caring you give your project the chance to have good design, it rarely (never?) happens by accident. A common problem developers can fall into is failing to allocate enough time for design. You describe it as "the last bit", when in terms of effort required it may reasonably be every bit as large a task as any other component of your project, and in terms of user impact it may be the largest part of your project. A (not so relevant) example about understanding the cost of design work: a lot of people claim that they can't draw, but they may be saying "my first sketch looked awful, therefore I can't draw", I started programming with 10 PRINT "HI!" 20 GOTO 10 but didn't tell myself "I can't write a defender clone, therefore I'll never be a programmer", skills are developed through use and practice. From a developer perspective ask yourself what role design plays in the architecture of your project, are you structuring things so that the design can be rev'd independently of the software - I often bounce between working on design side and programming side tasks while working (ADD at work), but that is only really practical if they are (de)coupled in a way that allows parallel development.