Dileepa Ranawake

How I think about building

I believe in thoughtful engineering, inclusive design, and building products that benefit humanity.

In practice, that means quality engineering and iterative product development.

• Understand before building

  Coding is execution. Engineering is understanding.

  I didn't want to just write code. I wanted to understand how the system worked.

  From Learning to Think Like an Engineer

• Start from real behaviour

  Schema design becomes clearer when you start from real behaviour, not tables.

  Model the real flows first. Let the schema fall out of them.

  From Surface-First Schema Design

• Ship small working versions

  Each slice stands on its own and pushes your architecture and build forward.

  It gives you a practical way to start building things without getting overwhelmed.

  From Minimum Viable Slice: Overcoming Builder's Block

• Keep testing whether I'm wrong

  You're not delusional when you're wrong. You're delusional when you don't test if you're wrong.

  Feedback, retrospectives, iterating the scope is key. This applies in my technical solo projects, my team projects and in life.

  From When Optimism Becomes Delusion

That's the order I work in with early-stage clients: find out what's true, ship the smallest thing that tests it, then build.

Things I've built

LittleSteps-AI

An AI guide for new parents.

Vial Keyboard Layers

A simple map of your keyboard's layers.

Sumrise

Email that's easier to read for people with dyslexia and ADHD.

kef-remote

A Mac app to control your KEF speaker from your keyboard.

Jammming

A React app to search the Spotify library and build a custom playlist.

Talks, teaching and recognition

• The transformative power of digital communities, my TEDxHull talk, 2018
• Spoke on AI and accessibility at the University of Warwick
• A podcast conversation about Sumrise with Jamie Wace
• Guest lecturer and mentor at the University of Hull Business School, 2020 to 2024
• NASA Space Apps global nominee, 2017

Play the talk

Blog

1. 7 min read Minimum Viable Slice: Overcoming Builder’s Block Why MVP thinking can leave developers stuck, and how Minimum Viable Slices get you moving again.
2. 8 min read Surface-First Schema Design Design the database from what the app visibly does (its screens, login and AI model), not from guessed tables. The result: a smaller schema that is easier to test.
3. 2 min read Sumrise: making email easier to read The startup I co-founded, making email easier to read for people with dyslexia and ADHD. The story: demo, what I did, talks and a podcast.

All seven posts