The 9 steps behind AI-enabled designHey, Everyone's putting AI-enabled on their process these days. Almost nobody can tell you what that actually means. So let me tell you what it means for me. Nine steps. Step 1: Get the baseline. Before you touch anything, wire an MCP into your analytics. You need to know the number before you can prove you moved it. Step 2: Audit what already exists. Connect GitHub, point Claude at the codebase, and understand what's actually built on the page you're...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
The clean career story is usually bullshit, but the first slap is useful Most design career stories get cleaned up after the fact. Which makes sense. Nobody wants to write the honest version on LinkedIn. I tried one thing. It didn’t work. I thought I was good. The job market disagreed. I took whatever got me in the door. I struggled at the first real task. I got promoted by accident because the senior person left. I stayed too long. I left for a reason that sounds dumb now. I ignored some red...
4 months ago • 11 min read
We removed the pause from design work I used to think the blank page was just friction. Annoying friction. The kind that makes you open Figma, stare at nothing, move one rectangle around for 14 minutes, then question every career decision that led you to becoming a person who professionally drags pixels for a living. Lately, I think it was doing more than slowing us down. It was forcing a pause. You had to sit with the problem long enough to decide what you were actually trying to make. You...
4 months ago • 8 min read
Your portfolio is not the presentation There is a specific kind of silence that happens in a portfolio interview. It is not dramatic. Nobody throws a chair. Nobody says, Tyler, this is becoming a crime scene. It is smaller than that. The hiring manager stops nodding. The PM looks at the slide thumbnails instead of the slide you are on. Someone leans back a little. One person is still smiling, but it has the same energy as a flight attendant during turbulence. The work might still be good. The...
4 months ago • 10 min read
Every tool should earn its seat A year and a half ago, I joined CapIntel. This week, I was promoted to Principal Product Designer. Which feels incredible. Not in the “I have ascended into corporate enlightenment” kind of way. More in the “holy shit, I’m trusted to solve bigger problems now” kind of way. And honestly, that trust has changed how I think about design. The more senior I get, the less I care about making beautiful static screens that sit in Figma collecting digital dust. I care...
4 months ago • 6 min read
You’re doing the work that should’ve been handed off I don’t think most designers are slow. I think we’ve just gotten weirdly good at staying busy with work that doesn’t need us. Not obviously wrong either. The kind that feels responsible and thorough, like you’re doing your job properly. That’s what makes it hard to spot. This hit me after a client call, somewhere between work, travel, and waiting for a flight home from a Toronto offsite. Laptop open at the airport, half a drink beside me,...
5 months ago • 5 min read
Why your portfolio always feels almost ready You open your portfolio and the first thing you do isn’t read the work. You zoom out. You look at the layout, the spacing, the balance of the page. Something feels off, but you can’t point to it. So you start moving things around. A little padding here. New grid there. Maybe swap a section. Maybe try a different template. You tell yourself you’re improving it. An hour goes by. It looks better. You still don’t want to send it to anyone. That’s the...
5 months ago • 3 min read
Figma Make slowed me down more than it helped Figma Make pissed me off this week. Like actually pissed me off. I was trying to build something real. Not a hero section. Not a fake UI. Real product shit. Upload, processing, validation, graph, review. Something with actual moving parts. And it felt wrong immediately. Not visually. Physically. Like dragging your hand across rough paper. That dry resistance. That slight catch on your skin. You feel it before you even think about it. Every...
5 months ago • 4 min read
Your kickoff is the problem Everyone can ship now. So why are we still building the wrong things? I had a conversation recently with someone who told me their team spent three weeks shipping something that should have taken a few days. No big surprises. No crazy scope. Just a straightforward feature. Three weeks. And I remember thinking… yeah, that sounds about right. Because I’ve seen that exact situation play out more times than I can count. It usually starts the same way. You get everyone...
5 months ago • 2 min read