State of Play

George Hastings is the solo founder of Unicorn Studio, the no-code tool that turned WebGL and shaders into something designers can touch and play with. But my favorite thing about George is that he built it alone, with no VC money, after years at IDEO and AREA17. This conversation goes deep into deterministic chisels vs stochastic AI design and his advice to designers who want to build their own tools. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 — Cold open and intro 1:39 — The blank page and building your own inspiration 4:48 — Making things vs building products 6:15 — Falling in love with code: AREA17, CodePen, and the browser 8:12 — Open canvas tools and the tension with code 9:06 — Reverse engineering the happy accident 11:02 — Knowing when it's done 12:12 — A tool or a way of thinking? 13:46 — The chisel vs stochastic design 16:50 — Building at 90% agentic: you're the boss, check the work 18:37 — Why AI struggles with shaders 20:24 — An agent inside the walled garden 21:35 — Charging money and the long closed beta 22:37 — The pixel game, Khroma, and getting the building bug 25:47 — Solo, no VC: "I'm really just trying to be an artist" 26:58 — Advice for designer-builders: solve a sexy problem 28:03 — Selling the workflow, not the outputs 30:15 — Soul, special sauce, and letting the shaders go 32:47 — OpenClaw, MCP, and agents using your tool 37:19 — The controlled agent rollout 38:22 — Orchestrators and mourning the old workflow 40:51 — Outro: go play with it LINKS: Unicorn Studio: https://unicorn.studio George Hastings on X: https://x.com/soulegit FOLLOW ME: Newsletter: https://uxtools.co X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Jamey Gannon is a creative director and Maven instructor teaching designers how to control AI like a creative director. She's running brand sprints, directing image models, and building her own tools while she does it. This conversation covers whether you can actually teach AI taste, the inputs most designers miss when evaluating AI tools, why she took an "AI sabbatical" to get good, and the five-principle framework she uses to direct image models. Want to become an AI Creative Director? Get 10% off Jamey's next cohort with promo code TOMMY here: https://bit.ly/4tJ9nF7 Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 — Cold open: AI is not magic 0:20 — The rise of AI creative directors 1:42 — Can AI learn taste? 4:30 — What most people miss about prompting 7:58 — Brand sprints, speed, and taste 13:01 — How AI fits into real client work 15:37 — A mood-board tool built with AI 22:00 — Jamey's daily creative stack 27:21 — How she found time to learn AI 31:08 — The one-click AI myth 38:39 — Visibility, distribution, and getting chosen 42:00 — The split between brand and product designers 46:04 — Pricing AI-assisted creative work 49:08 — The AI Creative Director framework 56:01 — Why being remembered matters LINKS: Maven (AI Creative Director course): https://bit.ly/4tJ9nF7 FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Kevin Espiritu runs Epic Gardening, one of the clearest examples of a creator-led media business that became much more than content: YouTube, commerce, products, books, and Botanical Interests. This conversation covers why Silicon Valley is suddenly fascinated by new media, what Kevin learned from the old SEO and affiliate-marketing era, why creators over-optimize the wrong things, how Epic Gardening thinks about products, IP, TV viewership, brand deals, channel strategy, and what it actually takes to build media that lasts. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 Media is soil 0:27 Why new media week starts with Kevin 1:38 Silicon Valley discovers creators 3:26 From SEO hacks to durable media 7:03 True outliers are one-of-one 10:19 Why creators get platform-stuck 12:33 Products, IP, and real media businesses 17:25 Brand deals without draining trust 21:03 YouTube is becoming TV 23:22 Format experiments and channel strategy 30:31 Packaging before production 35:07 Scaling beyond the founder 40:03 Tommy's media company, live consult 45:30 Broad vs niche audiences 50:02 Raising money and the next creator companies 56:06 Cultural campfires LINKS: Epic Gardening: https://www.epicgardening.com Botanical Interests: https://www.botanicalinterests.com Kevin Espiritu on X: https://x.com/KevinEspiritu FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom IG: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Tom Krcha founded Pencil.dev after years inside the design tooling cycle, from Flash evangelism to creating Adobe XD, which gives him a rare view of where AI design tools are actually heading. This conversation covers why agents are best at the first 80%, why designers still need the last 20%, what a headless design tool means, how Pencil is building for swarms of AI designers, and why taste comes from still putting your hands in the work. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 Headless agents inside design tools 0:31 Why design tools are splitting 1:36 Tom’s path from Flash to Pencil 5:13 Stochastic vs deterministic design 6:16 Why designers still need the chisel 9:18 How Pencil started inside Cursor 10:19 Designer as orchestrator and final authority 12:05 Canvas, tweaker, and headless agents 14:16 What “headless design tool” means 15:52 Context as the portable briefcase 17:09 — Pencil as an agent-first canvas 20:53 Building tools that build tools 24:52 Why users create 50-artboard files 26:26 Agent specialization and subagents 27:35 Why vibe coding feels like Flash 29:38 Can agents create happy accidents? 31:17 The canvas as a crime scene 32:28 Does AI make you a better author? 35:06 What designers do with 60 agents 36:38 Pencil’s roadmap and the future of iteration 38:22 Taste comes from participation LINKS: Pencil.dev: https://pencil.dev Tom Krcha on X: https://x.com/tomkrcha FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/tommygeoco LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Hannah Ahn is designing healthcare in the exact moment AI is making it easier than ever to take control of our health. She leads design and marketing at Superpower, a health startup building an AI layer across bloodwork, labs, genomics, and medical records. Before that, she came up through product management at Canva, which makes her a useful kind of design leader right now: practical, visual, brand-sensitive, and allergic to treating velocity like the whole job. We talk about designing trust around health data, why Superpower rolled out Claude Code to the design team in January, how she hires for team composition, and why the most underrated signal in a designer right now is still love of the game. Join 100k+ designers reading my newsletter:: https://uxtools.co Come party with me at Config 2026 (June 25): https://luma.com/usxsrlu1 CHAPTERS: 00:00 Designing trust when AI touches your health 03:06 PM to designer was the practical path 06:41 How Superpower runs a five-person design team 10:34 Hiring for composition, not clones 13:55 Love of the game beats credentials 16:46 Rolling Claude Code out in January 21:47 When velocity starts producing slop 24:41 The 1% that makes people trust you 33:23 The junior ladder is breaking 36:31 Designers as architects, not prompt operators LINKS: Superpower: https://superpower.com Hannah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahnhannah/ FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom IG: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Diego Zaks runs design at Ramp, the most AI-installed company in the world. Not kidding, Anthropic showed up at their office because they were using Claude Code more than Anthropic was. We talk about how Ramp got there, how design changes when everyone is a builder, what AI fluency means inside their company, and what he thinks design becomes five years from here. Join 100k+ designers reading my newsletter:: https://uxtools.co Come party with me at Config 2026 (June 25): https://luma.com/usxsrlu1 CHAPTERS: 00:00 The AI-Installed Company 03:50 The Slack Engineer Who Wasn't Human 10:16 The 4 Levels of AI Fluency 13:27 Make Everyone a Designer 22:17 How Ramp Hit 99.5% Installed 28:54 Anthropic Flew to the Office 31:47 Glass: Why Build Your Own AI 49:30 What Design Becomes in 5 Years LINKS: Ramp: https://ramp.com Ramp is hiring: https://ramp.com/careers Ramp Builders blog (engineering): https://builders.ramp.com Ramp Labs on X: https://x.com/RampLabs Diego on X: https://x.com/diegozaks FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom IG: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Amelia Wattenberger spent eight years as a front-end developer before the title on her business card turned into "designer" — she's been at GitHub, now she's building Intent. This conversation covers why developers are mourning their old flow state, the eras of AI coding tools from Copilot to CLI to the app era, why the spec is becoming the new source of truth, and what Amelia means when she says the work is shifting from implementation to intention. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 — The moment the IDE stopped making sense 2:16 — The ladder of abstraction, and a career moving up and down it 7:35 — Where the abstraction stops: you can't automate eating ice cream 10:29 — Developers are mourning their flow state 16:02 — Eras of AI coding tools: Copilot → CLI → the app 22:43 — Living specs vs. static PRDs 29:38 — Inside Intent: workspaces as desks you pick up and put down 39:02 — Plan, implement, review — and where the medium goes next 42:46 — Advice for people too employed to pathfind 44:33 — Outro: where purpose lives when agents do the rest LINKS: Intent: https://www.augmentcode.com/product/intent Amelia Wattenberger on X: https://x.com/Wattenberger Amelia's Musings: https://wattenberger.com/ FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom IG: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Nad Chishtie is the Head of Design at Lovable — the company at the center of the AI coding explosion. He nearly got fired before his first day for emailing his CEO a thesis on why Lovable should be a web browser. Now he's redesigning what design teams look like when everyone in the company can build software. We talked about why half of Lovable's design system is now written for agents instead of people, what happened when they went full "agent maxing" for two weeks (and why background agents failed), and there's this moment where he explains who actually ends up owning vibe coding when it lands inside a big company — and it's not who you'd expect. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 — Almost fired before day one 1:20 — Falling into design by accident 2:39 — The call that changed his career 4:45 — Why generalists felt broken in traditional orgs 5:08 — The "gumption" trait for AI-native work 6:54 — Housekeeping vs cannibalizing yourself 8:23 — End-to-end ownership when everyone can build 10:54 — Spiking fast and killing darlings faster 13:06 — People who couldn't prototype before now can 15:05 — How Lovable's org actually works 19:44 — When enterprise came knocking 22:45 — Hackathons and making room for throwaway work 25:15 — The email that almost got him fired (full story) 28:09 — Apple blocking mobile vibe coding apps 30:27 — Half our design system is written for agents 31:34 — Agent maxing: background agents failed, linters won 33:53 — Eating their own SaaS stack 37:15 — Who actually owns vibe coding in the enterprise 42:43 — What Lovable looks for when hiring designers 43:28 — Why every designer should be a founder right now 46:54 — Territory Studio uses Lovable for sci-fi UIs 48:16 — Thesis: everything will be interoperable ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. ABOUT STATE OF PLAY Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders. LINKS: Lovable: https://lovable.dev Follow Nad: https://x.com/nadonomy FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Facundo Santana and José Rago run Basement Studio - 35 people in Argentina, working with Vercel, Mr. Beast, and Kid Super. They poured actual wine on a surface to get a WebGL texture right. That detail tells you everything about how this shop operates. This conversation covers how they protect quality as they scale, the R&D lab that spun out BasHub and XMP, why they open-source everything, how 30 people pile into a single Slack channel before anything ships, and why Basement Ventures is quietly becoming a real VC fund. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 0:00 — They used actual wine to build a website 0:24 — Who is Basement Studio? 1:36 — From a Buenos Aires apartment to 35 people 5:17 — The Kid Super World project 7:19 — "Would you show it to your mom?" 9:49 — Working with Vercel on Geist and v0 13:20 — How 30 people review work in one Slack channel 16:05 — Open source: BasHub, XMP, and giving back 18:06 — The lab that becomes real products 21:32 — How AI is changing creative studios 24:49 — Basement Ventures: from studio to microfund 28:43 — Investing in the tools you actually use 31:14 — Building a studio that outlasts its founders LINKS: Basement Studio: https://basement.studio Facundo on X: https://x.com/falanfantana José on X: https://x.com/ragojose Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nv7M79lMEnU FOLLOW ME: Newsletter: https://uxtools.co X / Twitter: https://x.com/tommygeoco LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Ben Blumenrose runs Designer Fund, which means he doesn't just see one team figure out AI, he sees how 50+ design teams across the portfolio are absorbing it. This conversation covers what happens when the floor rises, what AI fluency actually looks like inside companies, why the AI ops role is emerging earlier than anyone expected, and how Ben is thinking about keeping his own kids away from the tools — for now. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 1:05 — Process flexibility and conflicting signals 2:27 — What Designer Fund's portfolio is actually doing with AI 5:34 — Enterprise adoption: Carvana vs eBay 6:40 — The AI ops role emerging at hire #4 9:59 — AI Imagineer and redesigning how designers work 12:12 — Junior designers vs early career talent 16:09 — AI native vs AI fluency 21:05 — The 19% slower problem and the factory floor 22:12 — The T-shaped designer gets wider and deeper 25:21 — Evaluating AI fluency in hiring 28:25 — Where the tools are now vs nine months ago 30:06 — The floor is high but the ceiling still matters 31:29 — Moral panic and the value of exceptional designers 33:27 — Does the designer-founder thesis still hold? 35:28 — VC path in a world where one person = a team 37:13 — Phantom competency: extraordinary person or extraordinary tools? 40:24 — Keeping kids away from AI and the Tin Can phone 45:14 — Closing: the bar is moving sideways LINKS: Designer Fund: https://designerfund.com Ben Blumenrose on X: https://x.com/benblumenrose FOLLOW ME: Newsletter: https://uxtools.co X / Twitter: https://x.com/tommygeoco LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Josh Puckett went goblin mode for four weeks to ship Interface Craft — a course where you pick a library card, sign your name on it, and insert it into a web interface that unlocks everything behind it. He's been designing for close to 20 years. Dropbox. Wealthfront. He's mentored and placed hundreds of designers through Upper Study. He invests into early-stage tools companies through Combine VC. We talk phantom competency, uncommon care, why a chef who cooks one new dish a week should probably find a different career, and whether "AI native" is a real skill or just the new "mobile designer." Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - "You have to demonstrate high slope" 00:14 - Who is Josh Puckett 01:53 - Coming out of the Interface Craft launch 04:03 - Goblin mode & going dark to build 04:45 - The Wealthfront chapter: 4-person design team 05:49 - Has design actually changed? 08:22 - Phantom competency & AI as apprenticeship 09:34 - LLMs as tutors: where they help, where they miss 11:20 - What are you telling designers right now? 12:32 - Uncommon effort vs. uncommon taste 16:19 - Discovery has changed: social as a portfolio 19:18 - "AI native" is just the new "mobile designer" 21:50 - High slope: what it looks like 24:10 - The playground pattern 25:47 - What to do with the anxiety 29:31 - Uncommon care: just give a shit 31:44 - Shot selection: where to invest your time 35:31 - What multi-perspective gives you 37:30 - Product design is not art 38:42 - Why designers are the least happy with AI 39:52 - One post away from changing your life ABOUT STATE OF PLAY Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders. LINKS: Interface Craft: https://interfacecraft.dev/ Upper Study: https://upperstudy.com Follow Josh: https://x.com/joshpuckett FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Jenny Wen led design on FigJam, one of the most playful tools to hit design in a decade. Now she's at Anthropic designing Claude. Not just the model, but the product that millions use daily. What I didn't expect: she sees these as the same problem. Both hide serious technical complexity behind simple, obvious interfaces. We talked about why designers are shipping production code now, why "UX designer" as a role feels outdated, and this framework she keeps coming back to: automate toil, augment creativity. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - From FigJam to Claude: same design problem, higher stakes 04:52 - How much model complexity should users actually see? 09:05 - Prototypes over docs in AI product development 16:04 - Why long-term design vision is harder in AI labs 21:27 - The canvas-tool category Jenny is watching 26:30 - Is chat UI over? (Jenny says no) 33:40 - From print magazine dreams to product design 42:03 - Will I ever recreate that FigJam magic? 47:51 - Is "UX designer" becoming outdated? 49:22 - Taste vs execution: the distinction more designers need LINKS: Claude: https://claude.ai Jenny Wen: https://x.com/jenny_wen FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Steve Ruiz was about to start at Adobe. Bags packed. Job accepted. Start date: Monday. Then he looked at what was happening with his side project — an open-source canvas tool he'd been building — and 200,000 people were using it every month. Hundreds of sponsors had put up 00,000. Two major companies wanted to build on it. He called Adobe and said he wasn't coming. That project became TLDraw. Steve's background isn't in software — it's in fine art. He has a masters in it. He spent thousands of hours studying ink on paper — how it moves, how it bleeds, how it dries. And when he later wrote the algorithms for digital ink, he had this deep physical knowledge that most engineers just don't have. We talk about why he killed his own SaaS product to focus on the SDK, why he thinks craft only matters when you're building for high-agency users, and his surprisingly simple answer to the question every open-source founder faces — how do you actually make money? Get the UX Tools Newsletter Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Cold open 01:30 - Art school to open source 04:32 - 10,000 hours of unmotivated work 06:08 - Finding ideas without external validation 08:22 - The content-first experimentation loop 11:30 - Why software is easier than art 14:42 - Most software experiences haven't been discovered yet 17:10 - Prototyping obsession and the infinite canvas 17:47 - 200,000 users before you could even log in 19:14 - Make Real: the first vibe code tool 21:13 - Optimize for the points of contact 23:51 - Killing the SaaS to ship the SDK 29:19 - The open source money problem 30:03 - "Just charge for it" — beating React Flow 32:12 - When craft actually matters (high-agency users) 35:57 - What's most fulfilling about building TLDraw ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. ABOUT STATE OF PLAY A narrative podcast about building things that matter told through deep conversations with designers and builders. LINKS: UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co TLDraw: https://tldraw.com Follow Steve: https://x.com/steveruizok FOLLOW ME: YouTube: https://youtube.com/@designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Ben Fryc doubled his freelance salary in a year. Then his wife told him, on vacation in San Francisco, that he was working too hard. He quit freelancing and never went back. Ben taught himself Cinema 4D during COVID and started designing a physical keyboard in Figma. Now he's a household name in motion design, works at Framer, and takes on all manner of passion projects. We get into the experimentation crash loop of learning 3D tools, why he treats passion projects like hobbies, and what he tells the young creative who wants to do it all. Get our newsletter: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS 00:00 — Intro 01:45 — Comic books, GeoCities, and why Ben wanted to make video games 04:40 — Five years at Mango Languages and the 3D pivot during COVID 07:20 — "You don't need to know everything about a tool" 09:26 — The Polygon Runway course and finding your people 12:51 — The Knob: fantastical devices that probably can't exist 15:33 — Commerce vs. passion and treating creativity like a hobby 17:59 — Photoshop muscle memory and tools that refuse to die 19:47 — Storyboarding as the bridge between static and motion 21:36 — What motion tools still hide behind right-clicks 24:28 — From Figma mockups to firmware in C 29:45 — Moments of delight: what makes motion design captivating 34:20 — The Play-Doh people nobody liked 35:25 — Where AI actually helps creative work 37:32 — Advice for the young creative who wants to do it all 40:38 — "I doubled my salary freelancing. Then my wife said stop." 43:53 — Outro LINKS Ben Fryc — https://x.com/benfryc Framer — https://framer.com FOLLOW ME Twitter/X — https://x.com/designertom LinkedIn — https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco Newsletter — https://uxtools.co

Andy Allen raised 5 million, built a hardware-software company, had a decent exit, and then walked away from all of it. Most founders would double down and scale. Andy did the opposite. He started Not Boring Software — fully bootstrapped, no investors, making apps that feel like nothing else on your phone. What Andy is doing isn't just different, it's proof that there's another path most designers don't even know exists. You don't have to raise money, scale fast or break things. You can just make something beautiful with a point of view where people can feel you in the work. A refreshing conversation for those tired of the ambient noise lately. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Walking away from 5 million 02:27 - Camera app becomes biggest launch yet 04:04 - Why speed is overrated for quality work 07:25 - Fully bootstrapped vs VC funding pressure 09:17 - Physical prototypes and 3D printing process 13:09 - Avoiding AI hype, focusing on interface innovation 15:45 - Game design principles in everyday apps 18:36 - The "kid in the cockpit" design philosophy 20:49 - Creative recovery and exploration process 22:49 - Leaving VC startup world for sustainable business 25:19 - Defining "enough" as a company and creator 28:44 - Being a beacon for other designers 32:11 - What's missing in design storytelling 36:51 - Hands in the clay vs management roles LINKS: Not Boring Software: https://notbor.ing Andy Allen: https://x.com/asallen Not Boring Camera App (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/not-boring-camera/id6737783441 FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Stephen Haney has been quietly building design tools for years. Now he's betting that the canvas wants to talk to your agents. Paper just shipped MCP support. I've been playing with it. It's wild. We talked about why he thinks the future stack is just three tools, why his team canceled Figma four months ago, and what happens when your production site becomes your source of truth for design. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Everything changed in nine months 03:57 - Where the puck is going 05:08 - Figma's walled garden problem 06:18 - Agent + Code Review + Canvas 11:42 - Did agents kill collaboration? 15:18 - They canceled Figma 4 months ago 17:27 - What MCP actually means 21:03 - Live demo: production → canvas → code LINKS: Paper: https://paper.design Stephen: https://x.com/stephenhaney FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: / itsdesignertom LinkedIn: / tommygeoco

Weber Wong was supposed to be a venture capitalist. Then he realized he wouldn't back himself, so he quit, moved to New York, and got a job at a coffee shop. Now he's building Flora, one of the most uniquely-positioned AI tools for creative teams. We talked about why node-based tools have such a bad reputation (and how Flora's fixing it), what "anti-slop" actually means when you're building AI creative tools, and the moment Pentagram reached out and he realized he'd accidentally built something useful. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - "They've been cooking" 02:11 - From VC to coffee shop to Flora 05:37 - The pain cave vs. Plato's cave 08:38 - Poetry as the entry point 11:34 - First time using an LLM 13:26 - "The world's most powerful creative operating system" 16:21 - Commerce vs. art — does it have to be at odds? 19:12 - A Berkeley professor and Cat's Cradle 20:25 - Fine-tuning GPT-2 on his own poetry 25:42 - Why node-based? 28:50 - The iceberg: low barrier, high ceiling 32:56 - What "anti-slop" actually means 40:48 - When Pentagram reached out 44:51 - Advice for the next generation of creatives LINKS: Flora: https://flora.ai Weber Wong: https://x.com/weberwongwong FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Pietro Schirano built one of the first AI search engines before Perplexity existed. He created Cloud Engineer, an open source tool with 11,000+ GitHub stars that got him hired at Anthropic. Now he's building @magicpathai (check it out at https://magicpath.ai). We talked about their Figma Connect feature that went viral last week, why he thinks vibe coding is "fast food" (and when you need slow food instead), and there's this moment where he describes two AI plugins combining to do something he never programmed — and how it changed how he thinks about what these models can do. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - "This thing seems like it understands" 02:03 - Designer to engineer pipeline 02:29 - The urge to create 05:17 - Before Designer GPT 08:35 - The moment two plugins combined on their own 10:40 - "I shipped four apps in 14 days" 11:52 - Bell Labs reached out about Cloud Engineer 13:41 - Will everyone build their own software? 18:41 - Where prototyping fits now 20:01 - How enterprise teams use MagicPath 24:51 - Vibe coding is fast food. This is slow food. 27:13 - Figma Connect and the viral reception 30:49 - What makes a good canvas editor 35:05 - Live demo: Figma to working code 39:48 - Extracting design systems automatically 50:32 - "You're living in the future" 52:47 - Advice for overwhelmed designers 55:09 - "If we remove the love people have for their work, we fail" ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. ABOUT STATE OF PLAY Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders. LINKS: UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co MagicPath: https://magicpath.ai Follow Pietro: https://x.com/skirano FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Sara Vienna is the Chief Design Officer at Metalab. Slack, Uber, Coinbase... the list of products that came out of that shop is GOAT'd. We talked about how they actually ship that work, their Tarantino process, why measuring velocity is "absolute bullshit," and a culture rule called "kind not nice" that changed how I think about feedback. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - "Designers are at a huge advantage" 01:58 - Learning Photoshop because tobacco companies lost a lawsuit 04:54 - "I was a really shitty designer first" 08:45 - Speed vs quality: earning space for the work you're proud of 12:05 - How MetaLab ships consistently 15:21 - The Tarantino process explained 17:16 - Building a culture of candid feedback 19:45 - "Kind not nice" 20:26 - Making space for play 26:45 - Burnout and what actually helps 30:05 - How MetaLab uses AI 35:07 - Designers marry the head and the heart 38:47 - Team structures: smaller but mightier 41:59 - T-shaped designers and specialists 44:34 - Why leaders need to stay in the work 48:00 - Advice for first-time design leaders ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. ABOUT STATE OF PLAY Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders. LINKS: UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co Follow Sara Vienna: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saravienna/ MetaLab: https://metalab.com FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco

Lee Black has been designing for 25 years. He made those Figma pills with goldfish swimming inside. He also ran an app company that nearly broke him. We talked about chasing money that never made him happy, why his tool stack hasn't really changed in a decade, and what happens when you master your tools so deeply that the rules start to bend. Get the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me) Join 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co CHAPTERS: 00:00 - "It's not about learning everything" 01:59 - Taking apart toys to understand how they work 04:35 - Speed vs. quality 07:19 - Music came first 09:29 - His tool stack (it's simpler than you think) 11:03 - "It hasn't really changed that much" 12:44 - ChatGPT as an ideas buddy 14:40 - How Midlife Engineering was born 16:10 - What "polish" means to him 18:17 - The Matrix scene that started the pills 20:36 - "I want to put a fucking goldfish in there" 21:09 - Designing with restraint 23:27 - Dieter Rams as jazz, not gospel 26:03 - Protecting taste when you scale 31:05 - The app company that broke him 48:16 - Advice for designers struggling right now 51:57 - If nothing mattered, what would you work on? ABOUT TOMMY GEOCO I spent 15+ years in tech and design. Former military. Father of five. Now building Internet Enjoyers, a weird little media + product studio rediscovering soul in creative tech. ABOUT STATE OF PLAY Host Tommy Geoco discovers what fuels the internet's most interesting designers and builders. LINKS: UX Tools Newsletter: https://uxtools.co Follow Lee Black: https://x.com/mrblackstudio 1042 Studio: https://1042.studio Midlife Engineering: https://midlife.engineering FOLLOW ME: X / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom Instagram: https://instagram.com/itsdesignertom LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco