Near Future Podcast

Tom and Jonny sit down with Frank Bach, a product designer at Anthropic who built his own design tool during onboarding week. They dig into why he prototypes in HTML instead of Figma, unpack his Swiss Army knife career from Red Bull to Headspace to Instagram, and get his advice for designers feeling the AI squeeze. Key takeaways Build the tool while you build the work. Frank made his design tool feature by feature during his first project at Anthropic, adding each part the moment he hit the need for it. A share function when he wanted to show his PM, then a Loom-style recording feature the next day, camera feed and all, in about three prompts. Load a control and a variant side by side and click them in sync. The most unusual thing he built steps two prototypes through the same screens on a single click. He is hoping Figma steals the idea. Most people inside a company have never seen the screens they own. Everyone at Headspace got the app free, so nobody had laid eyes on an upsell screen in years. A live side-by-side of current state and proposed state is what gave leadership the confidence to green-light the work. Begin anywhere. Frank has turned John Cage’s line into a working design principle. What matters is having something to click, see and feel, and the details get figured out along the way. Variety compounds differently to mastery. Energy drinks at Red Bull, meditation at Headspace, then social media at Instagram: every jump was chosen on purpose. He calls himself a Swiss Army knife of design, and reckons it is what makes someone stand out in an interview panel. Learning the tools on the company dime is a real benefit worth asking for. DoorDash set a goal it called Design 2028, where every designer becomes a design engineer, and gave people the time and space to get there. Frank admits he complained about it at first and is now grateful he did not have to learn it in his own hours. A lot of people working hard on something is a reason for empathy, and the metric still decides whether it worked. Frank got pushback from a former colleague for publicly critiquing a feature. His read: designers who want to talk business have to be able to talk about failures like adults, because there is not a lot of emotion in business. Do the next project’s pre-work before you get to it. Frank queues up a foundation on the Tuesday so that Monday’s project starts from something rather than a blank page. Half of it may be throwaway, and a PM running agents can now come back in a morning with what used to take a two-week sprint. Solve one of your own problems and it becomes the standout project in your portfolio. For anyone in an organisation with no AI budget and no guidance from above, that is Frank’s route through. A grocery list app or a plugin for a digital guitar amp both count, imperfect included. Old, slightly bad technology is a good counterweight to this pace. Frank keeps a five-inch black-and-white Quasar countertop television on his desk, one channel and a radio dial. He calls it poorly designed and perfectly designed at the same time, the same pull that took people back to vinyl. Close the 100 tabs and learn one thing today. His answer to feeling overwhelmed in an AI-first company. Nobody has landed on a perfect process yet, which means the process is still yours to shape, and he found that anxiety and excitement flipped over into each other almost overnight. Chapters 0:04 — Bureau, Edenspiekermann, Headspace, Instagram, DoorDash: the run-up to Anthropic 2:18 — A day at Anthropic, where a 12-month roadmap makes no sense 4:32 — The LinkedIn post that started all this 5:03 — A quiet onboarding week and an enterprise Claude account 7:46 — “How do I share this?” A share function, then a Loom feature, in three prompts 9:14 — Shortcut keys, screen glimmers and museum wallpapers 10:18 — Accidentally rebuilding Claude Design, backwards 11:24 — Sunshine Shop, WooCommerce and total cowboy mode 12:33 — Will the Frank tool still be around in 12 months? 13:37 — Two prototypes side by side, clicking in sync 15:41 — Where the line sits between human and AI 16:43 — Mega tools, workspaces and a live command line 18:54 — Energy drinks to meditation to social media: the Swiss Army knife career 21:07 — Mastery versus invention, and naming the Frank Mega Tool 23:52 — DoorDash’s Design 2028, and a quarterly meetup as a forcing function 27:30 — Accountants, lawyers, and doing your taxes with an AI tool 29:19 — The weirdest design processes he has come across 32:19 — John Cage: begin anywhere 34:13 — Critiquing an old colleague’s feature, and the fallout 37:00 — Advice for designers with no budget and no backing 41:14 — Mathematicians, art, Spotify and Suno 42:55 — Quickfire: AGI takes over, what do you do with the time? 43:59 — Quickfire: the five-inch Quasar TV that is perfectly badly designed 45:59 — Staying grounded when the pace is this intense 48:41 — Close your 100 tabs and learn one thing today Mentioned in the episode Frank Frank Bach’s website — francoisbach.com Frank on LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/francoisbach Frank on X — x.com/zendadddy Sunshine Shop, his creative collective and e-commerce store — sunshineshop.la LA Design & Dev, the Los Angeles meetup he organises — ladesignanddev.com Companies and past roles Anthropic — anthropic.com Bureau, the design studio Frank co-founded and later closed Edenspiekermann, where Red Bull was the main client — edenspiekermann.com Red Bull — redbull.com Headspace — headspace.com Instagram — instagram.com DoorDash — doordash.com People Jenny Wen, Head of Design at Claude, whose Hatch Conference talk Jonny saw — jennywen.ca Andy Puddicombe, the English co-founder of Headspace — headspace.com/content/video/meet-andy-puddicombe/923 John Cage, composer, source of “Begin anywhere” — johncage.org Tools and products discussed Claude — claude.ai Claude Design — anthropic.com/news/claude-design-anthropic-labs Figma — figma.com Cursor — cursor.com Loom — loom.com Sketch — sketch.com Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop — adobe.com WordPress — wordpress.org WooCommerce — woocommerce.com Dropbox — dropbox.com GitHub — github.c...

Tom and Jonny catch up after the summer with a roundup of August’s four guests, from Monzo’s fake app to Poem/1’s self-learning fulfilment agent. They ask whether designers are giving away their leverage to agents, answer a listener who wants the show to branch out, and share what they built, including Labyrinth rebuilt in two hours. Key takeaways Being deliberate about what you give away is most of the job now. Every August guest drew the line somewhere different, and every one of them drew it. Jonny’s version: even when it is slower, and even when an AI would do it better, make sure the decisions being made are still yours to make. Make one decision with an agent and fifty get made for you. They arrive interlinked, so working out which ones landed and why costs more than piling on another prompt. You end up with work that is technically yours and nothing in your head connecting it. A learning loop is an agent that remembers its own mistakes. Matt Webb’s Poem/1 fulfilment agent handled queries from 700 units by turning each new exception into a standing rule. Jonny’s caveat is that the abstract version convinces nobody, which is why “everyone should have agents” lands so flat. Agents accumulate cruft, so prune them. Jonny moved his main agent from NanoClaw version one to version two this week and deleted about half the notes it had written to itself over six months. What survived reads as concise instructions instead of six months of contradictions. When everyone can make the impressive thing, impressive moves. GPT-6 Astra put one-shot 3D and cloned games within reach of anyone with a prompt. Jonny’s yardstick for where the value went: his dad, a vicar, could now get further on a demo video than Jonny could have managed five years ago. Understand the grain of the medium you are designing against. Randy Hunt’s framing was the old-school graphic designer collaborating with the printer to get intent onto the page. Having an agent write your code is a different skill from understanding what that code does to your design. AI writing feels thin because the thinking happened somewhere else. Matt Webb can feed a model everything he has ever published and still fail to stand behind what comes back. It may convince everyone else, and it is still not something you can point at and call yours. Build the silly project yourself or you will never learn the tool. Demos online tell you nothing about where the limits sit. Tom is close to downloading Blender for exactly this reason, and Jonny built a full 3D Labyrinth in two hours partly to find out what two hours now buys. The impressionists are the closest analogue to this moment. Photography arrived, exact landscapes stopped being the point, and painters who already had mastery chose what to break. Whoever does best next will understand the technology underneath well enough to bend it. Skills get better when you rewrite their output by hand. Tom burned a month of Claude Fable 5.1 credits in half an hour, then rewrote both research skills’ results manually and fed those back as the template. A 10,000-word essay he would never read became a 400-word list of links. The craft question matters more than the job title. Tim, a listener, asked whether the show could branch out beyond senior design folks. Yes, with a lens: creative technologists, engineers, product people and founders are all fair game, as long as the question stays how AI is shifting the role and craft of design. Chapters 0:04 — Intro: back to school, and a cosy September episode 0:59 — Rounding up August’s four guests 1:38 — James Storer: Monzo’s fake app and its biggest token spender 3:29 — Randy Hunt: Notion, SVA, and two full-time roles 4:36 — The printing press, and the grain of the medium 6:30 — Patrick Lewis: four times a founding designer 7:57 — T-Rex arms, and shaping a role around what you enjoy 8:51 — Matt Webb and an inventor’s practice 9:49 — Poem/1’s self-learning fulfilment loop 11:31 — The Gmail triage loop Tom hasn’t built yet 12:43 — OpenClaw, and agents that rewrite their own memory 13:36 — Lobotomising an agent onto NanoClaw version two 16:59 — Where every guest drew their own line 17:22 — Are we losing our leverage to agents? 18:30 — GPT-6 Astra, and what happens when everyone can do it 22:20 — Make one decision, get fifty 24:10 — Is design an art or a science? 26:47 — Inventors, not technologists 28:44 — Why you have to build the silly project yourself 30:20 — The impressionists, photography, and our toddler phase 31:50 — Listener feedback: branch out beyond senior design folks? 33:45 — Grading the podcast, and 36 YouTube subscribers 36:29 — Design at the core, but a wider cast 39:40 — Labyrinth, one-shotted in two hours 42:45 — Burning a month of Claude Fable credits on skills 45:40 — Consolidating everything into one Dia browser 47:39 — Design leadership circles 49:12 — Hatch Berlin, Brighton, and save the date for 22 October 53:16 — Wrap up Mentioned in the episode The August episodes we round up Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo) — share.transistor.fm/s/ab6c1806 Ep #13: Randy Hunt (Notion & SVA) — share.transistor.fm/s/29c8593b Ep #14: Patrick Lewis (Klay) — share.transistor.fm/s/8d030297 Ep #15: Matt Webb (Inanimate) — share.transistor.fm/s/c39062f5 People James Storer, Senior Product Design Lead at Monzo — linkedin.com/in/james-storer-5b543625 Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA — randyjhunt.com Patrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay — patricknlewis.com Matt Webb, writing at Interconnected — interconnected.org Christine Røde, product designer at The Browser Company — linkedin.com/in/christinerode Lenny Rachitsky, host of Lenny’s Podcast — lennysnewsletter.com/podcast Tim, the listener who wrote in with the feedback Companies and past roles Monzo — monzo.com Notion — notion.com SVA MFA Design — design.sva.edu Klay — klay.vision Inanimate, Matt Webb’s current company — inanimate.tech The Browser Company — thebrowser.company Tools, models and products discussed GPT-6 Astra — openai.com/index/gpt-6-astra Claude Fable 5.1 — anthropic.com/claude/fable OpenClaw — openclaw.ai NanoClaw — nanoclaw.dev Grok Bot — x.ai Cursor — cursor.com Dia, the browser by The Browser Company — diabrowser.com Blender — blender.org Poem/1, Matt Webb’s poetry clock — poem.town Labyrinth, the Ravensburger board game — ravensburger.co.uk Jonny’s own projects Labyrinth online, built in two hours — labyrinth.jonny.ooda.run Ooda, secure collaborative hosting for teams — ooda.run designtools.fyi, run by an agent that maintains itself — designtools.fyi Events Mostly Working, the London design mornings Tom runs — lu.ma/mostly-working Hatch, Berlin, 16–18 September, where Jonny is speaking on the 18th — hatchconference.com design + AI, Brighton, 24–25 September, where Tom and Jonny run a workshop — designplusaisummit.com About the pod

Tom and Jonny sit down with inventor Matt Webb, the man behind Berg, Little Printer and the poetry clock Poem/1. They dig into how he built a practice around human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, unpack the retro charm of his ageing AI clock, and go behind the scenes of the Claude-powered agents running Poem/1's Kickstarter fulfilment. Key takeaways Shape your role around your practice. Matt focuses on human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, rather than chasing a job title. AI is a rubber duck, not a co-writer. Its value is helping you think aloud without replacing your voice. Universal Basic Agency. AI can help non-experts cross the single technical hurdle blocking an idea. Agents can turn exceptions into policy. Poem/1's fulfilment agent proposes reusable rules for a shared SOP, so problems are solved once. Reports can reveal more than dashboards. Daily narratives surface patterns you did not know to track. Make deliberate time to learn new tools. Matt blocks at least a day a week because the gains compound. Building on a model means borrowed time. Poem/1 relies on a retiring model whose strange tone newer models cannot reproduce. Poem/1 is an invisible social network. All 700 clocks show the same poem at the same moment worldwide. Chapters 0:04 — Intro and Matt's career throughline 5:56 — Leaving leadership to build 7:28 — AI and unblocking imagination 13:02 — Keeping AI out of your voice 17:35 — ChatGPT and tldraw as a rubber duck 24:12 — The imagination bottleneck 29:04 — Universal Basic Agency 34:38 — The story behind Poem/1 44:44 — A retro AI product and invisible network 52:08 — Agentic Kickstarter fulfilment 1:02:54 — Reports versus dashboards 1:06:40 — Quickfire questions Mentioned in the episode Matt Matt Webb's blog, Interconnected — interconnected.org Unoffice Hours (his 30-minute call booking system) — interconnected.org/home/2020/09/24/unoffice_hours Acts Not Facts, his consulting practice — actsnotfacts.com Companies and past roles Berg — the design studio Matt co-founded with Jack Schulze and Matt Jones Google Research R/GA Ventures Inanimate — Matt's current startup — inanimate.tech , newsletter at news.inanimate.tech Betaworks — betaworks.com People Jack Schulze — Berg co-founder Matt Jones — Berg co-founder Daniel Fogg — Matt's co-founder at Inanimate Alex Hulme — founder and creative director of Approach, the industrial design agency that helped bring Poem/1 to market — approach.studio , Poem/1 case study at approach.studio/work/poem1 Tom Armitage — helped with Poem/1's firmware — tomarmitage.com Tools and products discussed ChatGPT — chatgpt.com Claude Code — claude.com/product/claude-code tldraw — tldraw.com BackerKit — backerkit.com Floship — floship.com M5Stick, made by M5Stack — m5stack.com Friend, the AI pendant — friend.com Matt's own projects, mentioned Little Printer, made at Berg — berglondon.com/projects/bergcloud Poem/1, Matt's poetry clock — poem.town Galactic Compass, the app that points to the centre of the galaxy — apps.apple.com/gb/app/galactic-compass A 270kg book vending machine that tweeted when it sold a book About the pod Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Find us at https://nearfuture.works

Tom and Jonny sit down with Patrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay. They dig into why "good" and "right" aren't the same thing, how AI has flattened the design experience curve, the pun-named playground he built to prototype without baggage, and why saying no might be the most important design skill right now. Chapters 0:04 — Meet Patrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay 1:05 — Building Clay: an AI music app made by musicians, not sales bros 2:27 — Content still has to resonate with humans, AI-generated or not 6:27 — Consistency builds trust: designing believable AI video avatars 10:16 — Figma bulls and bears: Jonny's rebuy vs. Patrick's near-total exit 12:37 — Where Figma still earns its place: branding and early sketches 13:42 — Founding designer for the fourth time: getting context fast with AI 16:51 — Building a pun-named playground to prototype without baggage 19:17 — Layoffs, flattened experience curves, and adopt-or-die 27:09 — Knowing yourself, saying no, and the founding designer's tightrope 36:44 — Capacity has grown, but so has the pressure to do it all 39:23 — Quickfire: chairs over AGI, decision-making he won't outsource, and granola Patrick Lewis — https://patrickjlewis.com Tools and products discussed Figma — https://www.figma.com Claude — https://claude.ai ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com GitHub — https://github.com Kit (newsletter platform) — https://kit.com Granola — https://www.granola.ai Find us at nearfuture.works

Tom and Jonny sit down with Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA. They dig into why speed and quality were never a trade-off, unpack the weekend build that turned into a two-week code review, and go behind the scenes of how a graduate design programme is rewriting itself around AI. Chapters 0:04 — Two institutions, one calendar: how Randy keeps both plates spinning 3:00 — Agents that absorb the busy work so he can stay close to the craft 5:29 — Dogfooding vs. knowing the competition: you have to do the work twice 8:22 — One place for everything, or a walled garden? Jonny re-buys Notion 11:10 — Battle-tested vs. multi-model: why living in one suite stops working 13:22 — Good, fast, cheap: Randy refuses to pick two 15:17 — Quality isn't the screen being right, it's how many people hit it wrong 19:05 — The handoff is a telephone game: why passing the baton kills the work 22:52 — Designers were shipping production code before the coding agents arrived 25:42 — He built it in a weekend. The PR took two weeks to review 29:35 — Writing code got cheap. Writing good code didn't 30:46 — Emergent chat vs. written-down skills: making the system legible to everyone 33:07 — Working in the open so you can see how your colleagues actually prompt 35:42 — Build it yourself or wait for someone to sell it: micro tool making 39:04 — The barbell curriculum: what endures vs. what has to stay malleable 43:20 — Directing a photographer vs. directing a model: same skill, different studio 44:57 — Where's the punk rock student who refuses to use AI? 47:58 — He went home for the summer and built an ERP for his dad's warehouse 49:33 — Quick fire: AGI takes over, so what do you actually do with the time? 51:37 — Wrap up, and a promise to come back for the music conversation Mentioned in the episode Randy Randy J. Hunt — https://www.randyjhunt.com Randy on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyjhunt/ Product Design for the Web (New Riders, 2013) — https://www.randyjhunt.com SVA MFA Design, where Randy is chair — https://design.sva.edu Randy speaking at Hatch Conference, Berlin, September — https://www.hatchconference.com/speakers/randy-hunt Companies and past roles Notion — https://www.notion.com Notion Agents, his current favourite app — https://www.notion.com/product/agents Etsy — https://www.etsy.com Artsy — https://www.artsy.net Grab — https://www.grab.com Deliveroo — https://deliveroo.co.uk Uber Eats — https://www.ubereats.com Tools and products discussed Claude — https://claude.ai Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code Claude Cowork — https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-cowork MCP (Model Context Protocol) — https://modelcontextprotocol.io ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com Google Gemini — https://gemini.google.com Google Workspace / Google Sheets — https://workspace.google.com Slack — https://slack.com Figma — https://www.figma.com Weavy, acquired by Figma and relaunched as Figma Weave — https://www.figma.com/blog/welcome-weavy-to-figma/ Paper — https://paper.design Pencil — https://pen.dev Events Hatch Conference, Berlin, September — https://www.hatchconference.com

Tom and Jonny sit down with James Storer, who leads design in Monzo's AI and personalisation collective and is the biggest token burner in the whole company. They dig into the fake Monzo his team built to prototype with, why he stepped off the leadership track to get back in the tools, and what he went to Config to ask Figma. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introducing James Storer 02:12 Why go back to doing the work after leading teams 10:13 The founder's fight: ship it, or make it better 14:47 Being a loud mouth turned out to be the skill 18:35 AI lowers the floor, so who raises the ceiling 25:30 Everyone an expert in everything, or still not enough hours 28:01 Building hardware when you can't solder 30:07 Should there be an app store with one user 33:43 Is the value the software, or making it with your kid 36:08 The UNO clone his six-year-old wanted to explode 40:01 A 69-year-old vicar and the church website 41:31 The messy middle: AI inside a regulated bank 43:44 A fake Monzo with fake money 49:36 Handoff should be a handshake 54:16 "What will you do to make me open you every day?" 60:39 Quickfire 68:31 Wrap PEOPLE James Storer — Design Lead, AI & Personalisation, Monzo https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesstorer/ Avi Ashkenazi, Deel — previous Near Future guest, on raising the floor and the ceiling https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviashkenazi/ Jake Knapp — author of Sprint — https://www.jakeknapp.com Simon from Morse — spoke alongside James at Mostly Working https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-amor/ COMPANIES Monzo — https://monzo.com Deliveroo — https://deliveroo.co.uk Freetrade — https://freetrade.io Habito — https://www.habito.com Klarna — https://www.klarna.com Twist — James's design agency Jitty — the house-buying startup James co-founded TOOLS AND PRODUCTS MENTIONED Cursor — https://cursor.com Claude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-code ChatGPT — https://chatgpt.com Figma — https://figma.com Figma Make, Figma Weave, code layers — announced at Config FigJam — https://figma.com/figjam Lovable — https://lovable.dev Stitch — https://stitch.withgoogle.com NotebookLM — https://notebooklm.google.com Notion — https://notion.com Linear — https://linear.app Abstract — version control for Sketch files Sketch — https://sketch.com Three.js — https://threejs.org React Native — https://reactnative.dev Nano Banana — Google's image model, via Gemini Hex — open-source dictation app Wispr Flow — https://wisprflow.ai Wabi — personal app builder for iPhone MeatLayer — agents paying humans for real-world tasks — https://meatlayer.ai M5Stack — small dev boards — https://m5stack.com Lumi / ROLI — light-up keyboards, now open sourced — https://roli.com BigQuery — https://cloud.google.com/bigquery ALSO REFERENCED Config 2026 — Figma's conference — https://config.figma.com Mostly Working — Tom's design and AI meetup in London https://luma.com/mostly-working Sprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz UNO — the card game James and his son cloned as "Duo" NEAR FUTURE Podcast — https://nearfuture.works/podcast Get in touch — podcast@nearfuture.works

Tom and Jonny are back for a duo episode after a month of guest interviews — Jonny has just about got the internet back after a house move and a camping trip. They reflect on what the recent guest run has taught them, dig into Backyard Designers Club and the hooha it sparked, and talk through why design and engineering leadership is such a hard place to be right now. Plus: Tom built a 3D chess game for his 5-year-old using Opus 5 and Three.js, and Jonny's Ooda gets a quiet YC moment. Chapters 0:04 — Intro: Jonny's back (and has internet again) 3:44 — Reflections on a month of guest episodes 8:20 — The common thread: leaders who build 17:00 — AI raises the floor, not the ceiling — but the ceiling hasn't moved 21:35 — The AI slop problem: Hacker News, Substack's detector & LinkedIn's report button 22:08 — Ellipsis and the proof-of-work problem for human writing 26:10 — Ini's wireless-in-the-browser project: the opposite of slop 21:32 — Backyard Designers Club: craft, sound design and game-like delight 29:13 — How fast an original idea can be cloned 31:21 — The hoo-ha: exclusion, community claims, and what a community actually is 38:53 — Who's on Backyard Designers — and what it says about design's visible/invisible divide 41:35 — Engineering leadership burnout: Gergely Orosz's three reasons leaders are quitting 44:35 — Is design leadership 12 months behind engineering on the same trajectory? 51:57 — Tom's AI experiments: agent skill pack + a 3D underwater chess game 1:00:01 — Jonny's Ooda project gets a YC validation moment 1:00:42 — What's coming up: Build workshop, Wednesday event with Christine Røde (The Browser Company), Brighton in September Useful Links Backyard Designers Club — https://backyarddesigners.club Broke Ass Designers — the commentary/reaction version - https://brokeass-designers.fly.dev/ Ellipsus — proof-of-work writing tool https://ellipsus.com/ Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) — engineering leadership trends post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gergelyorosz_interesting-recent-trend-im-observing-share-7487619068187852800-ceQ2/ Ooda — Jonny's internal tool hosting project — https://ooda.run Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Near Future Build Workshop (Aug 13th): https://nearfuture.works/build Find us at https://nearfuture.works

This week Jonny moves house, so Tom hosts solo. He’s joined by Ini Abiodun, lead product designer at AirOps, to discuss designing inside a fast-moving AI startup and the systems she’s built to move faster. Ini explains how her 90-day onboarding plan collapsed almost immediately due to pace, and how internal AI assistants like Fantino and Clara helped her learn the codebase, accelerate a listening tour, and ship early, including a widely adopted UX writing “skill” that encodes brand voice, product context, and content rules while diagnosing and rewriting copy. She shares how she spends significant time scaling design via cross-functional relationship-building, joining eval conversations to reduce user cognitive load, and enabling engineers through design reviews. Ini also describes her personal “Oracle” knowledge base in Obsidian/Claude for communication, stakeholder context, daily/weekly routines, and performance tracking. The episode closes with Palmwine Wireless, her interactive 1950s-style online radio broadcasting AI-generated Nigerian instrumentals across decades, plus quick-fire questions. (00:00) - Intro & Guest Welcome (00:52) - Joining AirOps: The 90-Day Plan (05:13) - Building the AI Content Design Skill (12:38) - Product Design vs. Design Operations (20:39) - Neurodivergence, Communication & Knowledge Systems (32:04) - Daily Reflection Practices (36:22) - Palmwine Wireless: Building a Nigerian Radio (43:41) - Sound Design Deep Dive (49:26) - Building the Music Library with Suno (52:45) - Quick-Fire Questions (59:00) - Outro & Thanks ## Mentioned in the episode - [Domingo Widen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/domingowiden/) - [Monologue by Every](https://www.monologue.to) - [Andrej Karpathy](https://x.com/karpathy) - [Wes Kao](https://www.weskao.com) - [Lenny’s Data](https://www.lennysdata.com/) ## More about Ini - [Ini’s personal website](https://iniabiodun.com/) - [Palmwine Wireless](https://radio.iniabiodun.com/) - [Ini on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/inioluwa-abiodun/) Find us at nearfuture.works

Hollie Lubbock (Design Director) and Josh Payton (VP of Design) at Wise join Jonny and Tom on the Near Future Podcast to unpack how their design org has rewired itself around AI — from prototyping kits that let anyone "hold" an idea, to the hidden operational grind behind every flashy AI demo. They dig into why disciplines aren't collapsing (they're specializing further), why AI is "an averaging machine," and what it takes to stand out when everyone has the same tools. Plus: a rapid-fire round covering deleted tools, current inspirations, and what they'll do when AGI takes over. Chapters 0:04 — Intro & guest welcome 0:49 — What day-to-day design at Wise looks like right now with AI 2:27 — The early prototyping kit that made AI feel "magical" 4:45 — Solo missions vs. collaboration in AI-driven work 6:07 — The "agent-operator" workflow trap 7:16 — Why scale (8,000 employees) changes the risk calculus 7:33 — How AI adoption varies across design disciplines 8:58 — The unglamorous ops work behind AI prototypes (InfoSec, workflows) 16:49 — Talent development: grads, internships, apprenticeships 19:03 — The three traits that matter most: smart, ambitious, curious 19:49 — Why design disciplines aren't collapsing 20:41 — "AI raises the floor, not the ceiling" — differentiation matters more 24:32 — Josh's 2x2 framework: when to let AI/PMs skip design entirely 29:37 — AI as an "averaging machine" and the tells of AI-generated work 32:13 — A WALL-E-inspired vision of the future 33:15 — Betting on human-curated, handcrafted experiences 34:36 — Josh's secret AI-built app project 35:15 — Josh's actual design process, tool by tool 37:27 — His AI agent fleet: Claude Code, Cowork, and more 39:47 — Bounded validity and lessons from engineering-first principles 42:24 — Quick-fire round begins 43:16 — What they'll never hand over to AI: curation 44:22 — The last tool they deleted (and why) 45:25 — What's inspiring them right now 46:58 — Wrap-up & where to find Hollie and Josh Useful Links Josh Payton, VP of Design at Wise https://www.joshpayton.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshpayton Hollie Lubbock, Design Director at Wise https://www.hollielubbock.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hollielubbock/ Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Near Future workshop (Aug 13th): nearfuture.works/build Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Tom and Jonny are joined by Domingo Widen, Staff Product Designer on the Front-End Infrastructure team at Fin (formerly Intercom) Domingo shares how designers at Fin have moved from prototyping in sandboxes to shipping directly to production, and unpacks his team's mission to build the platform and tools that let every team move from concept to production faster with AI. The conversation traces the story of getting designers into developer environments — from a top-down mandate and painful early setup sessions to a smoother, engineer-assisted process — and how that groundwork now lets designers self-serve with Claude. Domingo introduces "Surge Intelligence," an encoded knowledge base that powers design-system skills so AI can enforce front-end conventions without a human policing every decision, and describes the PR-style review process for designers who want to contribute their own skills. The back half explores where design is headed: the enduring value of human judgment and "taste" built through reps, the edge cases only builders learn from experience, and why Domingo believes AI will keep design work capped around 85% for a while. They close with quick-fire questions on tools he wishes existed (a home for aligning on live prototypes, since Figma hand-off has broken down), his favourite product (MyMind), and what he'd do with his free time in an AGI future. Chapters 0:00 – Intro & welcoming Domingo Widen 0:52 – How the Front-End Infrastructure team works today 2:20 – Is Domingo still a "product designer"? 3:49 – Splitting time between infra, design system, and product work 4:22 – Getting designers into developer environments: the origin story 9:45 – Optimizing the setup process with engineering 14:20 – From constant support requests to a self-serve steady state 11:29 – Claude as a fallback for technical hiccups 12:14 – Enforcing design consistency without slowing the company down 14:02 – Introducing Surge Intelligence and how design skills read from it 15:57 – Serving both designers and engineers with shared knowledge 18:13 – Do designers see AI codifying their instincts as a threat? 20:09 – The 85% problem: where human judgment still wins 23:52 – Codifying skills: the PR-and-review process for Team 2X 25:11 – Human judgment vs. automated skill approval 26:15 – Predictions for how the designer role evolves industry-wide 28:20 – Foundational design knowledge that AI won't replace 30:37 – On "taste," reps, and gut instinct 32:38 – The superpower (and blind spots) of designing in code 34:24 – Is Claude enough, or will tools fragment further? 36:20 – The missing tool: aligning on live prototypes instead of Figma 39:28 – Zooming out: is this a temporary infra push or years-long work? 41:12 – Why this becomes "training the brain" rather than a one-off project 42:56 – Optimizing for designers, engineers, and PMs alike 43:56 – Quick-fire: coffee, drawing, and life after AGI 45:37 – Quick-fire: the product Domingo wishes he'd designed (MyMind) Useful Links Domingo’s website: https://www.domingowiden.com/ Domingo on Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/domingowiden Mymind: https://mymind.com/ Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Near Future workshop (Aug 13th): nearfuture.works/build Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Tom and Jonny sit down with Avi Ashkenazi, Senior Product Design Director at Deel, for the podcast's first-ever guest episode. Avi shares the story behind Vidit, an internal screen-recording tool he built (and vibe-codes on weekends) that now has 600 daily users and 10,000+ videos produced — and which he's now made free for anyone at viddit.video. The conversation dives deep into Deel's AI-forward culture: designers losing Figma seats after 30 days of disuse, "super users" burning through massive AI token budgets, twice-weekly AI showcase sessions, and how much of the design workflow has shifted from Figma into tools like Claude Code. Avi also discusses building internal tools like Links (an Obsidian-style knowledge brain) and an AI-powered portfolio screening tool for the ~300 daily design applications Deel receives. The back half covers hiring in the AI era — including why uniqueness and craft still matter more than ever, the tension between AI making collaboration seamless versus more isolating, and Avi's "spicy take" that no one should manage designers without being a staff-level practitioner themselves. They close on how AI-freed time should be spent: hunting for the next big cross-functional bet rather than busywork. Chapters 0:00 – Intro & welcoming Avi Ashkenazi 0:33 – Building Vidit: Deel's in-house Screen Studio alternative 3:49 – 600 daily users and open-sourcing (for free) at viddit.video 7:56 – How AI tools have changed ways of working at Deel 10:25 – Deel's build culture, one-click dev onboarding, and losing Figma seats 14:44 – Where the design industry is heading with AI (Shopify vs. Deel) 18:44 – Token budgets, "super users," and adoption curves across the team 23:54 – Scaling judgment: building "Links" and "Launchpad" brains 35:23 – AI-assisted hiring: screening 300+ design applications a day 43:28 – What AI gets wrong when judging portfolios (uniqueness & self-affirmation) 50:18 – Where the freed-up time should go & Avi's spiciest take on AI and craft 57:04 – Wrap-up & useful links Useful Links Vidit (Avi's screen recording tool): viddit.video Avi's personal site: superavi.com Deel careers: deel.com/careers Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Near Future workshop (Aug 13th): nearfuture.works/build Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Tom and Jonny share updates from Tom’s Mostly Working meetup in London with Kate Pincot (Multiverse), focused on scaling design impact through tooling and agents, and preview upcoming podcast guests in July. They reflect on how the meetup format has evolved as more people have hands-on AI experience, shifting from first experiments to practical, scaled adoption inside teams, with more focus on token costs and measurable value. They discuss Figma Config releases (Motion, Figma Weave, Sites/Make, and upcoming code components), debating canvas-first vs code-first workflows and the “source of truth” question for enterprise teams. Jonny summarizes a Near Future Works post on AI transformation: set a coherent strategy, secure org-wide buy-in, and maintain craft/quality so AI speed doesn’t produce worse outcomes. They also touch on music ownership, a Claude Code World Cup calendar prompt, Anthropic “Fable” returning and Sonnet 5, Z.ai’s open-weights GLM model, a keyboard-shortcuts tool, and an open online workshop (Aug 13) to build design tools. 00:00 Welcome and agenda 00:12 Mostly Working recap 00:52 Podcast updates and banter 03:01 Meetup lessons so far 07:13 Figma Config reactions 12:39 Source of truth debate 22:51 Jagged frontier and craft 28:11 Quality Bar Cannot Drop 28:47 Barbell Strategy for AI 30:18 Craft Beyond Output 32:37 Atrophy and Writing Muscle 35:47 Craft Across Disciplines 36:40 Music Ownership Stories 41:22 Claude Calendar World Cup 42:57 AI News Frontier Models 45:27 Beautiful Shortcuts Tool 46:57 Open Workshop Invite 49:48 Signup Feedback and Wrap Links: Mostly Working: https://luma.com/mostly-working Near Future blog post: https://nearfuture.works/updates/a-new-jagged-frontier-why-craft-still-matters Figma's config keynote: https://config.figma.com/san-francisco/session/829e6ced-3257-4f5c-b675-aa72f4d1f98f/ GLM5.2 by z.ai: https://z.ai/ https://shrtcts.click/ Our next workshop: https://nearfuture.works/build As always, feedback welcome at podcast@nearfuture.works Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Tom and Jonny are back for another wide-ranging episode. Jonny starts by recapping his golf trip to Mallorca — where a non-technical friend used Lovable to vibe-code a fully functional scoring app for their annual 16-man Ryder Cup-style tournament, the Stryder Cup. It's a perfect case study in personal software. From there, Tom brings a meaty topic: the "death of the middle manager" narrative gaining steam in the press. Drawing on his five years as Director of Product Design at Monzo, Tom and Jonny debate whether this is a real structural shift or a post-ZIRP overcorrection — and what managers should actually do to stay relevant. In the quick-fire round, Jonny introduces Ideogram, a small but opinionated image model that excels at visual design and can be self-hosted and fine-tuned on your own work. Tom follows up with Midjourney's unexpected pivot into health and wellness medical devices — and what it says about where AI companies might be headed. They close by testing themselves on "In the Weights" — a site that checks if your name appears in AI training data. Jonny is in (top 25% British product designer). Tom is not. Finally, they tease an upcoming half-day AI design workshop open to individuals — coming late July/early August. Email podcast@nearfuture.works with feedback, ideas, or complaints. Chapters 0:00 — Welcome & podcast updates New email address: podcast@nearfuture.works 1:23 — Guests & format chat Guests are coming — but this pod isn't going guest-only 2:00 — Jonny's golf trip to Mallorca 16-man Ryder Cup-style tournament, Mallorca, 35-degree heat 4:06 — The Strider Cup app — vibe coded on Lovable How a non-technical friend built a live scoring app with AI — and why personal software is the perfect use case 8:59 — Can AI improve your golf game? Spoiler: Jonny is a lost cause 10:49 — Are middle managers finished? Tom introduces the "Middle Managers in the Firing Line" article and his Monzo perspective 18:36 — Tom's take: the functions matter, not the title Is Jack Dorsey right? Tom's nuanced answer on direction, psychological safety, and player-coaches 22:02 — Jonny's take: I don't buy it Manager-to-report ratios, the pastoral role, swanning around looking busy, and the market doesn't care what you enjoy 32:56 — Quick fire: Ideogram A small, opinionated image model built for visual design — and why it points toward personal, self-hostable AI tools 38:27 — Quick fire: Midjourney's wild pivot From sci-fi image generation to… health and wellness medical devices 43:50 — In the Weights — are you in the training data? Tom and Jonny test themselves live. Results are humbling for one of them. 47:55 — Upcoming AI design workshop Half-day, ticketed, late July/early August — build your own AI design tools --- ## Links: - https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/middle-managers-in-the-firing-line-8966722/ - https://ideogram.ai - https://www.midjourney.com/medical - https://intheweights.com Find us at nearfuture.works or email the pod at podcast@nearfuture.works with suggestions and ideas for content or guests. Click here to view the episode transcript.

Jonny and Tom dig into the uncomfortable reality of Europe's dependence on US-controlled AI — sparked by Anthropic's Fable 5 being banned outside America days after launch. They explore what the dystopian narrative Europe 2031 predicts for the continent, debate London's surprising rise as an AI talent hub, wrestle with what it means to build a business in the age of AI, and Tom reveals his open-source design tooling project, Kazam. 0:00 — Introduction & the content pipeline Jonny and Tom kick off the episode and share their very low-tech approach to collecting topics throughout the week — a Slack thread — which immediately surfaced the biggest AI story of the moment. 1:27 — Fable 5, banned in minutes: the sovereignty wake-up call Anthropic's most powerful model yet was blocked for all non-US citizens within four days of launch. What does it mean when critical infrastructure can be switched off by a foreign government overnight? 4:42 — Europe 2031: a cautionary tale Jonny breaks down the 18,000-word narrative podcast europe2031.ai — a near-future story of Europe's failure to build sovereign AI capability, its dependence on open models that eventually disappear, and the grim choice between American and Chinese technology. 9:53 — What does this actually mean for you? Tom pushes for practical takeaways. If AI vanished tomorrow it'd probably be fine — but the longer dependency grows, the harder it becomes to function without it. From job market effects to information control, the risks are subtle but compounding. 13:21 — Practical steps: diversify your AI diet Rather than avoiding AI, Jonny argues for being intentional about where you get it from. Use open-weight models, try Mistral, explore OpenRouter — don't build critical dependency on US big tech whose incentives may not align with yours. 15:36 — The acceleration problem and European incentives Tom reflects on how the structural incentives driving US and Chinese AI development will naturally widen the gap with Europe — even without any bad intentions from the US side. 17:18 — London rising: DeepMind, Cursor, and the talent story Cursor just announced a 200-person London office. Tom traces how Demis Hassabis's insistence on keeping a London team when Google acquired DeepMind seeded a generation of AI talent — now paying dividends for the whole city. 19:14 — Nuance: AI isn't just bad or just good Jonny argues for holding the tension — concentration of power is genuinely worrying, but the potential benefits to humanity (drug discovery, scientific breakthroughs) are also real. The podcast's purpose is navigation, not evangelism. 22:51 — Building a business in the AI era The guys get into the meta-question: what is the right business model for an AI consultancy? Training vs. capability delivery, day rates vs. outcome-based pricing, what to give away free vs. what to keep — and why neither of them really has the answer yet. 35:24 — Tom's open-source project: Kazam Tom reveals what he's been building — a lightweight open-source design framework for creating portable, lo-fi design micro-tools as single HTML files. No npm, no server, no dependencies. Inspired by a workshop where 60 designers built 60 tools in 3 hours. Links europe2031.ai Jacob Heftmann grillitype.com Our 1 page HTML tool example: https://dither-shape-p.ooda.run/ Find us at nearfuture.works

Tom and Jonny reflect on their live workshop at Product Unleashed in London, explore the history of designers building their own tools, and dig into how AI can be used as a counterbalance to your own working style — not just an amplifier. Chapters Building a Design Tool in 15 Minutes at Product Unleashed Tom and Jonny recap the workshop they ran at Product Unleashed, where they built retro design tools (Etch A Sketch, MS Paint) live in front of an audience — twice. They discuss how the challenge evolved, why they pivoted from serious tools to fun ones, and how they got the final result live on the internet using a QR code. Why Designers Building Their Own Tools Matters Jonny shares the narrative from the workshop's opening slides — a Gutenberg-moment argument for why designers are now able to build hyper-personalized tools for the first time, referencing Adobe, Figma, and the growing landscape of AI-native design tools. Historical Examples: Eames, Lennon & the Apple Calculator Tom walks through three historical examples of makers building tools to unlock their own creativity: Chris Espinoza's Calculator Construction Set for Steve Jobs, Ken Townsend inventing automatic double tracking for John Lennon, and Charles and Ray Eames creating the Kazam machine to bend plywood into new furniture forms. The Value of Craft in the Age of AI Jonny reflects on Karri Saaranen (founder of Linear) and his view that design is the thinking — and there's no shortcut to it. The conversation explores whether something made quickly can ever be truly iconic, and why craft still has real, felt value even as AI capabilities grow. AI as Amplifier or Counterbalance: Knowing Your Working Style Tom introduces the idea that AI shouldn't just universally amplify — for some people (perfectionists who stall), it should act as a counterbalance, nudging them to ship. For others (fast movers who skip deliberation), the opposite. Both share personal examples of how they've tuned their own AI workflows around their personality types. Ooda: Instantly Sharing Internal Prototypes Jonny shares an update on Ooda, his tool that lets teams publish prototypes, tools, and documents to a private, secure link in seconds — just by asking Claude. He explains the pivot from "run your dev server in the cloud" to "don't let your team's work disappear," and why the response from a handful of people last week convinced him the problem is real. Building a Calculator with a 5-Year-Old Tom shares a heartwarming weekend story of building a calculator with his five-year-old son Waltie — complete with a car button, a horse button, and a Lego-themed interface — and reflects on what it means to grow up in an era where building software is as natural as playing. Jonny draws parallels to how touchscreens changed children's expectations of interaction. (00:00) - Episode #3: (00:04) - Building a Design Tool in 15 Minutes at Product Unleashed (07:45) - Why Designers Building Their Own Tools Matters (12:13) - Historical Examples: Eames, Lennon & the Apple Calculator (19:57) - The Value of Craft in the Age of AI (22:45) - AI as Amplifier or Counterbalance: Knowing Your Working Style (34:32) - Ooda: Instantly Sharing Internal Prototypes (43:59) - Building a Calculator with a 5-Year-Old Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Tom and Jonny dig into the outcomes of Tom's Mostly Working event featuring James Storer from Monzo, unpacking how leading design teams are using AI not to ship faster, but to learn faster — and why the language of "design vs. product" is getting in the way. They get into the state of Figma: is it losing its grip on the design workflow, or is it actually thriving? And they draw an unexpected parallel to the smartphone camera era to ask whether AI will democratise design the same way. Plus: upcoming events, what they're each building, and some honest holiday parenting failure. 0:04 — Mostly Working: AI in Design at Monzo — Tom recaps the event with James Storer, prototyping at Monzo, and why the team focuses on learning speed over shipping speed 6:11 — Three Use Cases for AI in Design Workflows — Jonny breaks down the emerging buckets: shipping production code, faster prototyping, and building internal tools 13:12 — Is Figma Losing Its Grip? — Jonny's spicy take on Figma overreaching, seat cancellation stats from a 90-person design org, and the Adobe comparison 18:17 — Figma's Growth vs. The Designer Exodus — Two things can be true: enterprise growth numbers and a slow professional exodus 21:29 — The Smartphone Camera Analogy — Did smartphones kill professional photography? And will AI do the same to design? 25:52 — Upcoming Events: Berlin, Shoreditch & Brighton — Jonny's "Tools That Shape Us" talk at Hatch Berlin (Sep 18), the live build session at Product Unleashed Shoreditch, and the Brighton workshop 35:37 — What We're Building — Jonny's prototype hosting tool, a Notion CRM, and Tom's AI-powered family holiday journal idea Find us at nearfuture.works Click here to view the episode transcript.

Near Future Podcast – Pilot Episode Welcome to the Near Future Podcast, where Tom and Jonny explore what they're building, learning, and experimenting with as AI reshapes how we work. In this episode: Agentic Murder Mystery Jonny walks through his experiment building a six-agent murder mystery game using NanoClaw. He created a cast of AI suspects — each with their own secrets, personalities, and email inboxes — and ran a live session with a group of exited startup founders. The conversation covers what makes agents distinct from standard LLMs (triggers, tools, memory, collaboration), and the surprisingly playful emergent behaviour that unfolded when participants tried to interrogate and social-engineer the AI suspects. The Near Future Logo Instrument Tom shares his experiment turning the Near Future logo into an interactive, playable design tool — built in Claude Code — that generates ambient generative music as the logo animates. The conversation explores what it means to treat a brand asset as a toy, and how ephemeral software experiments fuel deeper craft practice. Craft, Design, and What Lasts Jonny reflects on receiving his long-awaited Poem Clock — a piece of hardware by Matt Webb that displays AI-generated rhyming couplets telling the time — as a lens for thinking about what makes design feel timeless. The duo discuss Dieter Rams' principles, the difference between craft as polish vs. craft as practice, and what that means for designers navigating the AI era. Hiring Designers in the Age of AI Tom shares observations from a recent head of design hiring process — how AI is adding noise on both sides, what strong portfolios look like right now, and the balance between deep foundations and pushing the frontier. Design Engineering & the Future of the Design Team A candid discussion on whether every designer needs to become a design engineer, the role of different archetypes within a team, and how to close the gap between Figma and code without putting everyone in an IDE. Tools We're Excited About Tom: Flora AI (visual asset generation with reference images), Notion's new agent capabilities Jonny: UK-built sovereign design tools — Dawn Labs, Superhands, and Dessn (00:00) - Pilot episode (00:04) - Introduction (01:07) - Agentic Murder Mystery (15:17) - The Near Future Logo Instrument (22:27) - Craft, Design & What Lasts (29:03) - Hiring Designers in the Age of AI (33:30) - Design Engineering & the Future of Design Teams (45:56) - Tools We're Excited About Find us at nearfuture.works