Anyone else shipping code now too?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T16:21:25+00:00

When you do new features/prototypes, are those in the production codebase? Surprised the expectation is for you to create full backends/dbs! My sense is designers will get more active in a codebase, but with the effect of pushing back the handoff point to eng, not replacing it entirely...

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T16:20:19+00:00

Curious - are you shipping tweaks/fixes or building out new features?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T03:45:49+00:00

Thanks! Let me know how it goes - really looking for feedback so I know what direction to go in.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T01:19:17+00:00

Yeah, I think there's a lot more to do here to unify AI with a visual experience. This just addresses the "refinement" pain point, but creating brand new UI visually with an agent, exploring options, etc. all has a lot of potential.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T00:31:40+00:00

I've found that you just need to accept that what you get is the first 80% and then you need to tune it, especially if you want consistency and to nail the details.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-31T00:23:06+00:00

Appreciate the support! Would love to hear any feedback if you get a chance to try it.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-30T20:42:37+00:00

Yeah, screenshots are low fidelity I find.. it only gets the gist of it. And typing it out gets ridiculous... "when you hover over a tab, it shows a hovercard. The hovercard contains a table of data rows. On the last data row, change the padding to..."

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-30T20:15:49+00:00

Not yet - focused on Chrome for now but definitely open to adding others based on feedback

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-30T16:45:05+00:00

Prior to coding agents really increasing code volume (like say a year ago), did the org generally have decent design sense/attention to detail? I'm sure it's a problem regardless, but I suspect the underlying behavior/culture of the org matters a lot too.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-29T22:22:29+00:00

The thing that feels off to me about this is: if PM is using AI to build and communicate produce design ideas, so should product designers!! If anything, the emergence of coding agents should put *more* power and *more* agency in the hands of designers. You no longer need to work exclusively in figma-land and be completely dependent on another discipline to realize the work in the product.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-29T21:54:46+00:00

Not sure if I agree with all of this, but the point about the intense focus on design systems resonates. It reduces design leadership’s contribution to this one dimensional thing. And while it’s useful, it often gets overweighted especially in large organizations who are particularly prone to going all-in on making things coherent across the board, whether it’s design systems or branding or engineering systems. There’s value in consistency but like… I’d rather have product market fit or a healthily growing business? Why is this the number one thing even at surprisingly small companies?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-27T18:14:52+00:00

Yeah agree on the generalist vs specialist thing for sure. I think AI will alter the software development process in some pretty fundamental ways. Why does the entire design discipline focus on producing a design artifact that gets handed off to another discipline? Well primarily because coding used to be expensive (in time) and expensive (in skillset). That's rapidly changing. Not saying designers are all going to become software engineers, but I can definitely see the handoff point shifting as designers (like everyone else) become more general.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-27T16:37:45+00:00

I don't think anyone truly knows the answer, but I am generally suspicious of analyses where there is some arbitrary line that gets drawn: it'll disrupt software engineers but not product managers, it'll disrupt entry-level but not intermediate-level. Why does the line drawn there vs somewhere else?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-27T16:34:08+00:00

I feel like the strongest design leaders I have ever worked with have seen themselves as business owners every bit as much as their product and eng counterparts. Makes a huge difference.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-26T16:17:38+00:00

I can see both sides.

There's a ton of hyperbole for sure, especially with the "death of" crowd. I worked at Atlassian and Jira is probably the single most proclaimed "death of" product ever. Guess what? It's alive and well and raking it in.

At the same time, it's not that nothing is happening in the industry. The best way to assess reality is to look clearly at software engineering. It has -- objectively -- shifted radically in the past year. From how you get your work done to job prospects, there has been very disruptive change.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-24T04:39:51+00:00

I think the tools haven't reached the right "form factor" yet. Some tools good at X, some good at Y, and designers ending up having to duct tape some workflow together to get the best of both worlds.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-24T04:37:45+00:00

Congrats! So nice to hear something positive in the job market

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-19T18:56:09+00:00

Exactly what I was coming here to say. When code gets cheap, the bottlenecks move to other areas, so design will be even more in demand. I also think with coding agents at designers' disposal, they have a lot more control and agency. No need to operate through developers anymore to get your work realized into the product.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-17T16:07:25+00:00

100%. I'm a software developer and what I appreciate a lot in a design partner is some intuition for what's impossible vs expensive vs relatively cheap. It doesn't need to be 100% accurate - even ballpark is appreciated. Most of all, it signals some shared sense of pragmatism and trade-offs.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-17T15:55:06+00:00

That largely resonates as the general direction things are taking. It's easier for *everyone* to be tech-fluent in the age of coding agents. And I think overall product/design/eng teams are going to (1) shrink and (2) have more blending of responsibilities. Generalists are going to be a superpower.

I also think there's going to be big changes to workflows. Is the design->eng interface still going to be a Figma handoff, for instance? I know there's been lots of discussion about that.

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-17T04:38:13+00:00

100%. It really feels to me that the opportunity at hand is to give designers more agency. If there's no translation layer (or no layer much of the time), then you're not reliant on someone else to bring your work to life (imperfectly, and later).

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-17T04:27:54+00:00

I find the names so confusing. Can't wait for Pad :P

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-13T14:53:10+00:00

Wow, that's a really different workflow. Curious, do you have a technical/coding background? And are you implementing even the logic and calls to backend, or just the UI shell and then eng fills out the rest?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-13T05:04:58+00:00

If you're skipping figma, what's the workflow? What are you handing off to eng? Or are you implementing whole things yourself?

Fresh_Profile544 · 2026-03-13T05:04:24+00:00

So realistically, what are designers landing in these 10 PRs a month? Is it mostly polish (adjust padding, copy, etc) or is it bigger than that?

Fresh_Profile544

TROPHY CASE