What Happens After You Make the Thing

I know this fear. More apps and websites are launching right now than any of us can keep track of. I have a great idea, but there are 79 similar apps already in the market. What if I share my idea prematurely and people steal and launch even more products?

However, the problem almost every builder runs into isn’t theft — it’s that nobody looks. Nobody engages. The thing exists, and then it sits there.

Building something and building something people actually use are two completely different problems. The first one is getting easier every month. The second one hasn’t changed at all.

It still takes understanding a real problem, watching how people move through it, and caring enough to fix what doesn’t work. That’s the part designers have been training for this whole time.

So this month, we’ll experiment with engagement. What will get the users on your portfolio site to engage with your hard work? What will make someone a founder vs. a wanna-be? Both come back to the same question: what happens after you make the thing?

– Eunji, Editor and Founder

When: Mondays @ 8-10 AM PDT and Fridays @ 10 AM-12 PM PDT
Host: Eunji Jeong
RSVP: https://luma.com/designedminds

Freelancing, building your startup, or working on personal projects? Join other design-builders for accountability, community, and focused work time.

No preparation or presentations required—just bring whatever you’re already planning to work on. Check in, enjoy focused work alongside friendly faces, and celebrate the small wins together.

When: Thursday, August 13 @ 6-7:30 EDT/3-4:30 PDT
Hosts: Michelle Yi Hsu, Dhrumil Shah, Parys Khazaie
RSVP Required: https://luma.com/a4lzwqfv

Most portfolios are built to be viewed. What if they were built to respond, guide, explain, or surprise?

In this hands-on mini hackathon, we’ll explore how AI can turn a static portfolio moment into an interactive experience. You’ll work in small groups to create one portfolio interaction that helps a visitor better understand a designer’s work, thinking, or personality.

Your idea could be practical, playful, or experimental — an AI case study guide, a personalized portfolio path, an interactive hero section, a project explainer, or something completely unexpected. AND the top 3 voted outputs will be featured on LinkedIn as a public spotlight for the ideas created during the workshop. 🔥

The goal is not to ship a polished product. It’s to build a rough concept with enough shape that you can record it, share it, and keep improving it later.

You’ll leave with:

• A working direction for an AI-enhanced portfolio interaction

• Practice turning an idea into a prototype using AI

• A better sense of how to make AI-generated outputs feel intentional, not generic

• A recording or rough artifact you can revisit for your portfolio, brand page, or case study

Note: No AI prototyping experience is needed. You can use any AI tool you’re comfortable with. Come ready to experiment, build quickly, and share what you create.

When: Tuesday, August 25 @ 3 PM EST
Team: Sara Barber, Moyai Fujimura, and Jong Lee
Speaker: Ammara Khan
RSVP: https://luma.com/0w9rd33z

What changes when you go from designing products to building a company?

Ammara will share her journey from product designer to first-time founder. The mindset shifts that challenged her way of thinking, and how design principles continue to shape every business decision she makes. Rather than focusing on the product itself, we’ll explore the lessons that come from navigating uncertainty, validating ideas, and learning to think beyond the interface.

What we’ll explore:

• Why becoming a founder requires a different way of thinking than designing products alone

• How UX research and continuous discovery can guide better product and business decisions

• Practical lessons for designers considering entrepreneurship who want to start building with confidence

About Ammara: A UX/UI Designer with two years of experience designing user-centered experiences across healthcare, education, fitness, and AI-driven products. Passionate about solving complex problems through research and systems thinking, she’s currently building her first startup while exploring the transition from designer to founder. Through her work, she advocates for continuous discovery, thoughtful product decisions, and building solutions that create meaningful impact.

Last month, a room of designers created working prototypes of pomodoro timers using Cursor, a coding agent some had been too intimidated to open.

Parys, Michelle, and Dhrumil showed everyone how to generate codified design tokens from a Figma design system and connect that to Cursor, so the prototypes the agent builds stay on brand. When the agent can fall back on your real system, it cuts down on hallucinations and wasted AI credits.

Parys said that the developer tools designers are most afraid of are often the ones that give you the fine control to change a design until it actually feels right. Since the event, a few designers shared what they’ve been experimenting with Cursor, now added to their tool stack!

If you’ve also built out your idea, share it in #build-in-public so we can learn from you and trade ideas. And if you have follow-up questions, Michelle, Dhrumil, and Parys would love to connect with you.

Recording link shared in Slack | How to create a codified design kit 💖

Khushali Parekh spent years designing digital products and SaaS platforms. Then she started applying the same UX and product thinking to her family’s car rental business in Dubai and found that design improves far more than interfaces.

From redesigning customer journeys and WhatsApp communication to building internal systems and shaping marketing workflows, she used design to simplify processes, reduce friction, and create better experiences for both customers and the team. Her takeaway: product thinking can drive business growth even in industries that don’t think of themselves as design-led.

Listen on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Music! 🎧

In August, the hackathon will give you a few hours and a group.
What you do after is yours.

Take the rough artifact and keep going. Share the progress in #build-in-public as you iterate before it’s perfect. And if you’re sitting on a bigger question about where your own path is heading, bring it to the podcast conversation!