Last Wednesday I attended an event conveniently named Design.md, hosted by the Shopify Design team. I have to confess - I’ve never been a fan of design industry events. I’ve conveniently avoided them throughout my career without feeling like I’m missing out on much. But this one stood out, because I noticed something I haven’t seen in a very long time, maybe ever in my time in the industry. Everyone was having fun.
Industry events are generally a good reflection of that industry. They give you a good idea of what people are thinking about and grappling with. And for the past decade, most design industry events have been focused on Figma mastery as professional identity, double diamond process theater, design’s proverbial “seat at the table”, and creating shareholder value through careful marriage of user and business needs. And if these phrases made your eyes roll back so far into the back of your head that you could see your own brain stem, you get what I’m talking about.
But it hasn’t always been like that. As a few seasoned design leaders at the event aptly noted, before “product design” even became a job title, designers were all just makers and tinkerers who bridged disciplines to create viscerally beautiful and tangible software experiences. But somewhere along the way, we lost the plot. Design became an industry obsessed with legitimizing itself inside the corporation and painting grand visions to impress “the stakeholders”. There was more talking about building things than actually building things.
That’s what struck me at the design event last week - it felt different. Every designer I spoke to, from students to ICs to directors, was buzzing with excitement. Everyone is building something (often many things) both at work and on the side. Everyone is shipping. And a lot of it is just people following their curiosity for the sake of fun and experimentation. Because the cost of experimentation is now near zero. It felt like creativity was let out of its corporate cage and unleashed back into the world.
AI changed some fundamental assumptions about the cost of building new products, forcing the entire industry to reevaluate its own truths about what it means to be a designer. Some at the event understandably lamented AI hollowing out the design process, arguing that by erasing the friction for ourselves and the user, we may be inadvertently erasing the very meaning of the activity itself. I don’t see it that way. Truthfully, many processes we invented for ourselves over the past decade did the opposite - they took meaning away from work, turning it into a sanitized corporate output. The design process is now shifting to the edges - toward direction, judgment, authenticity, and figuring out what’s even worth building. By hollowing out the old process, I see us concentrating our work in the space where we find the most meaning. The creative process was never meant to be sanitized. And now it’s getting messy again.
Obviously, not everyone is excited. In fact, most people are not:
I think this does reveal a fascinating gap in AI adoption - those who feel it’s exploitative vs. those who feel it’s a supernatural multiplier for their work. How someone experiences AI in their job reveals a lot about why they’re doing that job in the first place. And the tech bubbles we spend time in - X, Threads, our jobs, and even this newsletter - skew sharply towards the multiplier view, even though the exploitative perception may be larger in absolute numbers.
Which brings me to my last question(s). Will this fun last? Will most of the businesses that are newly enabling us to have fun be around in a few years? Did everyone finally get up to dance only to realize we’re playing the game of musical chairs? Unfortunately, I don’t know. But to me that’s not a reason to stop dancing. If anything, it makes me want to enjoy it even more. Because sitting on the chair was never the fun part.
Zain Shah@zan2434
Imagine every pixel on your screen, streamed live directly from a model. No HTML, no layout engine, no code. Just exactly what you want to see. @eddiejiao_obj, @drewocarr and I built a prototype to see how this could actually work, and set out to make it real. We're calling it
4:00 PM · Apr 22, 2026 · 5.6M Views
1.08K Replies · 3.38K Reposts · 26.5K Likes
This genuinely blew my mind. Is this a peek into the future of user interfaces? Streaming UI directly from the model, basically 24fps responsive image generation. This breaks many assumptions about what an interface is. And we are so early.
jem@sheherenow_
6:26 PM · Apr 27, 2026 · 2.12K Views
1 Reply · 3 Reposts · 36 Likes
While I don’t believe “design is dead”, I feel like this visual captures so much of the current discourse.
3. Clicky
Farza 🇵🇰🇺🇸@FarzaTV
Here's the new Clicky. It's the simplest interface in the world to talk to AI + spawn agents. It builds Mac apps. It does research to help you find IG micro-influencers. It interacts with native Apple Notes, Calendar, Reminders. Built for consumers, 0 setup. Try today, free.
12:52 AM · Apr 26, 2026 · 1.06M Views
442 Replies · 320 Reposts · 5.95K Likes
This product launch has been making waves on X for good reason. Clicky is a very creative way to embody AI on your desktop and feels a lot closer to the agentic interface most people who are not prosumers will actually understand (and dare I say, click with. Sorry.)
Just a quick note - I’m changing the frequency of the posts back to 1x/week, for now. As many of you know, I’m still dialing in the format and the schedule to find a model that’s sustainable for me and most valuable for you. I’ve been enjoying writing these pieces more than I expected, but that also comes with more time spent tweaking, editing, and making them crisp. I may still occasionally post additional pieces throughout the week, but for now you can look forward to one good piece of writing every week.
I want to ask you for a favor - if you’ve been enjoying the newsletter, please consider sharing it with your team / colleagues / friends. It really helps, especially in these early stages as I’m posting into the social media void and looking for like-minded people. To those that already shared - thank you, it means a lot. See you next week.
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