about
It starts with the patterns underneath.
Twenty years of UX/UI and product work, from CSS to frameworks to design systems, which have been at the center since they emerged. The thread is the same: a shared language that keeps product, design and engineering building the same thing.
How I got here
Building websites pulled me into CSS, and CSS has been part of my work since 2008.
CSS kept showing the same patterns. Frameworks like Bootstrap turned them into rules that many pages share. A design system goes one step further: product, design and code all work from the same rules. Design systems became my day job in 2018, and I led them for most of those years.
Interactive design came first in my studies. Later, I went back to study UX specification in depth: research, information architecture, usability testing and writing product specs.
Along the way I've led design systems and UX teams, and helped product owners work better with UX and dev.
And right now is the most exciting part. AI can build at a scale that did not exist before, but scale without orchestration and precision just makes a mess faster. That gap, between the promise and the craft it still needs, is exactly where the work sits. Orchestration and precision are what the practice has been all along, in CSS, in design systems and in specs. Now they matter more than ever.
Working together
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Same words, decisions that stick.
When product, design and dev call the same thing by different names, decisions drift. Teams settle on shared words for flows, components and states, and the decisions they make start to hold.
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Specs become conversations.
A spec works best when people talk it through. Requirements are lined up with goals, and feedback turns into decisions. Everyone agrees on what to build before anyone builds it.
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Product owners see more of the picture.
Product owners learn to think UX and to think like developers. They see a request through the user's eyes and the developer's constraints before it becomes a ticket.
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The whole product stays in view.
One screen can look right and still break the flow around it. Your team gets someone who looks across UX, product, specs and the design system, from discovery to handoff.
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Ready and done mean the same to everyone.
Work runs smoother when the scope is clear. Teams share a sense of what's in, what's out, and what ready and done look like, so fewer surprises show up late.
What I build now
- open-ux.dev
AI agents build UI quickly, but they can't defend their design choices. Open UX gives them sourced UX rules, so every decision comes with a reason.
- Orchestra
Context and memory don't always carry from one agent session to the next. Orchestra keeps shared memory and skills in one place, so the work builds on itself.
- Kee
A rapid-logging journal for iPhone, with boards that turn everyday life workflows into simple routines.
Let's talk
Working on a design system, a UX team or an AI design workflow? I'm happy to talk it through.
Start a conversation