Designers open pull requests.
Engineers come to design reviews.
AI moved the line between design and engineering, and it moved it in both directions. I open pull requests, fix accessibility issues, write the AI instructions and skills the team works from, and design straight in the codebase. Engineers propose designs, learn the reasoning behind them, and turn up to design review with an opinion.
The challenge is no longer engineering effort. It is value to the user.
The designer's job is not the artifact anymore. It is the opinion.
What it did
GroundIQ, Fugro · 2025 to 2026
- 100+
- Design changes I shipped myself
- 5
- In one year. Each one shipped something
- 1.5 weeks
- Down from eight, for deliveries that run through platform processing
- 2
- One use is exploration. Two is a pattern
From brief to merged
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Brief
A goal, a constraint, and a sketch. Never a pixel-perfect spec.
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Generate
The model drafts against the product's own components. It never invents a button.
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Review
Read like a junior's work. What did it add that nobody asked for?
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Rebuild
Rebuilt against the platform's primitives. Mockups are specs, not pictures.
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Pull request
The diff is the handover. There is no handover step.
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Audit
An AI heuristic pass reads every PR first. I catch judgement.
Each step in detail, with the five ways a design can start: read the process →
Go deeper
- The process
Five ways to start a design, one road to production, and the rules that keep it honest.
Read → - Design ops
A process only survives if the team has somewhere to put things. Six pieces that make the loop repeatable by someone who is not me.
Read → - What's hard
The model builds fast. The three problems that are left when speed stops being the problem.
Read →
Working out where the line sits on your team?
I talk about this with teams who are already blurring it, and with teams who are not sure they should. Email is fastest.