The week got its time back
Design thinking has not changed. What has changed is how much of my week goes into the work around it, file setup, placeholder content, sanity checks, second opinions. Agents take that part, so a three-week project lands in two and the thinking gets more of me.
Where the time went back
A project that used to take three weeks now takes two: same scope, same standard. Not because any one step got instant, but because the manual half of each step is no longer mine to do.
More of the week goes to design thinking and hi-fi, the part a designer is actually for.
Skills I built along the way
The tools are strongest on the work around the design: the setup, the repetition, the checks, and the perspective a single designer can miss in an industry this specific. Most of what I learned was how to hand that part over well.
The same screen, two ways
Left: a wireframe I set up by hand, with placeholder content — explaining the interaction meant a meeting, and everyone walked out picturing it differently. Right: the same idea a few days earlier, filled with content close to real data, and clickable, people see what I actually meant.
- —Every frame and grid built by hand before the idea could even be judged.
- —Placeholder text and lorem-ipsum cards standing in for how the screen would really read.
- —Static — explaining what would happen took a meeting, then everyone’s own memory of it.
- +An agent scaffolds the frames and grids, so the day starts on the idea, not the setup.
- +Content close to real resident data, messy edge cases included, generated in minutes.
- +Clickable — the interaction plays out live, so nobody has to imagine or remember it.