My world view is informed by my background in industrial design. This is how I approach everything. I posses a fierce bias towards action. I value learning directly from experiencing the material. Learning to work with its constraints and attributes play a vital role in deciding what and how to build with it. This is why I’ve been thinking about artificial thinking as a new kind of material.
I’ve always had curiosity for code as a material. I started coding websites in my early teens. I started experimenting with Swift in 2014 and C when I began playing with Arduino. I remember spending my summers learning everything I could from the folks over at Team Treehouse. I was following my curiosity and had no plans of becoming an engineer. I just wanted to learn how to use this knowledge to become a better designer.
Today, the lines between roles are becoming blurred by the day. It’s no longer safe to think of oneself as one thing or the other. In the age of AI, any person with a growth mindset, curiosity, and bias for action has the opportunity, even if temporarily, to morph. However, if the electricity goes out or servers are down we all return to what we know best. This is why it’s important that your skillset is strong with or without electricity.
In the last couple years, I’ve been able to take my once fragmented understanding of programming and transform it. Using an LLM powered coding workflow, I’ve been able to augment my coding skills. It’s been exhilarating seeing how far these models have come. I recently worked on my personal website using Opus 4.6 and Zed. I shipped in a matter of a week. A major part of my time was spent iterating on the designs in Figma. I have many other examples, but this has been the most recent “wow” moment.
The process surfaced the question, “Why is designing taking so much time?” Why am I not moving faster? I came to the realization that this is how it is suppose to work and I was falling for the speed trap. As humans working with LLMs we’re working with a new kind of thought material. Maybe it’s the level of quality outputs coming in at the speed of light that’s causing me to compare my organic neural network. So what if the constraints of organic thought have begun to show. It would be insane to compare a scribe to a laser printer. A scribe is a scribe and a laser printer is what it is.
Here’s my thinking on this “need for speed” that plagues most of us working in the industry today. By all means, go ahead and join the rat race. Skip your breaks. No one can stop you. This kind of behavior has its limitations. Slowing down, researching, and incubating play an important role in the creative process. It lets the material breathe. Learn how to balance and respect the constraints of the material you’re working with. Your mind is a precious thing that needs space and time to think new thinks.