Fractional Design & Strategy. Previous @figma
Joined March 2009
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May 12
Opening up some availability as a fractional design leader to work with teams looking to build a durable competitive advantage with design. Here's some details on some of the work I've done and how I think about design:
coda.io/@corey-lee/fractiona…
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Jun 9
"set the corner radius to 4px"
Software design now is like ahhh yeah you’re gonna need an LLM for that no wait it’s a sub agent actually open a worktree no you need skills to get that done no no no it’s now a loop you need a loop to do it actually install a connector first I changed my mind you need a plugin
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Jun 4
Big fan of this. I used to write a mini thesis for every design review to sanity check my reasoning and polish my communication.
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Jun 4
残り１名！
May 29
前からずっと思っていたけど、やはり独立するデザイナーがまだまだ少ない。独立するにあたっての覚悟、独立する理由、そしてその道を歩む楽しみや苦労をリアルに話せる場を用意したかった。そのため、design founderの話を中心に、6月16日にイベントを開催します。ぜひ参加してください。
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Jun 2
席数が限られているのでお早めに
May 29
前からずっと思っていたけど、やはり独立するデザイナーがまだまだ少ない。独立するにあたっての覚悟、独立する理由、そしてその道を歩む楽しみや苦労をリアルに話せる場を用意したかった。そのため、design founderの話を中心に、6月16日にイベントを開催します。ぜひ参加してください。
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May 29
前からずっと思っていたけど、やはり独立するデザイナーがまだまだ少ない。独立するにあたっての覚悟、独立する理由、そしてその道を歩む楽しみや苦労をリアルに話せる場を用意したかった。そのため、design founderの話を中心に、6月16日にイベントを開催します。ぜひ参加してください。
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May 11
前職で夢の仕事ができても、結局辞めて独立した。
なぜなら、与えられた環境で成長することよりも、自分のポテンシャルを信じている。
不安な気持ちは本当にわかる。その上で、フリーランスから正社員になったところで自分の仕事が置き換えられる可能性は変わらないし、組織の中で溢れちゃうこともあるので、どちらが正しいのか🤔
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Corey Lee retweeted
May 9
It’s kind of crazy that we used to write code for free. You just opened an text editor and typed in some words completely at no cost
Same with designs. Every rectangle and shape was free
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Apr 28
Opening up some capacity to work a team in need of fractional design leadership soon. If you are looking for help let me know. 日本語でも
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Apr 4
Operation → Orchestration
いろんな人と話して考えてみて、デジタルなプロダクトデザイナーは、本質的には「オペレーション」だったのだと改めて思う。少なくとも自分は「設計」している自負はもちろんあるが、同時にそういう、上方から言われて作業していた部分もあった。
やっていたのはツールの操作。ただ習熟に時間がかかるから、それ自体に価値があるように見えていた。そこにユーザビリティ、UXなどの語彙が重なって「デザイナーだけが持てる特別な力」という神話ができあがった。それら概念自体は正しいし、今もリスペクトしてる。ただ、オペレーションしてるだけという、自覚を遠ざける方向にも働いた気もする。
AIがそれを突きつけてきた感覚がある。成果物がコードそのものだから、AIの得意領域と完全に重なっている。UIの正解パターンを選んで組み合わせる作業。それはAIの独壇場だ。
designの語源は「designare」。何を作るべきかを決める行為。ビジュアルを整えることでも、もっともらしい概念を語ることでもなかった。
自分はオペレーターだったのか、設計者だったのかが問われる。この時代に、みんなはどう思ってるんだろうか🤔
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Mar 27
While everyone else is trying to double down on taste I'm bullish on strategy and intent.
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Mar 26
There's a world of design to learn from across different regions, languages and cultures. but designers keep looking at the same small sample of references and discourse to set the meta.
Mar 26
It's amusing how many designers treat the english design discourse bubble as an accurate representation of the entire designsphere.
Having spent most of my career working outside that context, most of the conversation seems incredibly inward looking.
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Mar 26
It's amusing how many designers treat the english design discourse bubble as an accurate representation of the entire designsphere.
Having spent most of my career working outside that context, most of the conversation seems incredibly inward looking.
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Corey Lee retweeted
Mar 25
I’ll say the thing no one is saying: design culture is broken in lots of companies.
Often design teams & designers are the most resistant to change org in the EPD triad, with highly vocal AI opponents, and little skill or interest in the art of campaigning for influence or resources. Won’t hold a number like a PM, not yelled at about timelines like engineering. While I have brought design topics to the board convo, not a single board has pressed me our design talent, strategy, or velocity. Most teams treat design like a tax they don’t want to pay, and those that *do* take a deep interest and want to invest in design get back big “get out of my figma” energy. And if you’re too precious about craft to dirty your hands with the dark art of corporate politics, good luck getting more headcount. If a PM or engineer can get 85% there with tailwind and a dream, you better come to the table with more than “I represent the user.”
Great designers are worth more than almost anyone on the team, and I’ve worked with lots of gems, but this is 0% surprising to me.
Mar 24
I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but it does feel AI-related. Unlike PM and eng, which started growing in 2024 (two years post-ChatGPT), design didn’t. If I had to venture a theory, I’d say that because AI is allowing engineers to move so quickly, there’s less opportunity—and less desire—to involve the traditional design process.
That said, you’d think design would become a differentiator as more products compete for attention. Something to think about for your company! We’ll keep watching this trend and AI’s impact on org design more generally.
One interesting observation we made when we went a level deeper: the ratio of demand for PMs vs. designers has flipped. In mid-2023, we went from more open designer roles to more open PM roles. And ever since, PM demand has been pulling away (currently 1.27x). This will be another trend to monitor, in terms of how AI is reshaping org design.
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Mar 22
Agree. The people that depend solely on this for design will be stuck with derivative solutions based on what previously existed and because everyone else can generate the same thing, they forfeit their ability to use design as a differentiator.
Mar 20
Google Stitch just launched. Non-designers are trying it and saying, “Designers are fucked.”
But I think there’s a blind spot here: A lot of these AI design tools are still generating pre-AI UI. That is not where the biggest product challenge is right now.
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Mar 7
Crazy to think about how much compute is being wasted on agentic systems for things that could be more effectively solved by a simple script.
Why learn about code and systems anymore when you can just YOLO tokens?
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