Hey Reader,

Hitting your inbox this week with a refreshed look and feel. My team and I spent the last couple of months completely redesigning and migrating my website to Framer.

After years on Webflow, it was time for a change :)

Btw – if you've joined the waitlist for Level up Club, keep an eye out on your inbox on Monday for an announcement 👀

In today's email:

• AI workflows in the wild: A look at how designers are actually using AI day-to-day, from a startup Head of Design’s tool stack, to an in-person demo night, to a full “Claude Code for Designers” course on agentic workflows.
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• Career & craft signals for 2026: New data on how designers are working right now (UX Tools Spring 2026 results), plus a practical portfolio guide to help you finish stronger case studies and prep for portfolio reviews.

Join Julia Ysabela Fernandez (Meta) and Elizabeth Alli (DesignerUp) for a practical walkthrough of where Al actually helps across the design process, from faster research and clearer insights to smarter decisions, stronger documentation, and storytelling that builds trust. ​ ​🎟️ Wednesday, May 20 - RSVP​

Design gems of the week

• ​Impeccable.style: 1 skill, 20 commands, and a curated set of anti-patterns to keep your UI output crisp when you’re building with tools like Cursor, Claude Code, Gemini CLI, or Codex CLI. Great if you want AI-generated UI to feel intentional.
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• ​Day in My Life as a Designer at a Startup: A behind-the-scenes look at how a Claire Taylor, Head of Design at an early-stage startup (Chronicle) structures her day: calendar rhythms, CEO collaboration, Figma jams, file organization, handoff to engineering, and the AI/tool stack she uses.
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• ​Double Diamond Demo Night (April 28): A live, recorded demo night for designers building with AI right now: agent-driven workflows, high-craft design engineering, and AI-native creative direction.
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• ​Improve your UX Design Portfolio and CV: A practical guide to building a portfolio that actually lands: a 9-step case study framework, what to include (and cut), how to make time and finish, prep for portfolio reviews, a launch checklist, and advice from hiring managers.
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• ​Claude Code for Designers (4 Hour Course): A walkthrough of “agentic design”: how AI agents work, how to set up your environment, craft your system prompt, use a 3-layer architecture, connect tools, and then move through a full workflow.

Open design roles:

• ​Senior Product Designer (US) - Binary
• ​Product Designer - Ghost
• ​Principal Product Designer - Taxwell
• ​Staff Product Designer, Social Experiences – Pinterest
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A MESSAGE FROM FRAMER New in Framer: Shaders A lot of influence comes down to visibility: having a clear POV, a crisp write-up, and a link you can send after the meeting. Framer makes it easy to publish a polished page fast and they just shipped Shaders, so you can add subtle motion and richer visual effects. Get 25% off for 3 months with code FEMKE25 → Publish with Framer

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​The design profession just split in three. Where are you?

UX Tools just published their State of Prototyping survey results — 1,478 designers shared how they actually work right now. The result? The profession has quietly fractured into three camps — working in the same orgs, on the same products, barely recognising each other.

Here's how it breaks down:

• Non-adopters — 37.7% doing zero AI-generated code. Not a little. Zero.
• Dabblers — 31.2% experimenting occasionally or about half the time
• Builders — 31.1% using AI for most or nearly all of their building time

The camp you're in is starting to matter

IC designers are the most anxious group in the entire survey. 32.4% feel less secure about their role in the next two years. Only 24.8% feel more valuable.

Design engineers sit at the opposite end. 50% feel more valuable. Only 10.6% feel less secure.

That gap isn't random. Design engineers are overwhelmingly in the builders camp — 80.9% of them spend more than half their building time on AI-generated code. And right now, they're the ones meeting the expectations the industry is starting to set.

The uncomfortable truth is that the design industry is shifting toward builders. Not just in job titles, but in what gets noticed, what gets rewarded, and who gets seen as a strategic asset rather than an executor.

You don't need to become a design engineer. But if you're sitting in the non-adopter camp, the gap between you and the designers getting the most career traction right now is widening. That's worth taking seriously.

The time barrier is real — but it's not what you think

The survey asked designers what's blocking them from adopting AI in their workflow. The #1 answer was time to learn AI tools.

I understand that. There are a lot of AI tools, they're changing fast, and nobody is handing you dedicated learning time at work.

But learning an AI tool isn't the same as learning Figma or picking up a new design framework. You can't really learn them by taking a course, reading a book, or setting aside an hour on a Tuesday.

They're fundamentally learn-by-doing. The potential is invisible until you're actually building something with them.

A few weeks ago I vibe coded my strategic design influence audit from scratch. I went in without a clear plan. But halfway through, something became obvious — AI doesn't just speed up the work, it changes what feels possible to attempt in the first place. That's not something you can read your way to understanding.

The other thing worth naming: waiting has a cost. Twelve months from now, the builders camp will be further ahead. The expectations in interviews, in teams, in how design leadership thinks about who's valuable — those are already shifting. Every month you spend in the non-adopter camp is a month of compounding distance between you and where the industry is heading.

Start with something small and real. Not a practice project. Something you actually need. You'll learn more in two hours of building than in two weeks of learning.

The satisfaction gap

Heavy vibe coders rate their workflow satisfaction at 7.4/10. Non-adopters score 5.9.

The survey notes that's correlation, not causation — and that's a fair caveat. But the gradient is nearly linear across every adoption level. That pattern is hard to dismiss.

My read on why: builders have more creative leverage. They can move from idea to something real faster. They're not stuck waiting on engineering capacity to test a concept or prototype an idea. That autonomy changes how you experience your work.

There's also a visibility angle here. Designers who can build, prototype, and ship with AI are showing up in rooms and conversations that non-adopters simply aren't part of. And visibility — as I've written about before — is one of the most underrated drivers of career growth. It's hard to advocate for a designer nobody's noticed.

Satisfaction isn't just about liking your tools. It's about feeling relevant, capable, and seen. The builders camp seems to have more of all three right now.

So, which camp are you in?

Are you actively building with AI, or are you telling yourself you'll get to it when things quiet down? Things probably won't quiet down. And the gap between the camps is only getting wider.

Where do you sit right now — and what's one thing that's actually stopping you from moving?

Have a topic you'd like me to write about? Reply to this email and let me know! I read every reply.