Chris Halaska

Crafting my own UI Kit to be used for prototypes. I'm going through component by component to direct my designer (Claude) on motion tweaks, style updates, and behaviour.

@hours nice, i’m not the only one!

@chalaska thought i was the only one using that term

getting code-blocked by eng

"Engineers do code, designers do design. Period." A startup engineer said this to me this week. The people who say things like this aren't wrong about the world today. They're just not willing to find out what it could be tomorrow. The willingness to try is the whole job now. The result of the experiment matters less than the fact that the team ran it.

@steveruizok it would be so much fun, i’d probably dust off photoshop even 😂

Who even makes UI like this? How would one even hire for this?

github if peak blizzard made it

@skeptrune ok!

PLEASE be a product builder. i am begging you. there are 100x more database-tuning devs than actual product wizards who know how to make things people want

One of the most challenging tasks I'm working on is defining an AI-first product process within a client team. Hitting a lot of resistance in some areas but an overwhelming understanding of the 'norm' just not cutting it anymore. Your competitors are adapting.

A normal morning in Australia

@alex_barashkov mate this is quality work!

hero section bts. made in blender.

Just had a retro on a feature with one of my client front-end teams, where we disagreed. They think prototyping should only happen when you genuinely need to discover something. Otherwise figma first, always. I think the speed of AI-enabled prototyping has challenged this. In figma I'd do one or two variations of an interaction and ship the one that worked the best. With AI I can prototype five or ten variations in much less time, experience them, and pick the right one. That's the whole argument. More options explored in less time means a better final product. The figma file stops being the source of truth, but the product gets better. Drag-and-drop, animation, edge cases, the way two states meet. You can't sketch your way to those. You have to feel them. And now you can feel ten of them instead of one. We're running this at @halaska right now. Don't fully know the answer yet. But I'm pretty sure the studios that figure it out first will ship product the figma-only studios can't catch.

It's been a LONG time since I picked up an NFT but @Deadfellaz by @betty_nft felt like a vibe

@thesupersmail @arvydas_gecas @dominikmartn Working through finalising the process with the stakeholders now so will share once I land on something solid!

@chalaska @arvydas_gecas @dominikmartn how about writing a longer post about the new designeer process

On one of our client projects, my designers @arvydas_gecas + @dominikmartn are moving toward shipping production code. The leadership load gets heavier, not lighter. Security. Access. Ownership when something breaks. The stakeholder conversations change when design is pushing code into a real environment. I'm defining the AI x design workflows, managing the change with clients, and still hands on with the team in Figma + Claude Code. Sweet spot.

@DamiDina Mainly Claude Code I think

@chalaska What tools and platforms besides figma will you be using here? Genuinely curious

Working on a new process to move one of our client teams to design-led development. Prototyping in code, real components, AI in the loop. Figma becomes the source of truth for the design system, not the place we ship from.

@lukas_kovac Well it kind of is, as the front-end team has already built the components in code 1:1 to the design system in Figma, well at least 99:1

What about having the source of truth for the design system (design components, styles) in code as well? For me, Figma is becoming more of a sketchpad. Having the source of truth there still feels like a friction, as it's not really a source of truth (what you see on FE is not what is in Figma - unless everybody is working hard on syncing it all)

@prmack Haven't found the perfect solution yet, working on it!

@chalaska I find it's the source of truth up until you launch. Then it's just catch-up. I heard that one way is just to screenshot the live site and work from that.

@0xCharlota winning!

sorry, i have no time to react to the obituaries of the design profession y’all are tweeting; i got an inbox full of project inquiries to get through

@sama the interface is due for a refresh, the old pattern doesn’t work for new rules

feels like a good time to seriously rethink how operating systems and user interfaces are designed (also the internet; there should be a protocol that is equally usable by people and agents)

@dominikmartn This is sick!

told gpt 5.5 to rebuild the nothing design bento grid from the skill

@bryan_johnson what’s the point of living longer if you’re not actually living?

idk if I can keep this up you guys. I just got one more to do: a five min warm eye compress before bed. I do endless things every day. From the moment I wake up to bedtime, and even when I'm sleeping, I'm always doing something and measuring it. It never ends. Help.