The state most operational software companies sit in for years, what it costs them, and why hiring another designer doesn't fix it.
30 May 2026
Most operational software companies have design without a function. There's a designer, or there was one, or there's an outsourced relationship. There is no design capability built into how the company works. The state has no clean name, so companies sit in it for years. Sometimes a decade.
I w...
Why DESIGN.md doesn't survive contact with a real design system
The Google Labs DESIGN.md spec is the right portable interchange for AI coding agents. It is not the right canonical source for tokens.
20 May 2026
We tried DESIGN.md as the canonical source of our design system. It did not work. Here is what happened, and what we learned to do instead.
Quick context
The Google Labs DESIGN.md spec is a structured Markdown format for describing design systems in a way AI coding agents can read and use. It ...
