Dive Club 🤿 Stephen Haney - The 2026 AI Design Field Report (tools, process, and what's working)
113 snips
Jan 19, 2026 
In a dynamic conversation, Stephen Haney, founder of the innovative design tool Paper, shares his insights on how leading design teams are integrating AI into their workflows. He discusses the disparity between AI adoption in startups versus bigger companies and highlights the concept of a 'designer playground.' With a focus on local development vs. cloud tools, Stephen reveals how AI is influencing performance evaluations and prototype testing. He emphasizes the importance of experimentation for designers looking to harness the creative potential of AI.
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Use Stateful Prototyping To Communicate UX
- Learn and adopt stateful interactive prototyping tools like Cursor or Cloud Code to communicate dynamic UX clearly.
- Use these tools to show focus, modals, and loading states instead of static screenshots or drawings.
Designer Forks Become The New Starting Place
- Top companies create isolated designer forks of repos so designers can prototype without engineering friction.
- Local dev with real app starting points beats rebuilding screens in generic cloud sandboxes.
Avoid Expecting Designers To Ship To Prod
- Don't expect designers at large companies to PR directly to production; accept role boundaries and maintenance costs.
- Treat PR-to-prod as a different job with pager and reliability responsibilities before volunteering for it.
