Brent Akamine

Last week, I had a conversation with ADPList co-founder Felix Lee. He wasn't reaching out with a pitch. He was simply calling individual designers to understand how the platform can continue to bring value to the community. ADPList is one of the biggest design communities on the web. And the co-founder is calling designers individually to hear their problems. That says something. When leaders are on the ground, genuinely listening, not to sell but to understand, the community feels it. Those companies don't always win financially. But they win in something harder to manufacture: loyalty. People will champion them in rooms they'll never be in. I've had the luxury of seeing this at a few places I've worked. I call it a luxury because it's not common. Most leaders aren't willing to step back down into the communities their products built. There's a kind of humility required that doesn't come naturally to everyone. What Felix is doing is the simplest thing and somehow still rare: just listen. Don't assume you know what people need. Go find out.

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This is a fascinating look at how AI is reshaping the way we design and build. Our workflows, and the relationship between design and code are evolving quickly. Jenny Wen explores what this shift means and how we can adapt to what’s ahead.

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about how “the design process is dead.” Jenny Wen from Anthropic mentioned it on Lenny’s podcast, and the conversation has been nonstop since. Personally, I don’t think the process is dead. It’s just changing. The traditional flow of discover, research, wireframe, mock, prototype, test wasn’t created because designers loved structure. It existed because building used to be expensive and understanding users took time. A wrong direction could cost real resources, so teams needed gates before committing to a build. That made sense at the time. But that process was built on a big assumption: that validating an idea had to happen before you built anything. That’s no longer true. With AI, small teams can move from idea to working product in a few days. You don’t always need months of research to understand an opportunity. You can build something real, get data, and actually feel how the experience works. That kind of learning is impossible from a Figma file or prototype. I still use Figma and my sketch book to explore visual directions or new interaction ideas. It’s how I think. But lately, I’ve been using AI tools to turn those explorations into real, data-driven prototypes I can validate right away. I get to test the flow, push on the edges, and feel where the design breaks down, sometimes before I even bring it to the team. For me, that’s where design is headed. Less about long, linear steps and more about cycling between exploration and real-world validation. The craft still matters. Taste still matters. Maybe even more now that building is faster and cheaper. The design process didn’t die. It’s shifting. And the best way to keep up is to stay close to the real experience, not just the idea of it.

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Proud to see this conversation from the All-In Podcast Summit go live with the NYSE. Kristen Scholer asked the question I get most often - which models actually matter for enterprise work - and my answer on the floor was: both. Frontier models raise the ceiling. Open-weight models bring the cost down enough that enterprises can reach it. Our job is to orchestrate 70+ models in one workspace and route each step to the right one, so a knowledge worker gets the result, not the plumbing. AI has moved from demo to production: real workflows, real budgets, real constraints. That is the moment Genspark was built for - a Microsoft Agent 365 launch partner alongside ServiceNow and Workday, and one of the first to co-sign the open-weight letter from Microsoft and NVIDIA. Thank you to the NYSE and All-In Summit teams. Great to represent Genspark.ai on that floor.

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It won’t last much longer, but right now, designers who can code are at a huge advantage (again). While many AI tools are still most powerfully wielded at the command line, a creative who knows their way around the terminal might just be positioned to win this whole thing, or at least to get a head start on redefining their role before someone else does that for them.

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The classic design process is evolving and fast. For African tech innovators, this is a wake-up call: the way we build products, design interfaces, and solve problems is changing globally. Leveraging AI, thinking beyond traditional processes, and embracing new design archetypes could be the key to creating world-class products from Africa. 🌍✨ Tech is no longer about following established playbooks, it’s about adapting, experimenting, and innovating faster than ever. #AfricanTech #Innovation #Design #AI #ProductBuilding #FutureOfWork

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