Dive Club 🤿 Stephen Haney - The 2026 AI Design Field Report (tools, process, and what's working)
9 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.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Design And Engineering Are Complementary
- Design and engineering remain distinct specialties because design explores problem space while engineering narrows and implements solutions.
- Specialization matters even as people can and should learn cross-disciplinary skills.
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.
