Dive Club 🤿 Karl Koch - Tips for New Design Engineers
Feb 4, 2026
Karl Koch, a design engineer who crafts interaction details and teaches others to bridge design and engineering. He talks about adopting a craft-oriented design-engineering mindset. He warns about common AI-generated code pitfalls and recommends practical tactics like inspecting in-browser, curating reference docs, and careful motion timing. He outlines a learning path and what employers expect in the role.
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AI Tends To Overuse Deterministic Patterns
- AI-generated code tends to be overly deterministic and often wraps logic in unnecessary patterns like useEffect.
- That leads to extra renders and wasted work which a design engineer must spot and avoid.
Embed Small Rules For Better AI Prompts
- Teach your AI assistant domain rules by feeding it short reference docs like "you might not need an effect."
- Then ask the model to check code against that doc to catch unnecessary useEffect usage.
Never Use Index As A List Key
- Avoid using array indexes as React list keys; generate stable unique IDs instead.
- Using stable keys preserves correct insertion, deletion, and animation behaviors.