Thinking

Where I think design and AI are going, and where studios fit.

From tools to systems

Most teams are using AI as a better tool: one person, one prompt, one output. That's the current state, and it's already useful. The next step is systems, where the work is automated end to end and the judgement is encoded once, then applied everywhere.

Swarms on a shared source

The model I'm building towards is swarms of agents and team members working off one shared knowledge base, executing consistently. The knowledge base holds the taste, the rules and the context. The agents and the people both read from it, so quality doesn't depend on who happened to do the work.

The pain point this solves is old: lots of team members usually means siloed thinking and siloed execution. That gap is what we're trying to close.

Where studios fit

A studio's value used to be hands. Increasingly it's judgement: knowing what the right thing is, encoding it, and setting up the system that executes to that standard. That's what Halaska OS is, and it's why every engagement now leaves one behind.

Supercharged, not replaced

AI supercharges judgement, context, speed and execution quality. It doesn't supply the judgement. After 20 years of this, that's the part I'm least worried about automating.

Designers' careers

The designers who provide more than execution are the ones who'll succeed. They've always been the more valuable ones, and AI has just heightened it. That means the ability to say no, to choose intuition over logic when it's warranted, and to embrace these tools to lift the quality and workflow of the whole team, not just your own output.

This is most of what we work through in coaching.