--- title: Readme type: about summary: Who I am and how to read this site. order: 0 --- # Readme I'm Chris Halaska, a product designer. 20 years in, six of them at Google, now working with a small number of crypto and AI startups from Dubai. This site is a set of working files, because that's how I actually work. When I finish with a client I leave them [a toolkit of files like these](/studio/halaska-os), so their design stays consistent after I roll off. Browse the folders on the left the way you'd browse a repo. ## Where to start - `current.md` is what I'm working on right now. - `about/` is the short story and how I think. - `career/` is where I've been. - `studio/` is Halaska Studio, the primary way of working with me. Prefer one file? The whole site lives at [/chris-halaska.md](/chris-halaska.md). --- --- title: Current type: about summary: What I'm working on right now. order: 1 date: Oct 2026 --- # Current What's on my desk right now. - Continuous improvements to [Halaska UI](/projects/ui-halaska), my UI kit built for founders and coders to use in anything. - Refining [Halaska OS](/studio/halaska-os), the foundation all our product work goes through. - Product and digital experience work through [the studio](/studio/halaska-studio). - Exploring a few experiments on the side. I have space to take on one or two new projects at the moment. [Book a call with me](https://cal.com/chalaska/intro) if one of them should be yours. --- --- title: About type: about summary: The short story. order: 1 --- # About The short story, from hobby to studio. Even in high school I was into animation and design, doing it as a hobby long before I realised it could be a career. That realisation took me into advertising, where I was quickly promoted to senior art director, then into product, and eventually out on my own. Since then I've worked across design, strategy and advertising, between San Francisco, Singapore, India and New York, including six years at Google on Google Photos and other consumer products. I'm currently based in Dubai, and loving that AI now lets me deliver far more at scale than we ever could, and build my own things alongside it. Right now I'm deep in AI. I think a lot about the future of design, designers' careers and what a studio becomes when AI can supercharge it. Not the tools as they are today, but the systems that come next: swarms of agents and team members working off one shared knowledge base, executing consistently. That's the leap I'm trying to make with the studio, rather than waiting for the industry to catch up. The longer version of that is in `thinking.md`. How I actually work is in `principles.md`. --- --- title: Thinking type: about summary: Where design and AI are going, and where studios fit. order: 2 --- # 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](/studio/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](/about/coaching). --- --- title: Principles type: about summary: How I work, in two halves. order: 3 --- # Principles How I work, in two halves: design the right thing, then design it the right way. ## Design the right thing Don't blindly build what's asked for. Challenge it, cut what doesn't make sense, and work out what's actually right for the business, the engineering and the users, not what simply looks nice. The best engagements are the ones where I'm directing this directly, with support from my designers. ## Design it the right way Validate as you go. A prototype beats a static mock, and that's been true for most of my career; AI just makes getting there much easier, so we iterate faster and the product comes out better. AI supercharges our judgement, context, speed and execution quality, but the judgement itself stays with me. And every client is set up so the standard holds after we roll off. --- --- title: Coaching type: coaching summary: Coaching and mentoring for designers. order: 4 links: - label: Book coaching ($299) url: https://cal.com/chalaska/coaching - label: Mentoring (booked out) url: https://cal.com/chalaska/mentoring --- # Coaching I coach and mentor other designers, one on one. ## Who it's for Designers, agency owners and product people working out how AI impacts the industry, who want to stay relevant and ahead of the game in their career and business. ## How it works Coaching is a paid 45-minute session ($299) where we go deep on your specific situation. Mentoring is a free 20-minute session, limited to a couple a week, and currently booked out. ## How to start [Book a coaching session ($299)](https://cal.com/chalaska/coaching), or [join the mentoring queue](https://cal.com/chalaska/mentoring) for when spots open up. Come with the problem you want to work on. --- --- title: Contact type: about summary: Book a call or email me. order: 5 links: - label: Book a call with me url: https://cal.com/chalaska/intro --- # Contact One way to reach me, two doors. ## Book a call [Book a call with me](https://cal.com/chalaska/intro). 25 minutes, and the fastest way to work out if we should work together. ## Email [chris@halaska.com](mailto:chris@halaska.com) ## Elsewhere - [X](https://x.com/chalaska) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrishalaska) ## Where Dubai, most of the time. --- --- title: Google type: career summary: Staff Product Designer, 2015 to 2022. order: 1 date: 2015–2022 role: Staff Product Designer --- # Google Six years on Google Photos and other consumer products, between San Francisco, Singapore, India and New York. ## The role Staff Product Designer, working on Next Billion Users and Google Photos. ## What I worked on I spent the first three years leading new products for the Next Billion Users team. That meant travelling to places like India, interviewing people on the street, and iterating on prototypes in the field, then launching products built for the reality of those markets: connectivity, device speed, language, all of it. Part of that was the default Photos app for Android One devices, designed around the same constraints. Then I moved to the main Google Photos app, a product with over a billion users, leading much of the sharing side with a large team spread across San Francisco and Sydney. While I was there I also mentored startups in the Sydney startup ecosystem. ## What I took from it I went deep on process for product development. I leant hard into product management, engineering requirements and business needs, and came out understanding the whole picture rather than just the design seat. I also came out with best practice for building products at scale, from small startups to billion-user products: the process for doing it, what works, and what doesn't. --- --- title: Immutable type: career summary: Staff Product Designer, 2022 to 2023. order: 2 date: 2022–2023 role: Staff Product Designer --- # Immutable A year and a half leading the consumer products UX team at Immutable in Sydney. ## The role Staff Product Designer, leading the consumer products UX team. ## What I worked on Crypto wallets with a hard brief: stay relevant for users who live deep in web2 while merging in web3 technology that wasn't smooth yet. A lot of the work was making the jumps between mobile apps and web browsers feel seamless when the technology underneath wasn't. We also built payments infrastructure, and the mobile wallet became the default for many of the games built on Immutable. ## What I took from it I went deep on crypto technology: the nuances of wallets, payments, and how it all interoperates. That knowledge became the first foundation of the studio. --- --- title: Earlier type: career summary: Advertising and freelance, 2006 to 2015. order: 3 date: 2006–2015 --- # Earlier Before product design: nine years across advertising, agencies and a bank. ## The role Senior Art Director at Ogilvy Interactive (2006 to 2010), Senior Designer at The Monkeys (2010 to 2013), a freelance year across Reactive and Pusher (2014), then Senior Designer at Commonwealth Bank (2014 to 2015). ## What I worked on In advertising I was always in the digital teams, leading the thinking on how traditional campaigns could be rethought for digital. Over time that flipped: campaigns became digital-first, led by what we could actually build. At Commonwealth Bank I worked on the mobile app, led the motion design, and worked on their new tablet application. ## What I took from it The bank gave me deep UX and research experience. We ran interviews with real users every week, and I learnt how to take that feedback and apply it to a product at scale. Advertising gave me the craft of the idea, and the habit of leading with what's possible. --- --- title: Founding the studio type: career summary: 2023 to now. order: 4 date: 2023–Now role: Founder --- # Founding the studio In 2023 I left full-time roles to start Halaska Studio. ## The role Founder, and the designer directing the work. ## What I worked on The studio started purely in crypto: DeFi apps, trading exchanges, mobile wallets, layer 2s, NFT storage and inscriptions. Since then we've taken on more and more AI products: AI voice assistants, AI storytelling for game designers, and voice AI agents for customer service teams. ## What I took from it Reading what each client actually needs: which part of the process matters at which stage, when to slow down and when to speed up, and how to direct other designers effectively while still adding my own impact to the work. --- --- title: CV type: career summary: The plain list of roles. order: 5 --- # CV The plain list. Each role above has its own file with the story. | Company | Role | Years | | --- | --- | --- | | Halaska Studio | Product Designer | 2023–Now | | Immutable | Staff Product Designer | 2022–2023 | | Google | Staff Product Designer | 2015–2022 | | Commonwealth Bank | Senior Designer | 2014–2015 | | Reactive & Pusher | My freelance design era | 2014 | | The Monkeys | Senior Designer | 2010–2013 | | Ogilvy Interactive | Senior Art Director | 2006–2010 | --- --- title: Halaska Studio type: studio summary: What the studio is now. order: 1 status: live links: - label: halaska.com url: https://halaska.com --- # Halaska Studio A design intelligence studio for startups. ## What it is Brand, product, website and marketing, designed as one, with a system that keeps them that way. We work with crypto and AI startups, and we specialise in AI strategy and systems, product, brand and story, and web and launch. The founders we've designed for have raised $400M+, backed by YC, Founders Fund, USV, Framework and Galaxy. ## Who it's for Founders who want a partner, not an agency. Teams whose product needs to earn the trust its engineering deserves. ## How it works I direct all the product work. You work with me to shape what we build, and I execute along with my team. Every engagement has [Halaska OS](/studio/halaska-os) built in as a foundational layer, so everything we output stays consistent and aligned with the business goals and the product vision, even after we're gone. ## What you keep Everything: the files, the components, the design rules, and Halaska OS set up for your product. --- --- title: Halaska OS type: studio summary: The AI toolkit a client keeps after we finish. order: 2 status: live --- # Halaska OS The AI toolkit a client keeps after we finish. ## What it is Our AI system, with 20+ years of product design judgement, including six at Google, already built in. Over an engagement we layer your brand on top: your taste, your voice, the decisions that make you different. The result is one source of truth that works in the tools you already use, like Claude and Cursor. This site is built from the same kind of files, which is the point. ## Who it's for Teams who want their design to stay consistent after we roll off. ## How it works We start from the base system and shape it around your product as we work. By the end it knows your brand, your components and your standards. Everyone on your team, and every AI tool they use, produces work that looks and reads like your best designer made it. ## What you keep The whole thing. Take it and run with it, or keep us on to look after it. --- --- title: Dash type: studio summary: Fixed-price design sprints. order: 3 status: live links: - label: dash.halaska.com url: https://dash.halaska.com --- # Dash Vibe-coded is fine. Vibe-coded-looking isn't. ## What it is Fixed-price design from senior design engineers. How you built your product doesn't matter. How it reads to an investor does. Dash gets it to the standard of the idea, in a one-week sprint or month by month. ## Who it's for Founders with a working product that doesn't yet look like one. Web app, mobile app or marketing site. ## How it works The sprint is three steps. A 25-minute discovery call to agree the goal, then you book your week and send the build and the context: that's the whole brief. We rebuild the screens that matter (layout, type, hierarchy, states) with your feedback folded in mid-week, and the rest of the product inherits the system. You get a working build on a live URL, in your stack. There's also a monthly shape: your product keeps getting better month after month, one piece of work moving at a time, shipped before the next one starts. ## What you keep The working build in your own stack. Keep the parts you want, or merge the lot. --- --- title: Engagements type: studio summary: How to work with me. order: 4 --- # Engagements Two ways of working with us, one rule: you work with me. ## What it is 1. Project-based, scoped to your specific milestone goals. 2. Embedded on a monthly basis, continuously iterating and improving the product and the guidance around it. ## Who it's for Project work suits a product that needs to be designed properly, once. Embedded suits teams shipping every week who want senior design in the room. ## How it works You have direct contact with us. I direct the work, you shape it with me, and I execute along with my team. Either way we're in your TG/Slack, in your Figma, and on the calls where the product decisions get made. ## What you keep Everything we make, plus [Halaska OS](/studio/halaska-os) built as the foundational layer of the engagement, so the output stays consistent even after we're gone. --- --- title: Halaska UI type: project summary: A UI kit for AI products. order: 1 status: live links: - label: ui.halaska.com url: https://ui.halaska.com --- # Halaska UI A UI kit for AI products, built for founders and coders to use in anything.  ## What it is A single-file React UI kit built on shadcn/ui: screens, AI UX patterns and components for founders building with coding agents. ## Why I built it A lot of the AI-generated websites and products I see are starting to look the same: the same default UX patterns, styling that's clearly AI-generated. I built this to give founders a way to make their product or website feel designed without hiring a designer. It gets them from 80% to maybe 85% of the way there. ## Where it's at Live at [ui.halaska.com](https://ui.halaska.com), and continuously improving. It's one of the things on my desk most weeks. ## Try it Browse the screens, patterns and components at [ui.halaska.com](https://ui.halaska.com), then follow the install step. Copy one prompt and your prototype looks designed. --- --- title: Get Future Proofed type: project summary: The newsletter. order: 2 status: live links: - label: getfutureproofed.design url: https://getfutureproofed.design --- # Get Future Proofed Occasional writing for designers on where the industry's heading. ## What it is A newsletter for product designers. I post when I've got something to say, not on a schedule. ## Why I built it I realised early that AI was changing a lot in this industry, and that the context I'd built up was useful to other designers along the way, even while everything keeps moving. So I started offering it as a newsletter. ## Where it's at Live at [getfutureproofed.design](https://getfutureproofed.design). The [coaching and mentoring sessions](/about/coaching) run alongside it, for designers who want to go deeper than a newsletter can. ## Try it Read it and subscribe at [getfutureproofed.design](https://getfutureproofed.design).