Work, experiments, and writing by Julie Chabin

"AI will replace designers" is trending and I've said it myself in pitches (coming from a designer, it grabs attention pretty fast). But most people repeating it don't understand what it really implies. It reduces design, and UI specifically, to something it isn't, and exposes how little most people, even in tech, understand what designers actually do. So here is a quick intro to software/interface design: An interface isn't paint. It's the layer that lets two sides communicate. In French, interface can even mean the person translating between spoken and sign language: the mediator who makes m

Early-stage startups don't need people who blindly follow the lead. They don't even need the smartest people. They need people who give a damn so much they don't care when they're called: "difficult" for questioning bad solutions "stupid" for asking to fill knowledge gaps "problematic" for pointing out problems "disorganized" for skipping the classic playbooks and processes "crazy" for believing you can actually pull it off before your seed runs out Early-stage isn't for everyone. It's for people who are fine being called all the names and wearing all the hats. These people will be the reason

Why early-stage startups should focus on shipping, not systematizing The past few months, I’ve helped a few early-stage startups get their product off the ground. 2 or 3 engineers, no designer yet, just a vague idea of what needs to exist. Half the time, the teams come from big tech. Strong resumes. Strong pitch decks. Strong opinions. And one request always shows up: “Julie, where’s the design system?” Or worse: “I can’t work because Julie hasn’t finished the design system.” (Oh, poor baby.) A design system feels smart. Scalable. Efficient. But when you don’t even have a product, it’s none of

I don’t believe in design handoffs. First, because I don’t like wasting time writing documentation for people who don’t even open both eyes when looking at designs. Second, because I like when things actually work. Design doesn’t stop at the Figma file. That’s the easy part. The real design happens when you see how it behaves in production, how it reacts to weird data, how it breaks because someone pasted an emoji into a form. So no, I’m not disappearing after I share the file. I stick around. I’m annoying, too. I’ll give you a demo. Snippets of code you didn’t ask for. If you tell me “it’s no