Sean Smith

Design Leader Building AI Products

Sean@seansmithdesign.com • linkedin.com/in/seansmithdesign • seansmithdesign.com

15 years shipping AI-native products across cross-platform productivity, B2B, and consumer apps. Player-coach with deep IC craft and team leadership, comfortable in either lane. Led design for Outlook Mobile and Mac through 2x+ MAU growth at hundreds-of-millions scale. Shaped ML-driven product experiences before generative AI was a category. Took two early-stage fintech concepts from idea to demo-ready as the one-person product, design, and build function, working with the founder of a stealth fintech venture. Completing Future London Academy's Design MBA in 2026. Strong in product design, design systems, AI-native UX, and prototyping, with AI-native workflows built daily around Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Paper, Figma, and Linear. Solo builder shipping Brukas (TestFlight), Ghostties (open source), and authored Claude Code agentic workflows.

Sean Smith Design

Product Design Leader & Builder

Nov 2025 – Present
  • Working with the founder of an early-stage startup studio on two fintech concepts, taking both from idea to demo-ready as the one-person product, design, and build function.
  • Owned the full stack of decisions: product definition, interaction design, visual design, design system foundations, and front-end build. Shaped end-to-end product flows from first-run through complex multi-step workflows. AI-native workflows throughout (Claude Code, Paper, Figma), including agentic systems for rapid prototyping in code.
  • Built with React, Next.js, HTML, CSS, and Expo (mobile apps).
  • First concept paused after a well-funded direct competitor entered the market. Second concept proceeding through contract discussions.
Microsoft

Outlook Mac & Mobile

2021–December 2025 | Principal Design Manager & Principal Design Lead
  • Led design for Outlook Mobile and Mac through 2x+ MAU growth at hundreds-of-millions scale, spanning AI-powered experiences and core reading workflows across iOS, Android, macOS, and web.
  • Drove cross-platform alignment of Copilot experiences across mobile, tablet, Mac, web, and Windows: one product vision, five platforms, different teams, different stacks.
  • Owned the Dynamic Action Button as a signature mobile design pattern. Modernized a years-out-of-date mobile design system into a foundation the team could ship from.
  • Player-coach across the chapter: hands-on design and prototyping balanced with strategic direction. Drove influence without authority across PM, engineering, and research to align on interaction paradigms and ship polished user interfaces at scale.
  • Grew, managed, and mentored a global design team of 11, from early career through principal level.
Microsoft

MileIQ Post-Acquisition, SMB Incubation

Dec 2015–2021 | Senior Designer to Senior Design Manager
  • Led design across SMB and consumer apps including MileIQ, Spend, and Visits. Ran user research and usability studies for evidence-based decisions, identifying product opportunities.
  • As Senior Designer, led design for Money in Excel, a personal finance product that pulled banking data via Plaid into smart Excel templates. Met users in the spreadsheet workflow they were already using to budget.
  • Supported hiring and growth of the team while balancing hands-on execution with product strategy. Stewarded through post-acquisition integration into Microsoft.
Mobile Data Labs (MileIQ)

Founding Designer

Jun 2015–Dec 2015
  • First in-house designer at Mobile Data Labs (MileIQ), working to invent the product vision for the IQ suite (Miles, Visits, Spend, plus a "super-IQ" shell) that turned mundane SMB tasks into ML-driven, suggested-action experiences, designing novel interaction paradigms for ML-driven product experiences before the category had a name.
  • Vision contributed to Microsoft's acquisition of the company in December 2015.
Projects
Brukas

AI Focus Coach: Solo Builder

2024 – Present
  • AI focus coach for iOS and macOS, live in TestFlight. Type what you are stuck on; a short conversation pulls you into a single focused timer. Solo product, design, and build.
  • Ships design as working, production-quality code. Built in native Swift, OpenRouter (multi-model) + Supabase. Original "Warm Clay" design system. High-fidelity prototypes moved directly to live product using Claude Code.
Ghostties

Ghostty Terminal Fork: Developer Tool

2024 – Present
  • Fork of the open-source Ghostty terminal built to manage many parallel Claude Code agent windows. Adds a multi-agent workspace sidebar, built-in browser for local testing, and an in-progress MCP/CLI task surface. Native macOS, Zig and Swift. Open-source community engagement via GitHub.
Claude Code agentic workflows

Open-Source Skill Extensions

2024 – Present
  • Open-source extensions for Claude Code authored solo: impeccable-swift, wrap + wrap-continue, design quality, and orchestrator scaffolding pattern.

Contact

Sean@seansmithdesign.com
linkedin.com/in/seansmithdesign
github.com/SeanSmithDesign
x.com/seansmithbuilds
seansmithdesign.com

Professional Development

Future London Academy
Executive Programme for Design Leaders ("Design MBA") | 2025-2026
Designer Fund
Design for Business Impact | 2019

Skills

Claude Code (authored)
impeccable-swift, wrap + wrap-continue, orchestrator scaffolding pattern, design quality
Leadership
Player-coach, design leadership, team management, hiring and team building, mentorship, design strategy, design operations, cross-functional partnership, influence without authority, stakeholder management, executive communication
Craft
Product design, interaction design, visual design, UI craftsmanship, design thinking, wireframes, prototyping, high-fidelity prototypes, user research, information architecture, end-to-end product design, onboarding flows, complex workflows, polished user interfaces, design quality, brand and storytelling, attention to detail, creative problem-solving, user empathy
Design Systems
Component libraries, design tokens, cross-platform parity, design system governance, design systems adoption, documentation
AI & Emerging
AI-native UX, AI model experiences, agentic systems, ethical AI experiences, AI-assisted development workflows, agentic workflows, interaction paradigms, generative design, prompt design, human-AI interaction, prototyping with AI, ML-driven product experiences, developer tools, developer tooling
Design Tools
Claude Code, Figma, Paper, Cursor, Codex, v0, Lovable, Remotion, Jitter
Build & Ship
Next.js, React, Swift, Xcode, iOS Simulator, Vercel, Supabase, GitHub, App Store Connect, Linear, PostHog, Expo
Domains
Productivity software, SaaS products, B2B, enterprise/B2B SaaS, fintech, consumer apps, API products, developer tools, mobile (iOS, Android), web, macOS, AI products

Links

seansmithdesign.com
brukas.app
ghostties.org
github.com/…/impeccable-swift
github.com/…/claude-skills
Outlook for iOS (App Store)
MileIQ (App Store)

Education

Art Institute of California - San Francisco
Graphic Design | 2007-2010
Academy of Art
Graphic Design | 2006-2007