Near Future Podcast

Near Future
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A regular podcast covering design and AI from the founders of Near Future, a boutique AI consultancy focused on teams that care about craft. We cover both what we're seeing on the ground and industry trends, ways of working and occasional guests from the design world.

  1. 3h ago

    Ep #18: Gabriella Hachem (CEO, Dessn): Design should be done in Production

    Tom and Jonny sit down with Gabriella Hachem, co-founder of Dessn and the podcast’s first design tool founder. They dig into why Dessn runs your codebase in the cloud so you can design on production, unpack the read-only decision that shaped the product, and go behind the scenes of building a design tool while the models caught up. Key takeaways Dessn runs your codebase in the cloud so you can design on top of the real thing. No local setup and no coding, and the page you pull onto the canvas is your production homepage rather than a representation of it. Gabriella has waited her whole career to open the real homepage and work on it.Read-only access to the repo was a focus decision before it was a security one. The first version of Dessn opened pull requests. They dropped it, because opening a PR isn’t the hard part anymore and it was never how they were going to win. Handoff now runs through MCP straight into Cursor or Claude Code.Leaving the engineering gate where it is smooths adoption. Workflows are already changing, and change is heavy even when it’s powerful. Keeping one familiar checkpoint untouched means a design team only has to renegotiate the part that actually matters.Dessn’s ideal customer profile turned out to be a culture, which is a very hard thing to qualify for. Every usual deterministic signal failed: vertical, size, stage. The proxy Gabriella watches for is whether a design engineer role already exists on the team.An excited user counts for nothing if leadership isn’t bought in. Gabriella has watched a deal die at that gate with the user still cheering for it. Nim is the one who says no, and she’s learning to, because you only have so much time and where you spend it matters.The handoff only ever existed because designers couldn’t reach the code. Remove the skill barrier and you remove the reason for the relay. Fewer people between the decision-maker and the executor gets you higher quality output and more speed.Roles were built on skills, and skills are the part that’s collapsing. You knew Figma so you were a designer, you knew how to code so you were a dev. Gabriella never became a Figma expert and still considers herself a good designer, because the thinking layer was always the job.Dessn’s learning curve is a curve of power. It’s mostly prompt-based, so there’s no tool to master, but there is a blank canvas problem: what can I even do in here? Ask it for a dropdown of every state a user could be in and it pulls them straight from your code.The models caught up to the vision, and that’s what conviction buys you. It didn’t work, it didn’t work, it didn’t work, and then it worked. Dessn never rode the hype wave, because the product couldn’t deliver on the promises yet, and now it can.The industry has gone from FOMO to fatigue after a slew of broken promises. Gabriella wants the headline to be exactly that: no broken promises. She’s blunt about competitors who answer the source-of-truth problem by creating another source of truth.The designer’s job is heading towards curation, and that was always the high-leverage part. Deciding this is the right thing to do was always the leverage. Her worry, one year out, is how much Dessn builds for the requests arriving today versus the version of design work she thinks is coming.“When did a feature become synonymous with a role?” An investor asked Gabriella where the visual editor was, given she builds for designers. Direct manipulation comes up constantly, and she thinks the industry should reopen that question rather than assume the answer.Chapters 0:04 — Our first design tool founder: Gabriella Hachem and Dessn1:18 — Montreal, first jobs, and never fitting the boxed roles2:22 — She didn’t quit to build a design tool. She quit to solve a problem3:34 — Design and prototype in your codebase, no local setup, no coding6:42 — Jonny built a Temu version of Dessn for a hackathon8:38 — Read access or write access to the repo, and why Dessn went read-only11:04 — Opening a PR isn’t hard anymore, so that was never how they win13:28 — Collapsing the talent stack: fewer people between decision and execution14:51 — Roles were built on skills. She thinks they should be built on thinking16:57 — Novelty budget, and a learning curve of power19:36 — Pulling real production pages onto the canvas20:48 — Every state defined in your code, and an automated Storybook22:54 — When your ideal customer profile turns out to be culture23:55 — Leadership is the real gate, and Nim is better at saying no25:16 — Two years of founding: hard, fun, and a whole other level of hats28:53 — How to know it’s your turn to take the risk30:51 — Montreal to New York to London, and why not San Francisco32:14 — Valio Con, a panel of design tool founders, and a week in SF33:11 — Frenemies, and the one thing nobody else does35:06 — Form an opinion about how you want to work, then go work that way40:03 — Creating another source of truth makes the problem worse41:57 — From FOMO to fatigue, and the models catching up to the vision43:30 — Speed, latency, and 120 frames per second46:17 — Proactive agents, direct manipulation, and the designer as curator49:33 — “When did a feature become synonymous with a role?”50:38 — Personalised workflows, plugins, and Dessn as infrastructure52:57 — React Native now, iOS Native and a Mac Mini next54:23 — Quick fire: a wine bar, a spatula, deleting X, and watching your mum use ChatGPT59:19 — Where to find Gabriella, and the infinite canvas betaMentioned in the episode Gabriella and Dessn Gabriella Hachem — https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriella-hachem/Gabriella on X — https://x.com/gabriellahachDessn — https://www.dessn.aiNim Cheema, co-founder and CTO — https://ca.linkedin.com/in/nim-cheema‘Collapsing the talent stack’, Gabriella’s piece on Scott Belsky’s essay — https://medium.com/@gabriella_46676/collapsing-the-talent-stack-40eb849a2f97Dessn’s $6m seed round, led by Connect Ventures with Betaworks and N49P — https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/12/dessn-raises-6m-for-its-production-focused-design-tool/Kevin Grajeda, Dessn’s employee number one, who Gabriella met on X — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevingrajeda/Companies and past roles Planned, where Gabriella was head of product and Nim was head of AI — https://planned.comUnsplash, where Nim worked — https://unsplash.comBetaworks, who hosted them in New York — https://www.betaworks.comConnect Ventures, who led the seed — https://www.connectventures.coPeople Scott Belsky, author of ‘Collapsing the Talent Stack’ — https://www.scottbelsky.comStephen Haney, foun...

  2. Sep 17

    Ep #17: Frank Bach (Anthropic): Building Your Own Design Tool, Beginning Anywhere, and a Swiss Army Knife Career

    Tom and Jonny sit down with Frank Bach, a product designer at Anthropic who built his own design tool during onboarding week. They dig into why he prototypes in HTML instead of Figma, unpack his Swiss Army knife career from Red Bull to Headspace to Instagram, and get his advice for designers feeling the AI squeeze. Key takeaways Build the tool while you build the work. Frank made his design tool feature by feature during his first project at Anthropic, adding each part the moment he hit the need for it. A share function when he wanted to show his PM, then a Loom-style recording feature the next day, camera feed and all, in about three prompts.Load a control and a variant side by side and click them in sync. The most unusual thing he built steps two prototypes through the same screens on a single click. He is hoping Figma steals the idea.Most people inside a company have never seen the screens they own. Everyone at Headspace got the app free, so nobody had laid eyes on an upsell screen in years. A live side-by-side of current state and proposed state is what gave leadership the confidence to green-light the work.Begin anywhere. Frank has turned John Cage’s line into a working design principle. What matters is having something to click, see and feel, and the details get figured out along the way.Variety compounds differently to mastery. Energy drinks at Red Bull, meditation at Headspace, then social media at Instagram: every jump was chosen on purpose. He calls himself a Swiss Army knife of design, and reckons it is what makes someone stand out in an interview panel.Learning the tools on the company dime is a real benefit worth asking for. DoorDash set a goal it called Design 2028, where every designer becomes a design engineer, and gave people the time and space to get there. Frank admits he complained about it at first and is now grateful he did not have to learn it in his own hours.A lot of people working hard on something is a reason for empathy, and the metric still decides whether it worked. Frank got pushback from a former colleague for publicly critiquing a feature. His read: designers who want to talk business have to be able to talk about failures like adults, because there is not a lot of emotion in business.Do the next project’s pre-work before you get to it. Frank queues up a foundation on the Tuesday so that Monday’s project starts from something rather than a blank page. Half of it may be throwaway, and a PM running agents can now come back in a morning with what used to take a two-week sprint.Solve one of your own problems and it becomes the standout project in your portfolio. For anyone in an organisation with no AI budget and no guidance from above, that is Frank’s route through. A grocery list app or a plugin for a digital guitar amp both count, imperfect included.Old, slightly bad technology is a good counterweight to this pace. Frank keeps a five-inch black-and-white Quasar countertop television on his desk, one channel and a radio dial. He calls it poorly designed and perfectly designed at the same time, the same pull that took people back to vinyl.Close the 100 tabs and learn one thing today. His answer to feeling overwhelmed in an AI-first company. Nobody has landed on a perfect process yet, which means the process is still yours to shape, and he found that anxiety and excitement flipped over into each other almost overnight.Chapters 0:04 — Bureau, Edenspiekermann, Headspace, Instagram, DoorDash: the run-up to Anthropic2:18 — A day at Anthropic, where a 12-month roadmap makes no sense4:32 — The LinkedIn post that started all this5:03 — A quiet onboarding week and an enterprise Claude account7:46 — “How do I share this?” A share function, then a Loom feature, in three prompts9:14 — Shortcut keys, screen glimmers and museum wallpapers10:18 — Accidentally rebuilding Claude Design, backwards11:24 — Sunshine Shop, WooCommerce and total cowboy mode12:33 — Will the Frank tool still be around in 12 months?13:37 — Two prototypes side by side, clicking in sync15:41 — Where the line sits between human and AI16:43 — Mega tools, workspaces and a live command line18:54 — Energy drinks to meditation to social media: the Swiss Army knife career21:07 — Mastery versus invention, and naming the Frank Mega Tool23:52 — DoorDash’s Design 2028, and a quarterly meetup as a forcing function27:30 — Accountants, lawyers, and doing your taxes with an AI tool29:19 — The weirdest design processes he has come across32:19 — John Cage: begin anywhere34:13 — Critiquing an old colleague’s feature, and the fallout37:00 — Advice for designers with no budget and no backing41:14 — Mathematicians, art, Spotify and Suno42:55 — Quickfire: AGI takes over, what do you do with the time?43:59 — Quickfire: the five-inch Quasar TV that is perfectly badly designed45:59 — Staying grounded when the pace is this intense48:41 — Close your 100 tabs and learn one thing todayMentioned in the episode Frank Frank Bach’s website — francoisbach.comFrank on LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/francoisbachFrank on X — x.com/zendadddySunshine Shop, his creative collective and e-commerce store — sunshineshop.laLA Design & Dev, the Los Angeles meetup he organises — ladesignanddev.comCompanies and past roles Anthropic — anthropic.comBureau, the design studio Frank co-founded and later closedEdenspiekermann, where Red Bull was the main client — edenspiekermann.comRed Bull — redbull.comHeadspace — headspace.comInstagram — instagram.comDoorDash — doordash.comPeople Jenny Wen, Head of Design at Claude, whose Hatch Conference talk Jonny saw — jennywen.caAndy Puddicombe, the English co-founder of Headspace — headspace.com/content/video/meet-andy-puddicombe/923John Cage, composer, source of “Begin anywhere” — johncage.orgTools and products discussed Claude — claude.aiClaude Design — anthropic.com/news/claude-design-anthropic-labsFigma — figma.comCursor — cursor.comLoom — loom.comSketch — sketch.comAdobe Illustrator and Photoshop — adobe.comWordPress — wordpress.orgWooCommerce — woocommerce.comDropbox — dropbox.comGitHub — github.c...

  3. Sep 11

    Ep #16: Jonny and Tom: Guest recap, Learning Loops, Leverage and a 3D Labyrinth

    Tom and Jonny catch up after the summer with a roundup of August’s four guests, from Monzo’s fake app to Poem/1’s self-learning fulfilment agent. They ask whether designers are giving away their leverage to agents, answer a listener who wants the show to branch out, and share what they built, including Labyrinth rebuilt in two hours. Key takeaways Being deliberate about what you give away is most of the job now. Every August guest drew the line somewhere different, and every one of them drew it. Jonny’s version: even when it is slower, and even when an AI would do it better, make sure the decisions being made are still yours to make.Make one decision with an agent and fifty get made for you. They arrive interlinked, so working out which ones landed and why costs more than piling on another prompt. You end up with work that is technically yours and nothing in your head connecting it.A learning loop is an agent that remembers its own mistakes. Matt Webb’s Poem/1 fulfilment agent handled queries from 700 units by turning each new exception into a standing rule. Jonny’s caveat is that the abstract version convinces nobody, which is why “everyone should have agents” lands so flat.Agents accumulate cruft, so prune them. Jonny moved his main agent from NanoClaw version one to version two this week and deleted about half the notes it had written to itself over six months. What survived reads as concise instructions instead of six months of contradictions.When everyone can make the impressive thing, impressive moves. GPT-6 Astra put one-shot 3D and cloned games within reach of anyone with a prompt. Jonny’s yardstick for where the value went: his dad, a vicar, could now get further on a demo video than Jonny could have managed five years ago.Understand the grain of the medium you are designing against. Randy Hunt’s framing was the old-school graphic designer collaborating with the printer to get intent onto the page. Having an agent write your code is a different skill from understanding what that code does to your design.AI writing feels thin because the thinking happened somewhere else. Matt Webb can feed a model everything he has ever published and still fail to stand behind what comes back. It may convince everyone else, and it is still not something you can point at and call yours.Build the silly project yourself or you will never learn the tool. Demos online tell you nothing about where the limits sit. Tom is close to downloading Blender for exactly this reason, and Jonny built a full 3D Labyrinth in two hours partly to find out what two hours now buys.The impressionists are the closest analogue to this moment. Photography arrived, exact landscapes stopped being the point, and painters who already had mastery chose what to break. Whoever does best next will understand the technology underneath well enough to bend it.Skills get better when you rewrite their output by hand. Tom burned a month of Claude Fable 5.1 credits in half an hour, then rewrote both research skills’ results manually and fed those back as the template. A 10,000-word essay he would never read became a 400-word list of links.The craft question matters more than the job title. Tim, a listener, asked whether the show could branch out beyond senior design folks. Yes, with a lens: creative technologists, engineers, product people and founders are all fair game, as long as the question stays how AI is shifting the role and craft of design.Chapters 0:04 — Intro: back to school, and a cosy September episode0:59 — Rounding up August’s four guests1:38 — James Storer: Monzo’s fake app and its biggest token spender3:29 — Randy Hunt: Notion, SVA, and two full-time roles4:36 — The printing press, and the grain of the medium6:30 — Patrick Lewis: four times a founding designer7:57 — T-Rex arms, and shaping a role around what you enjoy8:51 — Matt Webb and an inventor’s practice9:49 — Poem/1’s self-learning fulfilment loop11:31 — The Gmail triage loop Tom hasn’t built yet12:43 — OpenClaw, and agents that rewrite their own memory13:36 — Lobotomising an agent onto NanoClaw version two16:59 — Where every guest drew their own line17:22 — Are we losing our leverage to agents?18:30 — GPT-6 Astra, and what happens when everyone can do it22:20 — Make one decision, get fifty24:10 — Is design an art or a science?26:47 — Inventors, not technologists28:44 — Why you have to build the silly project yourself30:20 — The impressionists, photography, and our toddler phase31:50 — Listener feedback: branch out beyond senior design folks?33:45 — Grading the podcast, and 36 YouTube subscribers36:29 — Design at the core, but a wider cast39:40 — Labyrinth, one-shotted in two hours42:45 — Burning a month of Claude Fable credits on skills45:40 — Consolidating everything into one Dia browser47:39 — Design leadership circles49:12 — Hatch Berlin, Brighton, and save the date for 22 October53:16 — Wrap upMentioned in the episode The August episodes we round up Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo) — share.transistor.fm/s/ab6c1806Ep #13: Randy Hunt (Notion & SVA) — share.transistor.fm/s/29c8593bEp #14: Patrick Lewis (Klay) — share.transistor.fm/s/8d030297Ep #15: Matt Webb (Inanimate) — share.transistor.fm/s/c39062f5People James Storer, Senior Product Design Lead at Monzo — linkedin.com/in/james-storer-5b543625Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA — randyjhunt.comPatrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay — patricknlewis.comMatt Webb, writing at Interconnected — interconnected.orgChristine Røde, product designer at The Browser Company — linkedin.com/in/christinerodeLenny Rachitsky, host of Lenny’s Podcast — lennysnewsletter.com/podcastTim, the listener who wrote in with the feedbackCompanies and past roles Monzo — monzo.comNotion — notion.comSVA MFA Design — design.sva.eduKlay — klay.visionInanimate, Matt Webb’s current company — inanimate.techThe Browser Company — thebrowser.companyTools, models and products discussed GPT-6 Astra — openai.com/index/gpt-6-astraClaude Fable 5.1 — anthropic.com/claude/fableOpenClaw — openclaw.aiNanoClaw — nanoclaw.devGrok Bot — x.aiCursor — cursor.comDia, the browser by The Browser Company — diabrowser.comBlender — blender.orgPoem/1, Matt Webb’s poetry clock — poem.townLabyrinth, the Ravensburger board game — ravensburger.co.ukJonny’s own projects Labyrinth online, built in two hours — labyrinth.jonny.ooda.runOoda, secure collaborative hosting for teams — ooda.rundesigntools.fyi, run by an agent that maintains itself — designtools.fyiEvents Mostly Working, the London design mornings Tom runs — lu.ma/mostly-workingHatch, Berlin, 16–18 September, where Jonny is speaking on the 18th — hatchconference.comdesign + AI, Brighton, 24–25 September, where Tom and Jonny run a workshop — designplusaisummit.comAbout the pod

  4. Sep 4

    Ep #15: Matt Webb (Inanimate): Building an Inventor's Practice, Poem/1's Retro Charm, and Agentic Fulfilment

    Tom and Jonny sit down with inventor Matt Webb, the man behind Berg, Little Printer and the poetry clock Poem/1. They dig into how he built a practice around human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, unpack the retro charm of his ageing AI clock, and go behind the scenes of the Claude-powered agents running Poem/1's Kickstarter fulfilment. Key takeaways Shape your role around your practice. Matt focuses on human-computer interaction, small groups and the physical world, rather than chasing a job title.AI is a rubber duck, not a co-writer. Its value is helping you think aloud without replacing your voice.Universal Basic Agency. AI can help non-experts cross the single technical hurdle blocking an idea.Agents can turn exceptions into policy. Poem/1's fulfilment agent proposes reusable rules for a shared SOP, so problems are solved once.Reports can reveal more than dashboards. Daily narratives surface patterns you did not know to track.Make deliberate time to learn new tools. Matt blocks at least a day a week because the gains compound.Building on a model means borrowed time. Poem/1 relies on a retiring model whose strange tone newer models cannot reproduce.Poem/1 is an invisible social network. All 700 clocks show the same poem at the same moment worldwide.Chapters 0:04 — Intro and Matt's career throughline5:56 — Leaving leadership to build7:28 — AI and unblocking imagination13:02 — Keeping AI out of your voice17:35 — ChatGPT and tldraw as a rubber duck24:12 — The imagination bottleneck29:04 — Universal Basic Agency34:38 — The story behind Poem/144:44 — A retro AI product and invisible network52:08 — Agentic Kickstarter fulfilment1:02:54 — Reports versus dashboards1:06:40 — Quickfire questionsMentioned in the episode Matt Matt Webb's blog, Interconnected — interconnected.orgUnoffice Hours (his 30-minute call booking system) — interconnected.org/home/2020/09/24/unoffice_hoursActs Not Facts, his consulting practice — actsnotfacts.comCompanies and past roles Berg — the design studio Matt co-founded with Jack Schulze and Matt JonesGoogle ResearchR/GA VenturesInanimate — Matt's current startup — inanimate.tech, newsletter at news.inanimate.techBetaworks — betaworks.comPeople Jack Schulze — Berg co-founderMatt Jones — Berg co-founderDaniel Fogg — Matt's co-founder at InanimateAlex Hulme — founder and creative director of Approach, the industrial design agency that helped bring Poem/1 to market — approach.studio, Poem/1 case study at approach.studio/work/poem1Tom Armitage — helped with Poem/1's firmware — tomarmitage.comTools and products discussed ChatGPT — chatgpt.comClaude Code — claude.com/product/claude-codetldraw — tldraw.comBackerKit — backerkit.comFloship — floship.comM5Stick, made by M5Stack — m5stack.comFriend, the AI pendant — friend.comMatt's own projects, mentioned Little Printer, made at Berg — berglondon.com/projects/bergcloudPoem/1, Matt's poetry clock — poem.townGalactic Compass, the app that points to the centre of the galaxy — apps.apple.com/gb/app/galactic-compassA 270kg book vending machine that tweeted when it sold a bookAbout the pod Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.worksFind us at https://nearfuture.works

  5. Aug 27

    Ep #14: Patrick Lewis (Klay): Founding Designer x4, and the Art of Saying No

    Tom and Jonny sit down with Patrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay. They dig into why "good" and "right" aren't the same thing, how AI has flattened the design experience curve, the pun-named playground he built to prototype without baggage, and why saying no might be the most important design skill right now. Chapters0:04 — Meet Patrick Lewis, founding designer at Klay1:05 — Building Clay: an AI music app made by musicians, not sales bros2:27 — Content still has to resonate with humans, AI-generated or not6:27 — Consistency builds trust: designing believable AI video avatars10:16 — Figma bulls and bears: Jonny's rebuy vs. Patrick's near-total exit12:37 — Where Figma still earns its place: branding and early sketches13:42 — Founding designer for the fourth time: getting context fast with AI16:51 — Building a pun-named playground to prototype without baggage19:17 — Layoffs, flattened experience curves, and adopt-or-die27:09 — Knowing yourself, saying no, and the founding designer's tightrope36:44 — Capacity has grown, but so has the pressure to do it all39:23 — Quickfire: chairs over AGI, decision-making he won't outsource, and granola Patrick Lewis — https://patrickjlewis.com Tools and products discussedFigma — https://www.figma.comClaude — https://claude.aiChatGPT — https://chatgpt.comGitHub — https://github.comKit (newsletter platform) — https://kit.comGranola — https://www.granola.ai Find us at nearfuture.works

  6. Aug 21

    Ep #13: Randy Hunt (Notion & SVA): Speed as a Quality Strategy, Killing the Handoff, and Teaching Design in the AI Era

    Tom and Jonny sit down with Randy Hunt, Head of Design at Notion and chair of MFA Design at SVA. They dig into why speed and quality were never a trade-off, unpack the weekend build that turned into a two-week code review, and go behind the scenes of how a graduate design programme is rewriting itself around AI. Chapters 0:04 — Two institutions, one calendar: how Randy keeps both plates spinning3:00 — Agents that absorb the busy work so he can stay close to the craft5:29 — Dogfooding vs. knowing the competition: you have to do the work twice8:22 — One place for everything, or a walled garden? Jonny re-buys Notion11:10 — Battle-tested vs. multi-model: why living in one suite stops working13:22 — Good, fast, cheap: Randy refuses to pick two15:17 — Quality isn't the screen being right, it's how many people hit it wrong19:05 — The handoff is a telephone game: why passing the baton kills the work22:52 — Designers were shipping production code before the coding agents arrived25:42 — He built it in a weekend. The PR took two weeks to review29:35 — Writing code got cheap. Writing good code didn't30:46 — Emergent chat vs. written-down skills: making the system legible to everyone33:07 — Working in the open so you can see how your colleagues actually prompt35:42 — Build it yourself or wait for someone to sell it: micro tool making39:04 — The barbell curriculum: what endures vs. what has to stay malleable43:20 — Directing a photographer vs. directing a model: same skill, different studio44:57 — Where's the punk rock student who refuses to use AI?47:58 — He went home for the summer and built an ERP for his dad's warehouse49:33 — Quick fire: AGI takes over, so what do you actually do with the time?51:37 — Wrap up, and a promise to come back for the music conversationMentioned in the episode Randy Randy J. Hunt — https://www.randyjhunt.comRandy on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/randyjhunt/Product Design for the Web (New Riders, 2013) — https://www.randyjhunt.comSVA MFA Design, where Randy is chair — https://design.sva.eduRandy speaking at Hatch Conference, Berlin, September — https://www.hatchconference.com/speakers/randy-huntCompanies and past roles Notion — https://www.notion.comNotion Agents, his current favourite app — https://www.notion.com/product/agentsEtsy — https://www.etsy.comArtsy — https://www.artsy.netGrab — https://www.grab.comDeliveroo — https://deliveroo.co.ukUber Eats — https://www.ubereats.comTools and products discussed Claude — https://claude.aiClaude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-codeClaude Cowork — https://www.anthropic.com/product/claude-coworkMCP (Model Context Protocol) — https://modelcontextprotocol.ioChatGPT — https://chatgpt.comGoogle Gemini — https://gemini.google.comGoogle Workspace / Google Sheets — https://workspace.google.comSlack — https://slack.comFigma — https://www.figma.comWeavy, acquired by Figma and relaunched as Figma Weave — https://www.figma.com/blog/welcome-weavy-to-figma/Paper — https://paper.designPencil — https://pen.devEvents Hatch Conference, Berlin, September — https://www.hatchconference.com

  7. Aug 14

    Ep #12: James Storer (Monzo): Fake Banks, Real Learning, and Being Monzo's Biggest Token Burner

    Tom and Jonny sit down with James Storer, who leads design in Monzo's AI and personalisation collective and is the biggest token burner in the whole company. They dig into the fake Monzo his team built to prototype with, why he stepped off the leadership track to get back in the tools, and what he went to Config to ask Figma. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introducing James Storer02:12 Why go back to doing the work after leading teams10:13 The founder's fight: ship it, or make it better14:47 Being a loud mouth turned out to be the skill18:35 AI lowers the floor, so who raises the ceiling25:30 Everyone an expert in everything, or still not enough hours28:01 Building hardware when you can't solder30:07 Should there be an app store with one user33:43 Is the value the software, or making it with your kid36:08 The UNO clone his six-year-old wanted to explode40:01 A 69-year-old vicar and the church website41:31 The messy middle: AI inside a regulated bank43:44 A fake Monzo with fake money49:36 Handoff should be a handshake54:16 "What will you do to make me open you every day?"60:39 Quickfire68:31 WrapPEOPLE James Storer — Design Lead, AI & Personalisation, Monzo https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesstorer/Avi Ashkenazi, Deel — previous Near Future guest, on raising the floor and the ceiling https://www.linkedin.com/in/aviashkenazi/Jake Knapp — author of Sprint — https://www.jakeknapp.comSimon from Morse — spoke alongside James at Mostly Working https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-amor/COMPANIES Monzo — https://monzo.comDeliveroo — https://deliveroo.co.ukFreetrade — https://freetrade.ioHabito — https://www.habito.comKlarna — https://www.klarna.comTwist — James's design agencyJitty — the house-buying startup James co-foundedTOOLS AND PRODUCTS MENTIONED Cursor — https://cursor.comClaude Code — https://claude.com/product/claude-codeChatGPT — https://chatgpt.comFigma — https://figma.comFigma Make, Figma Weave, code layers — announced at ConfigFigJam — https://figma.com/figjamLovable — https://lovable.devStitch — https://stitch.withgoogle.comNotebookLM — https://notebooklm.google.comNotion — https://notion.comLinear — https://linear.appAbstract — version control for Sketch filesSketch — https://sketch.comThree.js — https://threejs.orgReact Native — https://reactnative.devNano Banana — Google's image model, via GeminiHex — open-source dictation appWispr Flow — https://wisprflow.aiWabi — personal app builder for iPhoneMeatLayer — agents paying humans for real-world tasks — https://meatlayer.aiM5Stack — small dev boards — https://m5stack.comLumi / ROLI — light-up keyboards, now open sourced — https://roli.comBigQuery — https://cloud.google.com/bigqueryALSO REFERENCED Config 2026 — Figma's conference — https://config.figma.comMostly Working — Tom's design and AI meetup in London https://luma.com/mostly-workingSprint, by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky and Braden KowitzUNO — the card game James and his son cloned as "Duo"NEAR FUTURE Podcast — https://nearfuture.works/podcastGet in touch — podcast@nearfuture.works

  8. Aug 7

    Ep #11: No Shortcuts. Backyard Designers, AI Slop, and the Leadership Squeeze

    Tom and Jonny are back for a duo episode after a month of guest interviews — Jonny has just about got the internet back after a house move and a camping trip.  They reflect on what the recent guest run has taught them, dig into Backyard Designers Club and the hooha it sparked, and talk through why design and engineering leadership is such a hard place to be right now.  Plus: Tom built a 3D chess game for his 5-year-old using Opus 5 and Three.js, and Jonny's Ooda gets a quiet YC moment. Chapters 0:04 — Intro: Jonny's back (and has internet again) 3:44 — Reflections on a month of guest episodes 8:20 — The common thread: leaders who build 17:00 — AI raises the floor, not the ceiling — but the ceiling hasn't moved 21:35 — The AI slop problem: Hacker News, Substack's detector & LinkedIn's report button 22:08 — Ellipsis and the proof-of-work problem for human writing 26:10 — Ini's wireless-in-the-browser project: the opposite of slop 21:32 — Backyard Designers Club: craft, sound design and game-like delight 29:13 — How fast an original idea can be cloned 31:21 — The hoo-ha: exclusion, community claims, and what a community actually is 38:53 — Who's on Backyard Designers — and what it says about design's visible/invisible divide 41:35 — Engineering leadership burnout: Gergely Orosz's three reasons leaders are quitting 44:35 — Is design leadership 12 months behind engineering on the same trajectory? 51:57 — Tom's AI experiments: agent skill pack + a 3D underwater chess game 1:00:01 — Jonny's Ooda project gets a YC validation moment 1:00:42 — What's coming up: Build workshop, Wednesday event with Christine Røde (The Browser Company), Brighton in September Useful Links Backyard Designers Club — https://backyarddesigners.club Broke Ass Designers — the commentary/reaction version - https://brokeass-designers.fly.dev/ Ellipsus — proof-of-work writing tool https://ellipsus.com/ Gergely Orosz (The Pragmatic Engineer) — engineering leadership trends post https://www.linkedin.com/posts/gergelyorosz_interesting-recent-trend-im-observing-share-7487619068187852800-ceQ2/ Ooda — Jonny's internal tool hosting project — https://ooda.run Podcast feedback: podcast@nearfuture.works Near Future Build Workshop (Aug 13th): https://nearfuture.works/build Find us at https://nearfuture.works

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About

A regular podcast covering design and AI from the founders of Near Future, a boutique AI consultancy focused on teams that care about craft. We cover both what we're seeing on the ground and industry trends, ways of working and occasional guests from the design world.

Information

  • Creator
    Near Future
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Near Future
  • Show Website
    Near Future Podcast

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