Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 09/10/2026Thanks! Fixing it — gotta leave a few of those around so you know it’s not AI :) 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 05/05/2026A new essay! In which I use a weird metaphor to describe what it’s like to design inside extremely ai-accelerated product teams. mattstromawn.com/writing/desi...mattstromawn.comDesign from the insideMatt Ström-Awn · Designer, leader, and coach focused on building exceptional products and teams. 171
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 20/04/2026New essay! In which I try to define the toolmarks that AI leaves behind in the process of turning your prompt into a generated output. mattstromawn.com/writing/expa...mattstromawn.comExpansion artifactsMatt Ström-Awn · Designer, leader, and coach focused on building exceptional products and teams. 230
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 08/01/2026Kinda wild given our conversation on Monday. I think it’s extremely rare for an inventor to profit from their invention. 110
Reposted by Matt Ström-AwnDonnie D'Amato @donnie.damato.design · 05/01/2026Today @mattstromawn.bsky.social is my guest on Wireframe Live for the first show of the new year! Catch us at 5pm ET today. 👀 wireframe.ds.housewireframe.ds.houseWireframe Live weekdays @ 5pm ETTransparent Design Talk 012
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/10/2025Happy to get input and suggestions for future additions! We’ll be continuing to add to the spec in lots of ways and want as much input and discussion as possible to guide the process. Just open a discussion on GH :) 020
Reposted by Matt Ström-AwnLukas Oppermann @lukasoppermann.com · 29/10/2025Just re-read @mattstromawn.bsky.social: buff.ly/xqE8kN9 - #DesignSystems are moving from static “dictionaries” to dynamic “functions” - Dynamic logic enables adaptive, personalized, and accessible UIs - Tools like CSS clamp() and Material’s dynamic color make this future possiblebuff.lyFunctions and the future of design systemsA new paradigm powering the next generation of design systems 031
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 28/10/2025Talking Heads got so tired of being called The Talking Heads that they put out an album called “The Name of This Band is Talking Heads” 130
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/09/2025New essay! What the heck is "quality", anyway? And how can we intentionally and meaningfully create it in our work? matthewstrom.com/writing/dece...matthewstrom.comDecentralizing qualityWhy moving judgment to the edges wins in the long run 021
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 11/09/2025also a fabulous year for naming web things (suckerfish dropdowns!) 030
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 11/09/2025taking a cue from jazz & blues, if you repeat yourself enough times it gets interesting again. To that end I will write a “should designers code” think piece every week from now until the heat death of the universe 190
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/08/2025Did some research of my own here, if it’s useful: matthewstrom.com/writing/prod...matthewstrom.comThe product design talent crisisWhy we should invest in the next generation of product designers 040
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 22/08/2025A really monkey’s paw moment for designers who wanted a seat at the table 062
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 01/08/2025New essay! Bad news: the “check engine” light is on for the practice of product design as a whole. matthewstrom.com/writing/prod...matthewstrom.comThe product design talent crisisWhy we should invest in the next generation of product designers 191
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 29/07/2025the prevalence of em dashes in ai writing means my writing is almost certainly in the training data set 120
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 29/07/2025Putting it into the universe: any company out there want to hire me to help them build an "associate product designer" program, modeled after many tech co's "associate product manager" programs (apmlist.com)? There's a lot of potential in the market right now.apmlist.comAPM List: Associate Product Manager Job List 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 21/07/2025You know what's better than a 3-legged stool? A 4-legged stool. (please send biblically-accurate stool memes) 000
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 17/07/2025Footnotes - bringing them up to side notes or popovers, but keeping the end-of-page ones for semantics and accessibility 020
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 16/07/2025The current desire for “Super IC” designers is possible because of a previous investment in coaches, mentors, and managers, that helped develop those folks. As companies cull managers and hire “player-coaches”, the next generation of ICs will lose out on much-needed development opportunities. 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 15/07/2025Is there anyone out there doing AI for design using computer vision (segmentation, world model, etc) instead of using language (LLMs, transformers, etc)? 000
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 11/07/2025definitely, and also depends on the relative productivity of what you're switching between. 100
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 11/07/2025It's true that the coding takes longer, but there's some extra productivity due to what you can do while the agent is working. 100
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 11/07/2025Based on a few weeks of using a coding agent, i think the recent result that coding AI slows developers comes down to two factors: 1. Coding agents allow the developer to multi-task 2. Multi-tasking involves context switching, which has a penalty 110
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 03/07/2025If you're working with design tokens, you might have noticed that the color format has been updated in the latest editor's draft at tr.designtokens.org/color/. But updating your tokens files is a snap! Here's a node script you can run that will get you up to speed: gist.github.com/ilikescience... 011
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 24/06/2025I was an early adopter! Looks like I bought a license in 2013. I think it was the first time I used markdown. Keep doing great stuff, and lemme know if you ever need design help :) 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 24/06/2025And if you don't need any of those things, but wanna work together anyway, you should still get in touch :) 000
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 24/06/2025After ~10 years of in-house design leadership, I'm going back to my roots as an independent designer. If you need: - 0 → 1 design partnership - Mentorship, coaching, or design org design - Early stage design strategy, especially in AI and Fintech Get in touch: hello@mu.design 1101
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 23/06/2025Kirby is a gem, and @bastianallgeier.com has been at it consistently for … more than a decade? I love a small team building a great product. 140
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 18/06/2025I can trace my entire career back to my ability to customize the scrollbar of my friends' xanga pages 100
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 18/06/2025this is my favorite genre of explainer essay: "you can just do things" 000
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 18/06/2025soupçon hits the triple word score of inkhorn words: it's borrowed from french, it has a funny accent, and it's easy to mispronounce (bonus word nerd shibboleth) also good joke 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 18/06/2025Regardless of the aesthetics of liquid glass, I think the enduring change in ios26 is that chrome (tab bars, url bar, etc) no longer has a background, and content extends edge-to-edge — @itsdpark.bsky.social was ahead of the curve with their 'no tab bars' manifesto: itsdpark.com/research/tab... 020
Reposted by Matt Ström-AwnAndy Stewart @andystew.art · 09/06/2025It’s a simple, slightly-opinionated WebGL library called Shdr. It won’t help you write shaders, per se, but it will help you render them without a lot of boilerplate or ceremony. I don’t know if it will be useful to anyone else, but it was useful to me. Check it out here: shdr.andystew.artshdr.andystew.artShdr: a lil WebGL library 121
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/05/2025(yes, gpt-image-1 generated an image with a circular crop 'baked in' 🤦♂️) 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/05/2025Doing some experiments with Figma's AI image generation; surprising results! Images generated by each model vary little within a consistent prompt. While the current image generation features might currently fit into graphic-design-type use cases, I don't see how they'd fit into UI design. 110
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 30/05/2025I often see design craft positioned as a reaction to the ubiquity of design systems. As in: great designers know when to break out of the system in search of higher quality. But there's a convergence that happens at high levels of systems thinking; exceptional systems result in well-crafted UI. 041
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 23/05/2025Looking for any design help? Doing UI systems for Terminal would be a dreamy gig. 020
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 22/05/20251. Depending on where you do business, it may be required by law 2. No matter where you do business, it is the right thing to do 010
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 17/05/2025Just polishing up my next LinkedIn post, “Design is a Dharmic wheel in a constant state of death and rebirth” 020
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 20/04/2025Really excited that the Design Tokens Community Group has published a new version of the Color module, giving the format a robust way to express colors in many color spaces with high precision. Congrats to everyone who contributed! tr.designtokens.org/color/tr.designtokens.orgDesign Tokens Color Module 072
Matt Ström-Awn @mattstromawn.bsky.social · 15/04/2025nice! I did something similar recently. codepen.io/ilikescience... 020
