Lina (@linazfowler) header
Lina (@linazfowler) profile picture

building autoresearch @quadrillionlabs product & design @stanford forklift certified

Joined December 2021
Photo by Lina (@linazfowler)Photo by Lina (@linazfowler)Photo by Lina (@linazfowler)Photo by Lina (@linazfowler)Photo by Lina (@linazfowler)
Unslopification speedruns should be a thing. I’d watch
Unslopping a vibecoded dashboard
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RSI is spooky 👻 Qualia by @quadrillionlabs beat Claude Code on a set of really hard research tasks.
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everyone's making slop unslopping videos now 😭
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lowkey one of the best things about being on tech twitter is getting to witness design twitter cook
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who should I follow on design twitter
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when’s the last time you made someone cry in design crit
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what happened to “hello, how are you” jk I prefer it this way
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it’s like when everyone gets precheck
everyone asked ai to make their brand look like no one else’s. now it looks like everyone else’s
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The silver lining is that the more uncommon it is to see analog brainstorming out in the wild, the cooler it is. People stop by my desk all the time intrigued by what’s on the post-its, whiteboard flows, and sketches. This didn’t use to happen.
Design isn’t dead… But the old way of designing is. And I think what we’re seeing is designers mourning. Mourning the ritual of design. I love it. The art of making something pixel perfect. People enjoy that process. Instant coffee is not the same as going through the process of learning about the origin and the story of a coffee bean, grinding it by hand, to then getting the perfect pour. Pressing a button on a CDJ vs pulling out a vinyl from a sleeve and placing the needle into a groove… Prompting feels the same and it takes a lot of the joy of the process away. But at least we can say that we were there when we had to do it all by hand. And I think people will still draw rectangles, purely to feel something. But pixel perfect designs are only as good as the product it’s depicting. The joy now has to be in perfecting the product, and not getting too stuck in pixels that don’t do anything. I’m speaking from my own experience of being a product designer. I don’t believe this is the case for many others in the industry… yet. Don’t let people’s opinions and perspectives change the way you feel about design. I believe the most exciting time in design is happening right now. And in a lot of ways nothing has changed. Change has — and always will be — just part of the job. Enjoy the ride and be good to each other ❤️
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so you think you unslopped your ui? run it through this and get a % github.com/finalowler/slop-s… built on @fildotai's unslop skill
Replying to @fildotai
inspired by @poteto's /unslop! some examples i used it on:
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not all angels walk VSFS some of us are busy deleting mono eyebrow labels off of every header
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low fi’s save lives 🤣 every day I have to actively resist the dopamine hit of too polished too fast
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one shotted a C36 with /colorfigures skill super cool ty @Aprilzz423
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I don’t use Figma anymore. For the past six months I’ve been uploading my consciousness directly into the ether and allowing the work to manifest through minor disturbances in the electromagnetic field. You think you are seeing the aurora borealis that's actually my brain waves. It’s a much more intuitive process. I sit completely still in my office until a founder somewhere develops a sudden inspiration for their brand positioning but in reality it was me clipping them in their brain stem, smiling down on them like one of God's children. People keep asking what tools I’m using. I understand the question. I used to think that way too. But asking me what tools I use is like asking a glass of water what software is wetness. Its a meaningless question. I don’t design anymore. I am the pixels. I am the logo. I am the little bit of space between the 'r' and the 'n' that you better make sure is kerned properly. When you increase the font size I experience physical growth. When you cut a vector point, my consciousness goes into quantum superposition. This is where the industry is going. If you're not on board, you're going to get left behind. My entire design system now lives in the collective unconscious. There’s no documentation. Your team will simply wake up knowing the button radius. If someone uses the wrong shade of blue they’ll hear a high pitched ringing sound until they correct it. Developer handoff has been so smooth since I started working this way. My effigy appears at the foot of the engineer’s bed and I open my mouth. The CSS comes out at a frequency only their fillings can receive. We’ve eliminated all meetings. I no longer send clients presentations. I enter their dreams as a white horse with an already complete interactive brand guidelines. They’re free to leave feedback by speaking into a bowl of room temperature water. I receive it immediately and disagree with it on a cellular level. Transcending this outdated material plane is my standing Tuesday meeting. Some people are uncomfortable with this. A procurement manager recently asked whether I could provide an SVG of the logo and I just told her to close her eyes and remember the first time she felt truly understood. She looked annoyed and just said their print vendor needed an SVG by today. A big adjustment has been personal. My wife asked if I could help bring in the groceries. I explained that I now exist simultaneously across every customer touchpoint. I think there’s a lot of fear right now about what happens when designers stop needing tools. But the people who adapt will be fine. You just have to be willing to let go of a few outdated ideas. Like having a body. Being legally distinguishable from a gradient. Anyway I am open for new branding projects this quarter.
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"When humanity writes the story of autoresearch, it must be a story of human empowerment ... where the bottleneck on scientific discovery is on the creativity and daring of human-agent teams, not resources." Building towards this future every day at @quadrillionlabs.
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When do I get to feed my design ideas to a gargantuan ant farm of simulated user testers
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How I knew I was growing as a researcher: I stopped saying "you're absolutely right!" to my advisor's Qs and started saying "I thought so too, here are some results" Wonder when my agent will do that
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