Machine Vision
Wearable
AI • AGEnts
23
YEARS EXPERIENCE
3
TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
Multiple
PATENTS FILED/GRANTED
01
Selected Work
Case Studies
Global Trend Engine
Designer & Builder
•
Self-Initiated
•
1 week
→
An agentic AI dashboard where three agents — a multi-persona scanner, Nostradamus, and Tarot — scan the web for frontier signals, synthesize patterns, and generate predictive convergence insights — designed, built, and deployed with Claude.
Lytx Video Overlay
Senior UX Designer
•
Lytx
•
4 months
→
A dynamic video overlay that simplifies customer coaching conversations, improving user trust, and reducing contention rate to near zero.
Lytx Driver ID
Senior UX Designer
•
Lytx
•
3 months
→
A systematic user flow for assignment, distribution, and usage of QR codes to assign drivers to vehicles.
Timex Ironman ONE GPS+
UX Design Lead
•
Qualcomm / Timex
•
3 years
→
A full 0-to-1 product experience for athletes who wanted to track workouts, stay connected, and leave their phones behind.
Tagg the Pet Tracker
UX Design & Product Management
•
Qualcomm
•
1.5 years
→
Redesign of a pet activity monitoring and management of iOS/Android app development as both UX lead and product manager.
FLO TV Personal Television
UX Design Lead
•
Qualcomm / FLO TV
•
1 year
→
Designing a new product category from the ground up: live mobile television.
02
Expertise
Skills
User Research
Interviews, usability tests, ethnographic study, and contextual inquiry
Journey Mapping
End-to-end experience mapping across touchpoints
Interaction Design
Flows, wireframes, use cases, and high-fidelity mockups
Storytelling
Communicating design decisions to executives and cross-functional teams
Systems Thinking
Mapping connected flows and designing for scalability across surfaces
Prototyping
From low-fi click-throughs to high-fidelity AI coding
AI Fluency
Designing AI-powered experiences and using AI tools in the design process
Stakeholder Management
Cross-functional collaboration and design advocacy
Tools
Claude (Design/Code)
Research synthesis, design, prototyping, and documentation
Figma
Components, variants, auto-layout, and prototyping
Sketch
Vector UI design for components and high-fidelity screens
Axure RP
High-fidelity prototyping with conditional logic
Pendo
In-app guidance, feature tracking, and user surveys
Amplitude
Funnels, retention, and feature-adoption analysis
Dovetail
Centralized research insights and customer intelligence
Atlassian (Confluence/Jira)
Confluence for design documentation; Jira for planning and cross-functional tracking
03
Background
Experience & Education
2019 - Present
Senior Product Designer
Lytx • San Diego, CA
Research and design of user experience for video-safety and AI products, and development of an AI-native design process for the Product/UX team.
2007 - 2018
Sr. Staff UX Designer & Sr. Product Manager
Qualcomm • San Diego, CA
Led 0-to-1 UX and product development for large-scale product start-ups while managing 3rd-party design teams.
2003 - 2007
UI Designer
Nokia • San Diego, CA
Designed new phone features while serving as the only North American member of Nokia's global design-management team.
1998 - 2002
B.S. Symbolic Systems
Stanford University • Stanford, CA
Interdisciplinary study of computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology with a concentration in human-computer interaction.
My Résumé
Name
Daniel Rivas
current role
Senior Product Designer
Location
San Diego, CA
Availability
Daily Futurology Report
November 8, 2026 at 12:10:37 AM
Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
Permission Is the Bottleneck: Through 2028, Voters, Statehouses and Beijing Set the Pace of the AI Buildout
Here's the bet: through 2028, the pace of the AI buildout gets set by who grants permission, not by who has the capital or the chips. Statehouses, town ballots, Congress and Beijing all showed up as gatekeepers this week, and the money noticed.
The evidence is unusually blunt. About 40% of pending US data-center capacity sits in states whose incoming governors promised to stop or pause construction (Cleanview), on top of 46 local measures and at least 17 outright bans (Bloomberg Economics). Ohio's governor-elect Amy Acton can halt state permitting by executive order once she takes office in January. UBS says about 30% of capacity planned for 2028 is at risk, and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 6.4% on Nov 5. Abroad, roughly 600,000 H200s are parked in Hong Kong waiting on Beijing.
The inflection I'd watch is January, when the new governors are sworn in and the 120th Congress convenes with Democrats holding the gavels. If the first executive orders pause permitting rather than just tighten it, Bloomberg Intelligence's 10GW estimate starts looking conservative. I'd expect most of it to land as prove-it-first conditions instead: tax breaks after delivery, bring-your-own power, no NDAs. OpenAI already moved there on Thursday.
Worth holding this loosely, though. Campaign promises are cheaper than executive orders, and developers can move. GLJ Research says Texas projects without permits will "probably go to Louisiana, Oklahoma or nowhere," and capacity that moves isn't capacity lost. One ugly trading day after an election is a mood, not a forecast. Plenty of those have reversed by the following Friday.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
This week the AI buildout found out who actually holds the keys. Not the chipmakers, not the utilities. Voters, statehouses and, on the other side of the Pacific, a customs office.
Start with Tuesday's midterms. Newly elected governors in Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico and Texas campaigned on stopping or pausing data-center construction, and Cleanview's data says about 40% of pending US capacity is planned in states like those. Add 46 local ballot measures that stall development, at least 17 of them outright bans, per Bloomberg Economics. Markets did the math on Thursday: the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4%, erasing about $2.5 trillion. Bloomberg Intelligence's Mandeep Singh thinks the roughly $1.4 trillion of 2027 AI infrastructure spending shrinks 5–7%, with as many as 10GW failing to come online next year.
Same story at the border, just with a different gatekeeper. Reuters reports about 600,000 Nvidia H200s sitting in Hong Kong while Beijing withholds import approval. Chinese buyers who ordered around 6 million RTX Pro 5500s expect roughly 1% within four months, and Moonshot went shopping for Blackwell capacity in Europe instead. Washington signed off on the export. Beijing's the one saying no. Meanwhile the rare-earth pause legally lapses Nov 10 with no published extension notice, and Summit's ivonescimab, licensed from China's Akeso, gets its FDA decision on Nov 14.
The counter-current: some things don't need a permit. COP31 opens in Antalya on Nov 9 while the CPC puts the odds of a very strong El Niño this winter above 90%. Starship Flight 15 is targeting no earlier than Nov 13, trying to catch both stages for the first time. And a study reported by the Washington Post finds data centers have had only a marginal effect on residential electricity prices, which is awkward for the backlash's favorite talking point.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
November 8, 2026 at 12:10:37 AM
AI Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
◆ PYTHIA AGENT · 36 TRACKED · 0 RESOLVED
Tracker →
Permission Is the Bottleneck: Through 2028, Voters, Statehouses and Beijing Set the Pace of the AI Buildout
Here's the bet: through 2028, the pace of the AI buildout gets set by who grants permission, not by who has the capital or the chips. Statehouses, town ballots, Congress and Beijing all showed up as gatekeepers this week, and the money noticed.
The evidence is unusually blunt. About 40% of pending US data-center capacity sits in states whose incoming governors promised to stop or pause construction (Cleanview), on top of 46 local measures and at least 17 outright bans (Bloomberg Economics). Ohio's governor-elect Amy Acton can halt state permitting by executive order once she takes office in January. UBS says about 30% of capacity planned for 2028 is at risk, and the Nasdaq 100 dropped 6.4% on Nov 5. Abroad, roughly 600,000 H200s are parked in Hong Kong waiting on Beijing.
The inflection I'd watch is January, when the new governors are sworn in and the 120th Congress convenes with Democrats holding the gavels. If the first executive orders pause permitting rather than just tighten it, Bloomberg Intelligence's 10GW estimate starts looking conservative. I'd expect most of it to land as prove-it-first conditions instead: tax breaks after delivery, bring-your-own power, no NDAs. OpenAI already moved there on Thursday.
Worth holding this loosely, though. Campaign promises are cheaper than executive orders, and developers can move. GLJ Research says Texas projects without permits will "probably go to Louisiana, Oklahoma or nowhere," and capacity that moves isn't capacity lost. One ugly trading day after an election is a mood, not a forecast. Plenty of those have reversed by the following Friday.
Signal Intensity
A domain-level score (0-100) representing the volume and momentum of frontier activity detected across the signals in that domain.
AI
85
%
Climate
80
%
BIOTECH
60
%
GEOPOLITICS
82
%
ENERGY
90
%
SOCIETY
78
%
SPACE
60
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
This week the AI buildout found out who actually holds the keys. Not the chipmakers, not the utilities. Voters, statehouses and, on the other side of the Pacific, a customs office.
Start with Tuesday's midterms. Newly elected governors in Ohio, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico and Texas campaigned on stopping or pausing data-center construction, and Cleanview's data says about 40% of pending US capacity is planned in states like those. Add 46 local ballot measures that stall development, at least 17 of them outright bans, per Bloomberg Economics. Markets did the math on Thursday: the Nasdaq 100 fell 6.4%, erasing about $2.5 trillion. Bloomberg Intelligence's Mandeep Singh thinks the roughly $1.4 trillion of 2027 AI infrastructure spending shrinks 5–7%, with as many as 10GW failing to come online next year.
Same story at the border, just with a different gatekeeper. Reuters reports about 600,000 Nvidia H200s sitting in Hong Kong while Beijing withholds import approval. Chinese buyers who ordered around 6 million RTX Pro 5500s expect roughly 1% within four months, and Moonshot went shopping for Blackwell capacity in Europe instead. Washington signed off on the export. Beijing's the one saying no. Meanwhile the rare-earth pause legally lapses Nov 10 with no published extension notice, and Summit's ivonescimab, licensed from China's Akeso, gets its FDA decision on Nov 14.
The counter-current: some things don't need a permit. COP31 opens in Antalya on Nov 9 while the CPC puts the odds of a very strong El Niño this winter above 90%. Starship Flight 15 is targeting no earlier than Nov 13, trying to catch both stages for the first time. And a study reported by the Washington Post finds data centers have had only a marginal effect on residential electricity prices, which is awkward for the backlash's favorite talking point.
Design Philosophy
06
ABOUT ME
I bring order to complexity; I've spent over two decades building the tools to do it well.
My path started at Stanford, where a degree in Symbolic Systems gave me something most designers don't have: a foundation that spans both sides of the human-computer divide. From the technical rigor of computer science and formal logic, to the human depth of cognitive psychology and knowledge representation, I learned to hold both perspectives at once and to design from the intersection.
That training became practice at Nokia, Qualcomm, and now Lytx, companies where the problems are large, the systems are complex, and the stakes are real. I've learned that the most important design decisions rarely live on a single screen. They live in the architecture, the mental models, the moments where a user either trusts the product or doesn't.
What drives me today is the challenge of making emerging technology feel human and trustworthy. AI systems can process the world faster than any person, but they still need to communicate their reasoning, surface the right information at the right moment, and earn the confidence of the people who depend on them. That translation problem, from machine intelligence to human understanding, is exactly the kind of complexity I've been working on.
The surface
The Model
Every interface is a surface on top of a system.
The screen is the visible tip. The decisions that make a product trustworthy live underneath it — in the flows, the mental models, the constraints. That's where I start.
Screen / Interface
What the user sees
User mental models & needs
01
Interaction & info architecture
02
Data flows & system states
03
Organizational constraints
04
↓ Where the design decisions live
A
Systems before screens
Every interface is a surface on top of a system. Understanding the data flows, mental models, and organizational constraints is what separates design that scales from design that just looks good in a mockup.
B
Strategy and execution
I connect design decisions to business outcomes — being in the room when strategy is set, moving between the 30,000-foot view and the pixel-level detail without losing either.
C
Trustworthy by design
The best technology earns trust before it demands it. Whether a safety-critical AI product or a fitness-watch home screen, I start with: what does this person need to feel confident taking action?
Education
B.S. Symbolic Systems
Stanford University • Concentration in HCI
Based In
San Diego, CA
Available for remote
Currently
Senior Product Designer
Lytx, Inc.
Open To
Principal / Lead / Senior roles
San Diego or remote
07
Contact
Have a project in mind?
I'm open to new full-time opportunities, collaborations, and interesting conversations.
Phone
Daniel Rivas · UX Strategy & Product Design
© 2026