UX STRATEGY • PRODUCT DESIGN
Research. Strategy. Systems Design. AI.
I design products that help people understand and trust systems they can't fully see — from machine vision overlays to GPS-connected hardware. That's been my work for over two decades. AI just made it more interesting. (See how I'm integrating AI into my design process.)
Machine Vision
Wearable
AI • AGEnts
22
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
September 9, 2026 at 1:50:03 AM
Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026-2028
Capability is cheap and now it ships locked: GPT-6 Astra launches as the “most intelligent and aligned model in the world” yet stays off by default, while PJM files to spend $20B at a record ~$329/MW-day and hyperscalers pencil in $5T of off-grid gas, China's rare-earth rule is armed for a November 10 cliff, electric bills become the 2026 affordability fight, and NOAA says the El Niño turns record-strong this month — even as Intellia's in-body CRISPR clears Phase 3. Through 2028 the binding constraint is power, minerals and consent, not intelligence.
Here's the bet through 2028: “how smart” is a solved, cheap question now, and it quietly stopped being the one that matters. What's live is whether the industry can physically build and power what the models run on, hold onto the minerals, and keep the public from voting against it — before a stack of deadlines all lands at once. Concrete, gas and consent, not IQ.
The receipts are all over this week. OpenAI shipped the smartest model it's ever made and shipped it locked — admin-gated, cyber customers first. PJM filed for $20 billion it doesn't have. Hyperscalers are penciling in $5 trillion of their own off-grid gas because the grid can't keep up. China's mineral rules are armed and dated to November 10. And Gartner still counts 88% of enterprise agent pilots that never reach production. Every one of those is a clock, and most of them read this fall.
I'd watch September through next spring hardest. That's when PJM finds out whether $20 billion buys real megawatts or just shoves the gap into 2028, when Beijing decides whether to let the November rule actually bite, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, and when the off-grid gas either shows up as poured concrete or stays a press release. The capability curve climbs the whole time. It's just not the line I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. That $5 trillion of off-grid gas is exactly cheap money conjuring power nobody modeled — the wall might be lower than it looks if you're willing to burn gas behind the fence and eat the emissions. Intellia clearing Phase 3 is a reminder that the boring, durable wins sometimes land faster than the scary ones. And public anger cools quick if the disruption stays dull, which it mostly has — right up until the bill arrives. The fences are real and going up. That's not the buildout stopping; it's the buildout getting slower, weirder and a lot more fossil-fueled than the market's got it priced.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
GPT-6 Astra shipped this week as “the most intelligent and aligned model in the world,” and OpenAI turned it off by default. Enterprise access is admin-gated, routed through a cybersecurity program first, priced well above the model it replaces. That's the tell. When the smartest thing anyone's ever built ships locked, the fight stops being about how smart. It's about who gets to plug it in, and whether the thing it plugs into can take the load.
Plugging it in is the wall. PJM — the grid for about 65 million people — cleared capacity at a record ~$329/MW-day and filed to spend up to $20 billion on plants it doesn't have yet, with the average family there staring down roughly $70 more a month by 2028. So the hyperscalers are quietly done asking the grid: Enverus figures they'll pour something like $5 trillion by 2030 into 62 gigawatts of their own off-grid gas, and Alpha Compute just signed for a 200-megawatt gas campus in Pennsylvania that could grow to a full gigawatt. Turns out the escape hatch isn't orbit. It's a gas turbine behind the fence.
The inputs and the neighbors are tightening on the same clock. China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and when it does the 0.1% rule and the extraterritorial provisions snap back on — the April 2025 licensing regime never actually left. And the neighbors are done being polite about it: electric bills are the 2026 affordability fight, six states have moratoriums up, seven are clawing back the tax breaks, and Brookings thinks rates could swing the midterms. The buildout used to argue with zoning boards. Now it's arguing with the ballot.
Two things this week don't file paperwork. Intellia's one-shot CRISPR cut hereditary-angioedema attacks 87% and became the first in-body edit to clear Phase 3 — published in NEJM, quality of life up seventeen points, an FDA filing underway this half. And NOAA now thinks the El Niño could become the strongest ever measured by the end of this month, peaking somewhere near +3.6°C. One mends a body on a regulatory clock; the other breaks a winter on a physical one. Neither is stuck in an interconnection queue.
So the next couple of years don't look like a leaderboard. They look like a wall of due dates — PJM's filing this fall, China in November, the El Niño peak this winter, the off-grid gas getting poured the whole way through. The models keep getting cheaper and smarter right through all of it. That just isn't the line that decides anything anymore.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
September 9, 2026 at 1:50:03 AM
AI Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026-2028
Capability is cheap and now it ships locked: GPT-6 Astra launches as the “most intelligent and aligned model in the world” yet stays off by default, while PJM files to spend $20B at a record ~$329/MW-day and hyperscalers pencil in $5T of off-grid gas, China's rare-earth rule is armed for a November 10 cliff, electric bills become the 2026 affordability fight, and NOAA says the El Niño turns record-strong this month — even as Intellia's in-body CRISPR clears Phase 3. Through 2028 the binding constraint is power, minerals and consent, not intelligence.
Here's the bet through 2028: “how smart” is a solved, cheap question now, and it quietly stopped being the one that matters. What's live is whether the industry can physically build and power what the models run on, hold onto the minerals, and keep the public from voting against it — before a stack of deadlines all lands at once. Concrete, gas and consent, not IQ.
The receipts are all over this week. OpenAI shipped the smartest model it's ever made and shipped it locked — admin-gated, cyber customers first. PJM filed for $20 billion it doesn't have. Hyperscalers are penciling in $5 trillion of their own off-grid gas because the grid can't keep up. China's mineral rules are armed and dated to November 10. And Gartner still counts 88% of enterprise agent pilots that never reach production. Every one of those is a clock, and most of them read this fall.
I'd watch September through next spring hardest. That's when PJM finds out whether $20 billion buys real megawatts or just shoves the gap into 2028, when Beijing decides whether to let the November rule actually bite, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, and when the off-grid gas either shows up as poured concrete or stays a press release. The capability curve climbs the whole time. It's just not the line I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. That $5 trillion of off-grid gas is exactly cheap money conjuring power nobody modeled — the wall might be lower than it looks if you're willing to burn gas behind the fence and eat the emissions. Intellia clearing Phase 3 is a reminder that the boring, durable wins sometimes land faster than the scary ones. And public anger cools quick if the disruption stays dull, which it mostly has — right up until the bill arrives. The fences are real and going up. That's not the buildout stopping; it's the buildout getting slower, weirder and a lot more fossil-fueled than the market's got it priced.
Signal Intensity
A domain-level score (0-100) representing the volume and momentum of frontier activity detected across the signals in that domain.
AI
94
%
Climate
96
%
BIOTECH
72
%
GEOPOLITICS
85
%
ENERGY
97
%
SOCIETY
93
%
SPACE
66
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
GPT-6 Astra shipped this week as “the most intelligent and aligned model in the world,” and OpenAI turned it off by default. Enterprise access is admin-gated, routed through a cybersecurity program first, priced well above the model it replaces. That's the tell. When the smartest thing anyone's ever built ships locked, the fight stops being about how smart. It's about who gets to plug it in, and whether the thing it plugs into can take the load.
Plugging it in is the wall. PJM — the grid for about 65 million people — cleared capacity at a record ~$329/MW-day and filed to spend up to $20 billion on plants it doesn't have yet, with the average family there staring down roughly $70 more a month by 2028. So the hyperscalers are quietly done asking the grid: Enverus figures they'll pour something like $5 trillion by 2030 into 62 gigawatts of their own off-grid gas, and Alpha Compute just signed for a 200-megawatt gas campus in Pennsylvania that could grow to a full gigawatt. Turns out the escape hatch isn't orbit. It's a gas turbine behind the fence.
The inputs and the neighbors are tightening on the same clock. China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and when it does the 0.1% rule and the extraterritorial provisions snap back on — the April 2025 licensing regime never actually left. And the neighbors are done being polite about it: electric bills are the 2026 affordability fight, six states have moratoriums up, seven are clawing back the tax breaks, and Brookings thinks rates could swing the midterms. The buildout used to argue with zoning boards. Now it's arguing with the ballot.
Two things this week don't file paperwork. Intellia's one-shot CRISPR cut hereditary-angioedema attacks 87% and became the first in-body edit to clear Phase 3 — published in NEJM, quality of life up seventeen points, an FDA filing underway this half. And NOAA now thinks the El Niño could become the strongest ever measured by the end of this month, peaking somewhere near +3.6°C. One mends a body on a regulatory clock; the other breaks a winter on a physical one. Neither is stuck in an interconnection queue.
So the next couple of years don't look like a leaderboard. They look like a wall of due dates — PJM's filing this fall, China in November, the El Niño peak this winter, the off-grid gas getting poured the whole way through. The models keep getting cheaper and smarter right through all of it. That just isn't the line that decides anything anymore.
ABOUT ME
Design Philosophy
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.
Systems before screens
Every interface is a surface on top of a system. Understanding the system (the data flows, the user mental models, the organizational constraints) is what separates design that scales from design that just looks good in a mockup.
Strategy and execution, not one or the other
I connect design decisions to business outcomes. That means being in the room when strategy is set, not just when wireframes need approval. It means being able to move between the 30,000-foot view and the pixel-level detail without losing either.
Trustworthy by design
The best technology earns trust before it demands it. Whether I'm designing a safety-critical AI product or the home screen on a fitness watch, I start with the question: 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
CURRENTLY
Senior Product Designer
Lytx
OPEN TO OPPORTUNITIES
Principal/Senior-Level Product Design Roles
In San Diego or Remote
SELECTED WORK
Case Studies
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, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams
Systems Thinking
Mapping connected flows and designing for scalability across product surfaces
Prototyping
Interactive prototypes from low-fi click-throughs to high-fidelity AI coding
AI Fluency
Designing AI-powered experiences and leveraging AI tools in the design process
Stakeholder Management
Cross-functional collaboration and design advocacy
Tools
Pendo
In-app guidance, feature tracking, and user surveys to inform design decisions
Dovetail
Centralized research insights, tagged findings, and shared customer intelligence repository
Figma
Components, variants, auto-layout, and prototyping
Claude (Design & Code)
AI-assisted research synthesis, design critique, content generation, and prototyping
Amplitude
Product funnels, retention curves, and feature adoption to identify usage and priorities
Gong
Customer interview repository for surfacing pain points, testing designs, and grounding decisions
Sketch
Vector-based UI design for components, wireframes, and high-fidelity screens
Axure RP
High-fidelity interactive prototyping with conditional logic and complex flows
Cursor
AI-assisted coding for rapid prototyping and exploring technical feasibility
BACKGROUND
Experience & Education
Senior Product Designer
Lytx · San Diego, CA
Researched and designed user experience for video safety and AI products, and developed an AI-native design process for the UX team.
tagsContainer
2019 - Present
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.
tagsContainer
2007 - 2018
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.
tagsContainer
2003 - 2007
B.S. Symbolic Systems
Completed interdisciplinary study of computer science, linguistics, philosophy, and psychology with a concentration in human-computer interaction.
tagsContainer
1998 - 2002
My Résumé
A full overview of my experience, skills, and education — ready to share.
NAME
Daniel Rivas
CURRENT ROLE
Senior Product Designer
LOCATION
San Diego, CA
EXPERIENCE
22 years
AVAILABILITY
✦ Human · Machine · Intelligence ✦ Systems before screens ✦ Strategy & execution ✦ Trustworthy by design ✦
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