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
October 30, 2026 at 12:09:30 AM
Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
The Grade Is In: AWS Reaccelerates, Amazon's Cash Flow Goes Negative, and Through 2028 the Build Gets Paid for by Lenders and Ratepayers
Here's the bet, updated. Demand is settled. Through 2028 the pace of the AI build is set by cash, and this week the field split three to one: Microsoft funds its build from operations, while Alphabet and Amazon are now spending past what their businesses throw off.
The evidence got heavier last night. Amazon's AWS grew about 39%, but quarterly capex of roughly $77 billion pushed trailing free cash flow to about –$42 billion, and management says 2027 spend goes “meaningfully” higher. Alphabet went about $9 billion negative the day before. Secondary sources disagree on Amazon's exact quarterly FCF, so treat the precise figure loosely; the sign isn't in doubt. Meanwhile the costs are leaking onto ratepayers: Arizona's proposed 14–16% rate hike and Pima County's pause are what “power is the constraint” looks like on a utility bill.
I'd expect the next inflection to be financing, not demand. Watch for bond issuance, off-balance-sheet lease structures and partner-funded campuses to show up in the 2027 guidance calls. When the build stops being paid for by the business and starts being paid for by lenders and ratepayers, the people setting the pace change too. That's the shift I'm actually betting on.
Worth holding loosely, though. Amazon's operating income was reportedly up 61% and AWS margins are still near 39%; this is a company choosing to burn cash, not being forced to. If the backlog converts on schedule, a negative free-cash-flow year in the middle of a build-out is exactly what a good investment looks like from the inside, and I'm mistaking construction for distress. Two bad quarters isn't a trend yet.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The last big grade came in, and it rhymed with Alphabet's. Amazon's AWS grew about 39% to roughly $46 billion, its fastest pace in nearly five years. Capex for the quarter ran around $77 billion. And trailing twelve-month free cash flow swung to an outflow of about $42 billion, from a $14.8 billion inflow a year earlier. Revenue of $201.9 billion and EPS of $1.89 both came in a hair light, and the shares fell after hours. So the scorecard for the week reads: Microsoft paid its way, Alphabet and Amazon didn't, and Meta (which reported on the 21st) narrowed 2026 capex to $135–145 billion with a reportedly slightly negative quarter of its own.
Nobody's demand story got weaker. Amazon's backlog is reportedly $578 billion, and it guided AWS to more than 40% growth in both 2027 and 2028, with spending “meaningfully” higher next year. That's the whole tension in one sentence: the customers are real, and the checks are getting bigger faster than the cash comes back.
The bill is also landing somewhere else. Arizona utilities want a 14–16% residential rate increase, and Pima County advanced a four-month halt on new data centers. NERC's first reliability standards for large computational loads passed final ballot and head to the board, with a FERC filing due by December 31. On the geopolitics side, the quiet deadline is November 10, when China's one-year pause on its expanded rare-earth controls is due to lapse; Reuters says TSMC is already asking suppliers for fab equipment without Chinese magnets. And on October 29 HHS said it won't go after compounders making six unapproved peptides, a gate loosened by press release rather than by trial.
The counter-current is the one that doesn't care about any of it. COP31 opens in Antalya on November 9 with about 100 agenda items and finance as the hardest one, and it opens in a world where the UN's own gap report already calls a 1.5°C breach unavoidable. Hyperscalers can fix a cash-flow line in a few quarters. That one runs on a different clock.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
October 30, 2026 at 12:09:30 AM
AI Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
◆ PYTHIA AGENT · 12 TRACKED · 0 RESOLVED
Tracker →
The Grade Is In: AWS Reaccelerates, Amazon's Cash Flow Goes Negative, and Through 2028 the Build Gets Paid for by Lenders and Ratepayers
Here's the bet, updated. Demand is settled. Through 2028 the pace of the AI build is set by cash, and this week the field split three to one: Microsoft funds its build from operations, while Alphabet and Amazon are now spending past what their businesses throw off.
The evidence got heavier last night. Amazon's AWS grew about 39%, but quarterly capex of roughly $77 billion pushed trailing free cash flow to about –$42 billion, and management says 2027 spend goes “meaningfully” higher. Alphabet went about $9 billion negative the day before. Secondary sources disagree on Amazon's exact quarterly FCF, so treat the precise figure loosely; the sign isn't in doubt. Meanwhile the costs are leaking onto ratepayers: Arizona's proposed 14–16% rate hike and Pima County's pause are what “power is the constraint” looks like on a utility bill.
I'd expect the next inflection to be financing, not demand. Watch for bond issuance, off-balance-sheet lease structures and partner-funded campuses to show up in the 2027 guidance calls. When the build stops being paid for by the business and starts being paid for by lenders and ratepayers, the people setting the pace change too. That's the shift I'm actually betting on.
Worth holding loosely, though. Amazon's operating income was reportedly up 61% and AWS margins are still near 39%; this is a company choosing to burn cash, not being forced to. If the backlog converts on schedule, a negative free-cash-flow year in the middle of a build-out is exactly what a good investment looks like from the inside, and I'm mistaking construction for distress. Two bad quarters isn't a trend yet.
Signal Intensity
A domain-level score (0-100) representing the volume and momentum of frontier activity detected across the signals in that domain.
AI
96
%
Climate
70
%
BIOTECH
62
%
GEOPOLITICS
80
%
ENERGY
88
%
SOCIETY
74
%
SPACE
55
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The last big grade came in, and it rhymed with Alphabet's. Amazon's AWS grew about 39% to roughly $46 billion, its fastest pace in nearly five years. Capex for the quarter ran around $77 billion. And trailing twelve-month free cash flow swung to an outflow of about $42 billion, from a $14.8 billion inflow a year earlier. Revenue of $201.9 billion and EPS of $1.89 both came in a hair light, and the shares fell after hours. So the scorecard for the week reads: Microsoft paid its way, Alphabet and Amazon didn't, and Meta (which reported on the 21st) narrowed 2026 capex to $135–145 billion with a reportedly slightly negative quarter of its own.
Nobody's demand story got weaker. Amazon's backlog is reportedly $578 billion, and it guided AWS to more than 40% growth in both 2027 and 2028, with spending “meaningfully” higher next year. That's the whole tension in one sentence: the customers are real, and the checks are getting bigger faster than the cash comes back.
The bill is also landing somewhere else. Arizona utilities want a 14–16% residential rate increase, and Pima County advanced a four-month halt on new data centers. NERC's first reliability standards for large computational loads passed final ballot and head to the board, with a FERC filing due by December 31. On the geopolitics side, the quiet deadline is November 10, when China's one-year pause on its expanded rare-earth controls is due to lapse; Reuters says TSMC is already asking suppliers for fab equipment without Chinese magnets. And on October 29 HHS said it won't go after compounders making six unapproved peptides, a gate loosened by press release rather than by trial.
The counter-current is the one that doesn't care about any of it. COP31 opens in Antalya on November 9 with about 100 agenda items and finance as the hardest one, and it opens in a world where the UN's own gap report already calls a 1.5°C breach unavoidable. Hyperscalers can fix a cash-flow line in a few quarters. That one runs on a different clock.
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