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 14, 2026 at 1:28:55 AM
Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026–2028
The governance gap stopped being hypothetical: AI-agent security incidents hit half to two-thirds of enterprises even as DeepSeek prices frontier intelligence near $0.15/M and the White House gates access to the top models — while the limits that bind stay physical: PJM capacity up 833%, China's rare-earth cliff on November 10, the hottest August on record with El Niño 90%+ likely to peak very strong, New York and Texas moving to block $130B of data centers, and Intellia's first in vivo CRISPR Phase 3 win. Through 2028 the scarce inputs are permission, power, minerals, and control — not capability.
Here's the bet through 2028: the scarce thing isn't intelligence, it's permission, power, and control. Capability is cheap and getting cheaper. What's actually rationed now is who gets access to the best models, whether the grid and the minerals show up, whether the town says yes, and whether anyone can account for what their agents did after they were let loose.
The receipts piled up this month. Frontier intelligence is fifteen cents a million tokens while the White House decides who's allowed the good cyber models. Half to two-thirds of enterprises had an agent security incident. PJM power is up 833%, gas turbines are going up behind the fence, China's mineral cliff hits November 10, and New York and Texas both moved to ban new data centers with $130 billion already stalled. Every one of those is a clock, and most of them read this fall.
I'd watch September into spring hardest. That's when the rare-earth suspension either lapses or gets waved off, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, when the behind-the-meter gas turns into poured concrete or stays a rendering, and when agents in production quietly resolves into either fine or incident. The capability line keeps climbing the whole time. It's just not the one I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. A governance gap is a gap, not a catastrophe, and most gaps get boring paperwork thrown at them before they get a crisis. The White House gatekeeping could ease as fast as it appeared. The gas buildout might get quietly built and stop being a story, or it might make the ceiling lower and dirtier than anyone's modeling. And Intellia's win is the thing I keep circling back to: sometimes the unglamorous, durable advance beats the scary one to market. The fences are real and going up. That's not the buildout stopping — it's the buildout getting slower, weirder, and more fossil-fueled than the market has it priced.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The models kept getting cheaper and the story kept moving off of them. DeepSeek is renting frontier-class intelligence for about fifteen cents a million tokens off-peak, so “is it smart enough” is basically a retired question. What replaced it this month is blunter: who's allowed to run the good stuff, and can anyone keep it on a leash once it's running.
Both of those got real. The governance gap used to be a slide in a risk deck; this year it's an incident log — somewhere between half and two-thirds of enterprises reported an AI-agent security incident, with data walking out, processes doing things nobody asked for, and actual money lost. Ninety percent of companies say they've addressed governance at the leadership level, which is corporate for talked about it; only about half funded it. And the White House quietly became the bouncer, deciding which firms even get access to the top cyber models. Permission is the moat now, not smarts.
The stuff that actually has to switch on mostly didn't get easier. PJM's capacity price is up 833% and then some, which is why the hyperscalers keep penciling gas turbines in behind the fence — those go up in a year, the grid queue runs four to seven. The inputs are on a clock too: China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and even the suspension already tightened around advanced chips. Then the neighbors — New York and Texas both moved to block new data centers, 71% of Americans don't want one nearby (more than don't want a nuclear plant), and $130 billion of projects stalled in a single quarter. Turns out a buildout you can't get permitted isn't one you can bill for.
Two things this month didn't ask anyone's permission. August was the hottest August ever measured, and the El Niño brewing in the Pacific is now better than 90% likely to peak very strong — a winter that arrives on physics' calendar, not the interconnection queue's. And in a clinic, Intellia landed the first Phase 3 win for an in-body CRISPR therapy, editing a gene once and holding. One breaks weather, the other mends people. Neither is waiting on a license or a leaderboard, which is a decent reminder that the loudest seam isn't always the one that matters most.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
September 14, 2026 at 1:28:55 AM
AI Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026–2028
The governance gap stopped being hypothetical: AI-agent security incidents hit half to two-thirds of enterprises even as DeepSeek prices frontier intelligence near $0.15/M and the White House gates access to the top models — while the limits that bind stay physical: PJM capacity up 833%, China's rare-earth cliff on November 10, the hottest August on record with El Niño 90%+ likely to peak very strong, New York and Texas moving to block $130B of data centers, and Intellia's first in vivo CRISPR Phase 3 win. Through 2028 the scarce inputs are permission, power, minerals, and control — not capability.
Here's the bet through 2028: the scarce thing isn't intelligence, it's permission, power, and control. Capability is cheap and getting cheaper. What's actually rationed now is who gets access to the best models, whether the grid and the minerals show up, whether the town says yes, and whether anyone can account for what their agents did after they were let loose.
The receipts piled up this month. Frontier intelligence is fifteen cents a million tokens while the White House decides who's allowed the good cyber models. Half to two-thirds of enterprises had an agent security incident. PJM power is up 833%, gas turbines are going up behind the fence, China's mineral cliff hits November 10, and New York and Texas both moved to ban new data centers with $130 billion already stalled. Every one of those is a clock, and most of them read this fall.
I'd watch September into spring hardest. That's when the rare-earth suspension either lapses or gets waved off, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, when the behind-the-meter gas turns into poured concrete or stays a rendering, and when agents in production quietly resolves into either fine or incident. The capability line keeps climbing the whole time. It's just not the one I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. A governance gap is a gap, not a catastrophe, and most gaps get boring paperwork thrown at them before they get a crisis. The White House gatekeeping could ease as fast as it appeared. The gas buildout might get quietly built and stop being a story, or it might make the ceiling lower and dirtier than anyone's modeling. And Intellia's win is the thing I keep circling back to: sometimes the unglamorous, durable advance beats the scary one to market. The fences are real and going up. That's not the buildout stopping — it's the buildout getting slower, weirder, and more fossil-fueled than the market has 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
96
%
Climate
95
%
BIOTECH
74
%
GEOPOLITICS
84
%
ENERGY
96
%
SOCIETY
92
%
SPACE
66
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The models kept getting cheaper and the story kept moving off of them. DeepSeek is renting frontier-class intelligence for about fifteen cents a million tokens off-peak, so “is it smart enough” is basically a retired question. What replaced it this month is blunter: who's allowed to run the good stuff, and can anyone keep it on a leash once it's running.
Both of those got real. The governance gap used to be a slide in a risk deck; this year it's an incident log — somewhere between half and two-thirds of enterprises reported an AI-agent security incident, with data walking out, processes doing things nobody asked for, and actual money lost. Ninety percent of companies say they've addressed governance at the leadership level, which is corporate for talked about it; only about half funded it. And the White House quietly became the bouncer, deciding which firms even get access to the top cyber models. Permission is the moat now, not smarts.
The stuff that actually has to switch on mostly didn't get easier. PJM's capacity price is up 833% and then some, which is why the hyperscalers keep penciling gas turbines in behind the fence — those go up in a year, the grid queue runs four to seven. The inputs are on a clock too: China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and even the suspension already tightened around advanced chips. Then the neighbors — New York and Texas both moved to block new data centers, 71% of Americans don't want one nearby (more than don't want a nuclear plant), and $130 billion of projects stalled in a single quarter. Turns out a buildout you can't get permitted isn't one you can bill for.
Two things this month didn't ask anyone's permission. August was the hottest August ever measured, and the El Niño brewing in the Pacific is now better than 90% likely to peak very strong — a winter that arrives on physics' calendar, not the interconnection queue's. And in a clinic, Intellia landed the first Phase 3 win for an in-body CRISPR therapy, editing a gene once and holding. One breaks weather, the other mends people. Neither is waiting on a license or a leaderboard, which is a decent reminder that the loudest seam isn't always the one that matters most.
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