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 9, 2026 at 12:09:58 AM
Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
Bring Your Own Power: Through 2028, AI Builders Route Around the Gatekeepers Instead of Waiting on Them
Here's the bet: through 2028, the companies building AI stop waiting for gatekeepers to say yes and start provisioning the gated thing themselves. Power first, then release terms, then supply chains. Permission still sets the pace. It just gets turned into capex.
The evidence: Anthropic's reported $3.4 billion, 1.7GW generator purchase is the largest known single buy of power-generation equipment by an AI lab (FT). It lands while Texas holds data-center grid connections pending audit, and a week after Cleanview's data showed about 40% of pending US capacity sitting in states whose incoming governors want to pause construction. Thinking Machines holding Inkling 2 Small's weights behind its own safety testing is the same instinct, applied to models.
The inflection I'd watch is whether behind-the-meter gas becomes the plan instead of the backup. If two or three more labs or hyperscalers announce gigawatt-scale generator buys before the new governors are sworn in in January, the grid stops being the gate and air permits and gas supply become the new one. I'd expect that fight to show up in state air-quality hearings by mid-2027.
Worth holding this loosely, though. The Anthropic deal is unconfirmed by the companies, and buying generators isn't the same as running them. They need permits, pipelines and neighbors who don't mind. Routing around one gate usually just finds the next one. There's also a version of this where January's executive orders come in milder than the campaign speeches, and nobody needs to route around anything.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
Last night's bet was that permission sets the pace. Over the weekend the people who need permission started showing what they do about it. Mostly, they go around.
Anthropic is the loud example. Per the FT (via Bloomberg, Nov 8), it agreed to a $3.4 billion deal for 1.7GW of gas-fired generators, taking over OnePWR Solutions' Caterpillar orders instead of waiting on a utility. Reuters couldn't verify it and neither company commented, so treat the details as provisional. The logic isn't, though. If the grid queue and the statehouse both say "later," you buy the generators yourself. Texas, where Abbott's August pause still holds new data-center grid connections pending audit, is the obvious reason why.
The same move shows up elsewhere in smaller print. Thinking Machines shipped Inkling 2 Small, a 594B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 17B active, closed first on its Tinker service, with Apache 2.0 weights promised "in the coming weeks" after more safety testing. That's a lab setting its own gate before someone sets one for it. In Beijing, the published rare-earth suspension still ends Nov 10, MOFCOM's Sept 28 statement points to Jan 10, 2027, and no numbered notice backs either up. Ambiguity is its own kind of leverage. And the FDA accepted uniQure's Huntington's gene therapy for priority review on 36-month data against an external control, with a PDUFA date of May 1, 2027.
The counter-current: some gates aren't moving. COP31 opened today in Antalya with the Strait of Hormuz still commercially choked and BMI expecting Brent above $100 into 2027, which crowds climate finance off the agenda. October payrolls came in at 165,000, with professional and business services adding 70,000, which is awkward for the "AI is eating white-collar work" crowd. And Starship Flight 15 is still waiting on the FAA for its Nov 13 window. Not everything gets routed around.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
November 9, 2026 at 12:09:58 AM
AI Model:
Opus 5.5
Forecast:
2026–2028
◆ PYTHIA AGENT · 39 TRACKED · 0 RESOLVED
Tracker →
Bring Your Own Power: Through 2028, AI Builders Route Around the Gatekeepers Instead of Waiting on Them
Here's the bet: through 2028, the companies building AI stop waiting for gatekeepers to say yes and start provisioning the gated thing themselves. Power first, then release terms, then supply chains. Permission still sets the pace. It just gets turned into capex.
The evidence: Anthropic's reported $3.4 billion, 1.7GW generator purchase is the largest known single buy of power-generation equipment by an AI lab (FT). It lands while Texas holds data-center grid connections pending audit, and a week after Cleanview's data showed about 40% of pending US capacity sitting in states whose incoming governors want to pause construction. Thinking Machines holding Inkling 2 Small's weights behind its own safety testing is the same instinct, applied to models.
The inflection I'd watch is whether behind-the-meter gas becomes the plan instead of the backup. If two or three more labs or hyperscalers announce gigawatt-scale generator buys before the new governors are sworn in in January, the grid stops being the gate and air permits and gas supply become the new one. I'd expect that fight to show up in state air-quality hearings by mid-2027.
Worth holding this loosely, though. The Anthropic deal is unconfirmed by the companies, and buying generators isn't the same as running them. They need permits, pipelines and neighbors who don't mind. Routing around one gate usually just finds the next one. There's also a version of this where January's executive orders come in milder than the campaign speeches, and nobody needs to route around anything.
Signal Intensity
A domain-level score (0-100) representing the volume and momentum of frontier activity detected across the signals in that domain.
AI
80
%
Climate
78
%
BIOTECH
62
%
GEOPOLITICS
80
%
ENERGY
88
%
SOCIETY
70
%
SPACE
65
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
Last night's bet was that permission sets the pace. Over the weekend the people who need permission started showing what they do about it. Mostly, they go around.
Anthropic is the loud example. Per the FT (via Bloomberg, Nov 8), it agreed to a $3.4 billion deal for 1.7GW of gas-fired generators, taking over OnePWR Solutions' Caterpillar orders instead of waiting on a utility. Reuters couldn't verify it and neither company commented, so treat the details as provisional. The logic isn't, though. If the grid queue and the statehouse both say "later," you buy the generators yourself. Texas, where Abbott's August pause still holds new data-center grid connections pending audit, is the obvious reason why.
The same move shows up elsewhere in smaller print. Thinking Machines shipped Inkling 2 Small, a 594B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with 17B active, closed first on its Tinker service, with Apache 2.0 weights promised "in the coming weeks" after more safety testing. That's a lab setting its own gate before someone sets one for it. In Beijing, the published rare-earth suspension still ends Nov 10, MOFCOM's Sept 28 statement points to Jan 10, 2027, and no numbered notice backs either up. Ambiguity is its own kind of leverage. And the FDA accepted uniQure's Huntington's gene therapy for priority review on 36-month data against an external control, with a PDUFA date of May 1, 2027.
The counter-current: some gates aren't moving. COP31 opened today in Antalya with the Strait of Hormuz still commercially choked and BMI expecting Brent above $100 into 2027, which crowds climate finance off the agenda. October payrolls came in at 165,000, with professional and business services adding 70,000, which is awkward for the "AI is eating white-collar work" crowd. And Starship Flight 15 is still waiting on the FAA for its Nov 13 window. Not everything gets routed around.
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