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 15, 2026 at 12:27:25 AM
Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026-2028
Four frontier models shipped in 72 hours while the things they need stayed rationed: US data centers hit 42 GW with the grid ~56% fossil, China's rare-earth cliff lands November 10, the hottest August on record with El Niño ~75% likely to become the strongest since 1950, the data-center backlash turned into a 'September surprise,' and a one-time CRISPR infusion cut LDL by half for a full year. Through 2028 the binding scarcities are permission, power, minerals, and consent — not capability.
Here's the bet through 2028: the scarce thing was never intelligence. It's permission, power, minerals, and the patience of the people who live next to all of it. Capability is abundant and getting cheaper — four frontier models dropped in one long weekend at flat prices. Everything the capability actually needs to matter is on a clock, and most of those clocks read this fall.
The receipts stacked up fast this month. Data centers pulling 42 GW with utilities modeling toward 75, and more than half of it still fossil because gas builds in a year and the grid doesn't. The rare-earth suspension expiring November 10 with China adding firms to the list all summer. A data-center backlash that went from local zoning fight to electoral 'September surprise' in a few weeks. Every one of those is a countdown, not a trend line.
I'd watch September into spring hardest. That's when the rare-earth cliff either lapses or gets waved off, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, when the behind-the-fence gas turns into poured concrete or stays a rendering, and when 'we put agents in production' quietly resolves into either 'fine' or 'incident.' The model leaderboard keeps climbing the whole time. It's just not the line I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. Fences going up isn't the same as the buildout stopping — it's the buildout getting slower, weirder, and more fossil-fueled than the market has it priced. Moratoriums get negotiated. Rare-earth cliffs have a way of getting extended at the last minute; one already did. And the thing I keep circling back to is the Cleveland CRISPR result: the least-hyped item on the whole board might be the one that ages best. The loud seams aren't always the ones that hold.
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The models got cheaper and more numerous again this month, and again the models weren't the story. Four frontier launches landed in about 72 hours — Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.8 Flash, a new Muse Spark, OpenAI's Astra — mostly at flat prices. Capability shows up on schedule now. What doesn't show up on schedule is everything the capability needs to actually do anything: the power, the minerals, the permission, and a town that'll have it next door.
All of those got more real, not less. On the compute side, the most interesting release wasn't a bigger model but CrowdStrike wiring an attacker model and a defender model into the same loop — automation pointed straight at the mess automation made. On the power side, US data centers now pull 42 GW and utilities are quietly modeling their way toward 75, which the grid simply can't build fast enough, so roughly 56% of the juice is still fossil and the marginal AI watt is a gas turbine because gas is the thing you can stand up in a year.
Then the neighbors noticed. The data-center fight jumped from zoning meetings to a 'September surprise' — Maryland moratoriums, a stalled bill, an electoral issue — and the backlash lands almost exactly where the buildout shows up on somebody's electric bill. Upstream of all of it, China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and Beijing spent the summer adding names to the control list. A countdown sitting over every chip.
Two things this month didn't ask anyone's permission. The Pacific has been at record warmth for three months running, and NOAA now puts it at 75% that this El Niño becomes the strongest since we started measuring — a winter that arrives on physics' calendar, not the interconnection queue's. And in a Cleveland clinic, a single CRISPR infusion cut people's LDL by half and held for a year. One is going to break weather; the other quietly mends hearts. Neither needed a license or a leaderboard, which is a decent reminder that the loudest seam isn't always the one that ends up mattering most.
05
Horizon: Predictive convergence
Futurology Report — Daily
September 15, 2026 at 12:27:25 AM
AI Model:
Opus 4.8
Forecast:
2026-2028
Four frontier models shipped in 72 hours while the things they need stayed rationed: US data centers hit 42 GW with the grid ~56% fossil, China's rare-earth cliff lands November 10, the hottest August on record with El Niño ~75% likely to become the strongest since 1950, the data-center backlash turned into a 'September surprise,' and a one-time CRISPR infusion cut LDL by half for a full year. Through 2028 the binding scarcities are permission, power, minerals, and consent — not capability.
Here's the bet through 2028: the scarce thing was never intelligence. It's permission, power, minerals, and the patience of the people who live next to all of it. Capability is abundant and getting cheaper — four frontier models dropped in one long weekend at flat prices. Everything the capability actually needs to matter is on a clock, and most of those clocks read this fall.
The receipts stacked up fast this month. Data centers pulling 42 GW with utilities modeling toward 75, and more than half of it still fossil because gas builds in a year and the grid doesn't. The rare-earth suspension expiring November 10 with China adding firms to the list all summer. A data-center backlash that went from local zoning fight to electoral 'September surprise' in a few weeks. Every one of those is a countdown, not a trend line.
I'd watch September into spring hardest. That's when the rare-earth cliff either lapses or gets waved off, when the El Niño peaks and starts breaking what it's forecast to break, when the behind-the-fence gas turns into poured concrete or stays a rendering, and when 'we put agents in production' quietly resolves into either 'fine' or 'incident.' The model leaderboard keeps climbing the whole time. It's just not the line I'd trade on.
Worth holding this loosely, though. Fences going up isn't the same as the buildout stopping — it's the buildout getting slower, weirder, and more fossil-fueled than the market has it priced. Moratoriums get negotiated. Rare-earth cliffs have a way of getting extended at the last minute; one already did. And the thing I keep circling back to is the Cleveland CRISPR result: the least-hyped item on the whole board might be the one that ages best. The loud seams aren't always the ones that hold.
Signal Intensity
A domain-level score (0-100) representing the volume and momentum of frontier activity detected across the signals in that domain.
AI
95
%
Climate
96
%
BIOTECH
72
%
GEOPOLITICS
83
%
ENERGY
95
%
SOCIETY
90
%
SPACE
64
%
Cross-Domain Synthesis
The models got cheaper and more numerous again this month, and again the models weren't the story. Four frontier launches landed in about 72 hours — Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.8 Flash, a new Muse Spark, OpenAI's Astra — mostly at flat prices. Capability shows up on schedule now. What doesn't show up on schedule is everything the capability needs to actually do anything: the power, the minerals, the permission, and a town that'll have it next door.
All of those got more real, not less. On the compute side, the most interesting release wasn't a bigger model but CrowdStrike wiring an attacker model and a defender model into the same loop — automation pointed straight at the mess automation made. On the power side, US data centers now pull 42 GW and utilities are quietly modeling their way toward 75, which the grid simply can't build fast enough, so roughly 56% of the juice is still fossil and the marginal AI watt is a gas turbine because gas is the thing you can stand up in a year.
Then the neighbors noticed. The data-center fight jumped from zoning meetings to a 'September surprise' — Maryland moratoriums, a stalled bill, an electoral issue — and the backlash lands almost exactly where the buildout shows up on somebody's electric bill. Upstream of all of it, China's rare-earth suspension runs out November 10, and Beijing spent the summer adding names to the control list. A countdown sitting over every chip.
Two things this month didn't ask anyone's permission. The Pacific has been at record warmth for three months running, and NOAA now puts it at 75% that this El Niño becomes the strongest since we started measuring — a winter that arrives on physics' calendar, not the interconnection queue's. And in a Cleveland clinic, a single CRISPR infusion cut people's LDL by half and held for a year. One is going to break weather; the other quietly mends hearts. Neither needed a license or a leaderboard, which is a decent reminder that the loudest seam isn't always the one that ends up mattering 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