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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.)

Video_overlay.png

Machine Vision

geneva-one.jpg

Wearable

nostradamus-convergence.png

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.

AI Product DesignAgentic SystemsData VisualizationFuturologyPrompt Engineering

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.

Machine VisionUser ResearchVisual Design

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.

System DesignUser ResearchQA TestingHardware Prototyping

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.

FitnessWearablesPatentHardware UX

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.

Mobile DesigniOSAndroidSystem DesignProduct Management

FLO TV Personal Television

UX Design Lead

•

Qualcomm / FLO TV

•

1 year

→

Designing a new product category from the ground up: live mobile television.

Ethnographic ResearchUsability TestingUX DesignSystem DesignDesign Team Management

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.

Design SystemsDesign LeadershipMachine Vision AIGenerative AI

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.

Usability TestingPrototypingMobile DesignPatents

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.

User TestingWireframingComponent DesignTechnical Writing

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.

HCIComputer ProgrammingNLPCognitive Science

My Résumé

Name

Daniel Rivas

current role

Senior Product Designer

Location

San Diego, CA

04

Blog

Experiments & Musings

Daily Futurology Report

September 25, 2026 at 12:48:00 AM

Model:

Opus 4.8

Forecast:

2026–2028

22 nations launch a UN 'Call for Control of Frontier AI' — pointedly without the US or China — the same week Altman briefs the Security Council for a speed limit, as the rare-earth cliff holds for Nov 10, a near-certain El Niño aims past every modern record, a 417-3 House vote shields ratepayers from data-center power costs, and Google's first orbital AI chips launch Oct 1. Through 2028 the binding constraints are governance, minerals, power and consent — not model capability.

Here's the bet through 2028: the models were never the constraint, and this fall keeps proving it. What's scarce is everything around them — the minerals to build the machines, the power to run them, the public's patience for hosting either, and the political agreement to govern any of it. This week that last one cracked into view. Twenty-two nations asked for global AI rules, and the two countries that build the frontier declined the invitation.


The evidence is on the calendar, not in a mood. A rare-earth suspension that lapses November 10. A frontier-AI oversight call with the US and China conspicuously outside it. A data-center power shortfall so real that Texas stopped connecting new load and the House voted 417-3 to protect ratepayers. An El Niño the WMO now calls near-certain and possibly the biggest in a thousand years, forecast to peak near a record in November. Half a dozen separate clocks, all bunched into one autumn.


I'd watch October into December hardest. That's when the rare-earth cliff either lapses or gets waved off at a Trump-Xi table, when El Niño peaks and starts breaking whatever it's going to break, when Google's first chips either survive orbit or don't, and when the UN's new coalition either grows teeth or stays a press release the two big players ignored. A lot of bets settle in the same eight weeks, and given the year, I wouldn't put the whole board on the calm outcome.


Worth holding loosely, though. A deadline is a negotiation, not a wall — the rare-earth freeze already got extended once, and a 22-nation declaration without Washington or Beijing is a long way from a rule anyone enforces. The likeliest real outcome isn't a cliff; it's slippage — everything a little slower, a little more gas-fired, a little stranger than the market has priced. And the development I keep circling back to isn't on the countdown at all: this fall a gene edit inside a living body cut people's cholesterol in half, while everyone else was staring at the clocks.

Cross-Domain Synthesis

This week 22 countries stood up at the UN and asked for a referee on frontier AI. The interesting part isn't the ask — it's the guest list. The US and China, the two countries that actually build the frontier models, didn't sign. So you've got a coalition of the willing forming around a table the two players who matter didn't show up to. Two days later Sam Altman walked into the Security Council and said OpenAI would slow down. The builders want brakes; the governments that house them can't agree on who holds the pedal.


Underneath the governance drama, the physical stuff keeps setting the actual deadlines. China's rare-earth freeze lasts only until November 10, and the chip inputs everyone needs now clear one license at a time. The power layer is worse: US data centers are pulling toward 76 gigawatts this year, Texas has quietly stopped taking new grid connections, and more than half of that power is still fossil. Nobody's building reactors fast enough, so the marginal watt is gas.


And people have noticed the bill. The US House — which agrees on almost nothing — voted 417 to 3 to stop data centers from dumping their power costs onto everyone else's electric bill. That's not a fringe worry anymore; that's Congress. Meanwhile the escape hatch stopped being a slide deck: on October 1 Google is putting four of its AI chips into orbit to see if compute can just run where the sun never sets. Funded, filed, and now actually flying.


The thing that ignores all of it is biology. A Cleveland Clinic trial edited a gene inside living patients and cut their bad cholesterol in half a year later, and the FDA just took Intellia's in-body CRISPR drug in for review. No cliff, no vote, no summit — just a quiet line of results walking from rare diseases toward the conditions everybody has. The loudest clocks this fall are the ones with deadlines. The one that may matter most doesn't have one.

05

Horizon: Predictive convergence

Futurology Report — Daily

September 25, 2026 at 12:48:00 AM

AI Model:

Opus 4.8

Forecast:

2026–2028

22 nations launch a UN 'Call for Control of Frontier AI' — pointedly without the US or China — the same week Altman briefs the Security Council for a speed limit, as the rare-earth cliff holds for Nov 10, a near-certain El Niño aims past every modern record, a 417-3 House vote shields ratepayers from data-center power costs, and Google's first orbital AI chips launch Oct 1. Through 2028 the binding constraints are governance, minerals, power and consent — not model capability.

Here's the bet through 2028: the models were never the constraint, and this fall keeps proving it. What's scarce is everything around them — the minerals to build the machines, the power to run them, the public's patience for hosting either, and the political agreement to govern any of it. This week that last one cracked into view. Twenty-two nations asked for global AI rules, and the two countries that build the frontier declined the invitation.


The evidence is on the calendar, not in a mood. A rare-earth suspension that lapses November 10. A frontier-AI oversight call with the US and China conspicuously outside it. A data-center power shortfall so real that Texas stopped connecting new load and the House voted 417-3 to protect ratepayers. An El Niño the WMO now calls near-certain and possibly the biggest in a thousand years, forecast to peak near a record in November. Half a dozen separate clocks, all bunched into one autumn.


I'd watch October into December hardest. That's when the rare-earth cliff either lapses or gets waved off at a Trump-Xi table, when El Niño peaks and starts breaking whatever it's going to break, when Google's first chips either survive orbit or don't, and when the UN's new coalition either grows teeth or stays a press release the two big players ignored. A lot of bets settle in the same eight weeks, and given the year, I wouldn't put the whole board on the calm outcome.


Worth holding loosely, though. A deadline is a negotiation, not a wall — the rare-earth freeze already got extended once, and a 22-nation declaration without Washington or Beijing is a long way from a rule anyone enforces. The likeliest real outcome isn't a cliff; it's slippage — everything a little slower, a little more gas-fired, a little stranger than the market has priced. And the development I keep circling back to isn't on the countdown at all: this fall a gene edit inside a living body cut people's cholesterol in half, while everyone else was staring at the clocks.

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

68

%

GEOPOLITICS

82

%

ENERGY

95

%

SOCIETY

88

%

SPACE

66

%

Cross-Domain Synthesis

This week 22 countries stood up at the UN and asked for a referee on frontier AI. The interesting part isn't the ask — it's the guest list. The US and China, the two countries that actually build the frontier models, didn't sign. So you've got a coalition of the willing forming around a table the two players who matter didn't show up to. Two days later Sam Altman walked into the Security Council and said OpenAI would slow down. The builders want brakes; the governments that house them can't agree on who holds the pedal.


Underneath the governance drama, the physical stuff keeps setting the actual deadlines. China's rare-earth freeze lasts only until November 10, and the chip inputs everyone needs now clear one license at a time. The power layer is worse: US data centers are pulling toward 76 gigawatts this year, Texas has quietly stopped taking new grid connections, and more than half of that power is still fossil. Nobody's building reactors fast enough, so the marginal watt is gas.


And people have noticed the bill. The US House — which agrees on almost nothing — voted 417 to 3 to stop data centers from dumping their power costs onto everyone else's electric bill. That's not a fringe worry anymore; that's Congress. Meanwhile the escape hatch stopped being a slide deck: on October 1 Google is putting four of its AI chips into orbit to see if compute can just run where the sun never sets. Funded, filed, and now actually flying.


The thing that ignores all of it is biology. A Cleveland Clinic trial edited a gene inside living patients and cut their bad cholesterol in half a year later, and the FDA just took Intellia's in-body CRISPR drug in for review. No cliff, no vote, no summit — just a quiet line of results walking from rare diseases toward the conditions everybody has. The loudest clocks this fall are the ones with deadlines. The one that may matter most doesn't have one.

AI

Finland and Norway lead a 22-nation UN 'Call for Control of Frontier AI Models' — US and China stay out

Hire Daniel Rivas

AI

Altman briefs the UN Security Council pledging OpenAI will slow down; Türk calls self-regulation 'nowhere near sufficient'

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Climate

Multi-model forecasts converge on Niño-3.4 near +4.0°C in November, past the +3.08°C 2015 record

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Climate

WMO's near-100% El Niño call through February 2027; 'supersizing,' possibly largest in ~1,000 years

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Biotech

Cleveland Clinic first-in-human CRISPR lipid therapy cuts LDL 52.5% at one year with no serious adverse events

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Biotech

FDA accepts Intellia's application for lonvo-z, an in vivo CRISPR therapy (Sept 7)

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Geopolitics

Rare-earth cliff holds for November 10; sub-14nm and 256-layer chip inputs on case-by-case review, 0.1% rule set to snap back

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Geopolitics

Rare-earth friction threatens to stall the trade-truce extension ahead of the Trump-Xi summit

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Energy

US data-center demand climbs toward ~75.8 GW in 2026; Texas pauses new grid connections as NERC lifts 10-yr peak by 224 GW

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Energy

56% of data-center power still fossil; hyperscaler capex $660-725B in 2026 as SMRs stay out until the early 2030s

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Society

US House passes the Ratepayer Protection Act 417-3 to stop data centers shifting power costs onto existing customers

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Society

Virginia's $0.011/kWh data-center power tax and large-load tariffs in 23 states put the buildout on household bills

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Space

Google's Project Suncatcher launches Oct 1 — four TPUs to LEO on a Falcon 9 Transporter-18 rideshare

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Space

SpaceX files for up to ~1M orbital data-center satellites (~100 GW); Starcloud raises $250M with Nvidia aboard

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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.

42944735170_124e75130e_z.jpg
icon-systems-before-screens.png

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.

icon-emoji-strategy.png

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.

icon-emoji-stakeholder-mgmt.png

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

1 week

Designer & Builder

Global Trend Engine

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.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
Global Trend Engine

4 months

Senior UX Designer

Lytx Video Overlay

A dynamic video overlay that simplifies customer coaching conversations, improving user trust, and reducing contention rate to near zero.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
Lytx Video Overlay

3 months

Senior UX Designer

Lytx Driver ID

A systematic user flow for assignment, distribution, and usage of QR codes to assign drivers to vehicles.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
Lytx Driver ID

3 years

UX Design Lead

Timex Ironman ONE GPS+

A full 0-to-1 product experience for athletes who wanted to track workouts, stay connected, and leave their phones behind.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
Timex Ironman ONE GPS+

1.5 years

UX Design & Product Management

Tagg the Pet Tracker

Redesign of a pet activity monitoring and management of iOS/Android app development as both UX lead and product manager.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
Tagg the Pet Tracker

1 year

UX Design Lead

FLO TV Personal Television

Designing a new product category from the ground up: live mobile television.

tagsContainer

​

Read More
FLO TV Personal Television

EXPERTISE

Skills

icon-emoji-search.png

User Research

Interviews, usability tests, ethnographic study, and contextual inquiry

icon-emoji-journey-mapping.png

Journey Mapping

End-to-end experience mapping across touchpoints

icon-emoji-interaction-design.png

Interaction Design

Flows, wireframes, use cases, and high-fidelity mockups

icon-storytelling.png

Storytelling

Communicating design decisions to executives, stakeholders, and cross-functional teams

icon-emoji-systems-thinking.png

Systems Thinking

Mapping connected flows and designing for scalability across product surfaces

icon-emoji-prototyping.png

Prototyping

Interactive prototypes from low-fi click-throughs to high-fidelity AI coding

icon-emoji-ai-fluency.png

AI Fluency

Designing AI-powered experiences and leveraging AI tools in the design process

icon-emoji-stakeholder-mgmt.png

Stakeholder Management

Cross-functional collaboration and design advocacy

Tools

Pendo_logo.png

Pendo

In-app guidance, feature tracking, and user surveys to inform design decisions

dovetail_logo.webp

Dovetail

Centralized research insights, tagged findings, and shared customer intelligence repository

Figma_logo_transparent.webp

Figma

Components, variants, auto-layout, and prototyping

claude-color.png

Claude (Design & Code)

AI-assisted research synthesis, design critique, content generation, and prototyping

amplitude_logo.png

Amplitude

Product funnels, retention curves, and feature adoption to identify usage and priorities

gong_logo.png

Gong

Customer interview repository for surfacing pain points, testing designs, and grounding decisions

sketch-icon.webp

Sketch

Vector-based UI design for components, wireframes, and high-fidelity screens

rpicon.png

Axure RP

High-fidelity interactive prototyping with conditional logic and complex flows

cursor_logo.png

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

BLOG

Experiments & Musings

Like

✦     Human · Machine · Intelligence     ✦     Systems before screens     ✦     Strategy & execution     ✦     Trustworthy by design     ✦ 

Design Philosophy

06

ABOUT ME

42944735170_124e75130e_z.jpg

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.

Linkedin

CONTACT DETAILS

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in mind?

I'm open to new full-time opportunities, collaborations, and interesting conversations.

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Daniel Rivas · UX Strategy & Product Design

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