Let’s Start Mostly Working

Gently taps the mic I’m trying something new:

An in-person morning for senior+ product designers in London to get hands-on with AI tools. Not polished talks or rehearsed panels, just a peek behind the curtain of how other designers are experimenting, and the space to build alongside a small group of peers.

Here’s why:

Over the last year, Jonny and I have run AI hack weeks with design teams of all shapes and sizes, from early-stage startups to 60+ person orgs at companies you’d recognise. My biggest takeaway across them all is that there is no magic bullet, people don’t ‘learn AI’ by watching demos or reading LinkedIn posts. (I appreciate the irony of saying this in a LinkedIn post!) They build AI confidence by actually making things and feeling the edges for themselves. Where it’s magic, where it falls apart, and perhaps most usefully, what this means for their actual work.

But senior+ designers rarely have the time, space or even permission to experiment hands-on. Yet they’re increasingly expected to have a view on how AI shapes strategy, future vision, and the tools their teams build with.

When Simon reached out last week (he’s been knee-deep building SwiftUI with Cursor at Sling) and suggested we team up to run something for the London design community, it felt like the perfect moment to try.

So, next week, on Thursday 5th Feb at Sling HQ in Shoreditch, we’ll gather a small group to run through a couple of live walkthroughs of how real designers are building with AI, before breaking out to build our own things. And then sharing what we made.

This is free. We’re opening up 25 spots, and keeping things intentionally small and peer-group-like, to enable this to be a safe, high-trust space.

So if you’re a seasoned product designer (or design leader) who’s been meaning to get more hands-on building with AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Lovable, Pencil etc), but haven’t quite made the space for it, this is your nudge to try. I hope you’ll join us! 🙏