THE EVENING SHIFT

Summary from the TLDR Design newsletter

After years of feeling drained by meetings, documentation, and design process, veteran designer Jamie Rothwell rediscovered his enthusiasm for the craft by building products directly with AI-assisted tools. A side project that went from idea to App Store in six weeks showed him the value of shipping real software instead of producing handoffs and specifications. Following a layoff, he doubled down on this designer-builder approach, arguing that adaptability and staying close to the product matter more than protecting traditional design workflows—and that many designers lost the fun of the job to process long before AI arrived.