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Over the last six months, I've built around thirty small app prototypes.
They're not startups. Most aren't even products, as such. They're scrappy little things I've hand-coded, together with help from Claude, a little rough around the edges. Some work better than others. Some get put to one side after a few days.
I can build more now. Faster. With less dependency or permission. But that's not the point. I don't want to become a full-blown developer. I'm not chasing a career pivot in that sense. I've got 30 years of experience as a designer, and I'm not interested in switching. I may go hybrid, but not a full switch.
What's changing isn't my job. It's my relationship with ideas.
I can stop waiting.
For most of my career, ideas had a dependency chain.
First you needed a printing supplier (yes I go that far back).
Then you needed a developer.
And you needed finance. Or time carved out of someone else's priorities.
Even personal ideas had a cost. Often too big to try casually.
Now I can manifest ideas in an afternoon without asking permission. Without almost any cost. Just a Claude subscription, free hosting, and a bit of my time (my first 20 prototypes were actually done with free AI plans.
That's the real unlock we're living through.
If I have an idea on Monday, I can have a version of it by Tuesday.
Not a deck. Not a Figma file. A thing you can use.
That shifts where the energy goes. Instead of polishing an idea in your head, you can externalise it early. Change someone's day, or not. Can the idea survive being a V1, not just a plan.
So the goal isn't to ship everything. The goal is to learn fast, cheaply, and without drama. Hopefully enjoy it too.
This is especially powerful as a designer.
Design has always been about shaping intent. About making things legible, usable, human. The difference now is that the feedback loop is brutally short. You don't have to argue using hypotheticals, or a big budget. You put it out there and watch what happens.
Importantly, this doesn't diminish design. It sharpens it.
I'm not trying to out-engineer engineers.
I'm trying to remove friction between curiosity and evidence.
Thirty prototypes later, the biggest gain isn't technical skill. It's agency.
Ideas feel lighter. Less precious. Easier to test, easier to discard. I don't need a roadmap to learn something small and true.
The shift isn’t ‘I learned to code‘, it’s ‘I stopped waiting’.
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