A couple of weeks ago, I gave a technical presentation on AI-assisted UI workflows to the Volaris AI Group. Shortly after, a designer from one of our sister companies reached out with a familiar request. They wanted to know if I would be willing to meet with their small group of designers—they call themselves the "design tribe"—to walk through how I handle Storybook and code handoffs.
I will always say yes to talking shop with other designers. So yesterday, we got together.
The conversation was fantastic. I walked them through my current reality: how I still fiercely protect Figma as the place where I sketch and think, but how I now use tools like Kiro to jump into the actual codebase and complete component library tickets. But beyond the technical shop talk, the meeting gave me a massive burst of creative energy.
It was a stark reminder of a simple truth: designers need other designers. It is how we think, how we process friction, and how we find inspiration.
But as the call went on, a shared reality surfaced. Their "design tribe" used to be a unified team. Recently, their company structure shifted, and they were broken apart, each embedded as a solo designer on separate, siloed products.
I nodded along because I am living the exact same transition. I was recently split from the other two designers on my team at AssetWorks, and we are now operating in our own distinct product silos.
There is a very specific danger that comes with the design silo, and it isn't just loneliness. It’s the death of the casual share.
When you are on a team working toward the same product goal, collaboration is frictionless. You casually ask someone to look at a messy flow, or you brainstorm over a rough sketch. The stakes are low.
But the moment you are siloed onto different products, sharing becomes a hurdle. Because your peers don't have the daily context of what you are building, showing them your work suddenly requires preamble. It becomes formal. Instead of a quick, five-minute sanity check, sharing starts to feel like it requires a prepared presentation deck and a scheduled meeting.
Because we are busy, we avoid the friction. We stop sharing the messy middle and only show the polished end result. And in doing so, we lose the exact creative friction that makes our work better.
Meeting with that design tribe yesterday was exactly the wake-up call I needed. Moving forward, I am making a conscious effort to lower the stakes of sharing again. We have to purposefully manufacture that "over-the-shoulder" environment, even when the enterprise structure naturally pushes us apart.
Sometimes, you just need to get in a room with other creatives and remind yourself that you aren't building in a vacuum.
#UXDesign #ProductDesign #DesignCulture #EnterpriseUX #Storybook #DesignCommunity