For many designs, you don't know what you want until you see it.

So, how do you see it? You can sketch, you can think, you can throw ideas on the wall. For me, it's easy to say "that works" and "that doesn't" vs. thinking of several ideas from scratch.

So, I use my AI friend to build prototypes. A bunch. Once I have them, I can run through options and see what resonates.

"I'm trying to integrate my calculator tool with a wiki/gallery of shared calcs." That's my problem. We have user calcs, and (soon) community calcs. How do we browse both?

Originally (aka yesterday) my design was a separate /wiki page, but my buddy Andy asked why it wasn't just part of the homepage.

And... yeah? Why shouldn't the cool calcs others have made immediately available for your perusal?

And so a design tool was born (try it out):

I've had ideas in the past about vertical side panels, but I wasn't sure what I wanted. And again, the pain of actually coding prototypes, knowing I'd throw away 90% of them, was too much.

Now, I ask my robo-buddy to create a bunch of variations, with panels for me to swap between layouts, and I can talk about what's working (or not). Then have it make different presets. Evolving, closer and closer, to that Yowza! design.

Thought 1: Tweaking

Even the design panel itself can be improved. I love that i can just write:

have the design lab panel (by default) on the bottom right, and save its position to localStorage so it remembers after reload where you had it

and it works. Magical times.

Thought 2: Sharing

Since I'm making the design tool... why not open it up for feedback? I'd like to see what layout ideas people have.

Thought 3: Design

Having a tool makes design so much easier!

Thought 4: Iteration speed is motivating

With the energy from building the tool, I started integrating my existing code into a live experience. This is good enough to play with and sus out bugs that may be hiding in the refactor.