Fast Tools, Slow Thinking: How to Design with AI Without Losing the Designer

In this episode, we speak with Idam Adam, a Product Designer at Upguard.

What does it look like when design and code fully merge, and AI becomes the bridge between an idea and a finished, clickable product? Idam is a Product Designer at UpGuard with a background that spans both coding and design. He's a heavy user of Claude Code and Codex agents, and he's built a workflow that lets him generate rich prototypes, facilitate better stakeholder conversations, and unlock creativity at a scale that wasn't possible before. But what makes Idam's practice distinctive isn't the speed, it's the discipline: spending time up front to go slower. Conscious recalibration. Using AI not just to build, but to think.

In this episode:

• How he uses AI to interview himself before building - creating rich context so the model can do its best work
• Why prototyping velocity changes stakeholder conversations entirely
• The cognitive load of Git, design repositories, and coding agents
• What companies are actually looking for when they want someone who can take an idea and ship a finished product
• And why "just because you can go fast, doesn't mean you should

Show notes:

https://www.idamadam.com

https://critter.sh

https://time.com/7295195/ai-chatgpt-google-learning-school

https://theconversation.com/is-ai-hurting-your-ability-to-think-how-to-reclaim-your-brain-272834