Design Engineering with Maggie Appleton

AI agents accelerate implementation but still can't do visual/spatial design reasoning, keeping human designers essential for taste and judgment.

• Design engineering defined: Maggie Appleton says a true design engineer digs into technical architecture and implements code themselves, unlike 'micro-interaction' designers who could be replaced by prompting an agent.
• Notebooks still win: Agents can't do spatial or visual reasoning well, so Appleton still sketches interfaces on paper before touching Figma or code — pen-and-paper thinking has 'quick feedback' agents lack.

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