Sean Smith
Founding / Head of Product Design & Builder
sean@seansmithdesign.com • linkedin.com/in/seansmithworks • seansmithdesign.com
A designer who builds. Sixteen years in product design. From founding designer at MileIQ (acq. Microsoft), designing ML-driven experiences, to leading a team of 11 as a player-coach on Outlook Mobile & Mac through 2x+ MAU growth at hundreds-of-millions scale, crafting Copilot, core experiences, and design systems.
Now I'm designing & building with AI every day. I ran the product, design, and build function working with the founder of MileIQ again, taking two fintech concepts from idea to demo-ready. Solo building Brukas, an AI focus coach live on the App Store, Ghostties, an open source multi-agent terminal, AI agent skills, workflows, and more.
Sean Smith Design
Founding / Head of Product Design & Builder
Nov 2025 to Present
Stealth Fintech
Feb to May 2026
- Partnered with the founder of MileIQ on two early-stage fintech concepts, owning product, design, and build. Both idea to demo-ready.
- Designed and shipped in React, Next.js, and Expo, prototyping directly in code and deploying on Vercel, Supabase, and Render.
- Built the AI system behind the work: reusable Claude Code skills, tiered subagents, and orchestration patterns that run parallel builds.
Ghostties
Dec 2025 to Presentghostties.org
- Open source multi-agent terminal for running parallel Claude Code agents. Fork of Ghostty with a workspace sidebar, built-in browser, and MCP/CLI surface. Zig and Swift.
- My daily driver, with early traction from other developers.
Brukas
Dec 2025 to Presentbrukas.app
- AI focus coach, live on the App Store for iOS with Mac coming. Type what you're stuck on; a short conversation pulls you into one focused timer.
- Native Swift over OpenRouter for multi-model experimentation, with Supabase. Original "Warm Clay" design system, prototypes moved straight to production via Claude Code.
Microsoft
Outlook Mac & Mobile
Feb 2021 to Dec 2025. Principal Design Manager & Principal Design Lead
- Led design for Outlook Mobile and Mac through 2x+ MAU growth at hundreds-of-millions scale, spanning AI-powered experiences and core reading workflows across iOS, Android, macOS, and web.
- Drove cross-platform alignment of Copilot experiences across mobile, tablet, Mac, web, and Windows: one product vision, five platforms, different teams, different stacks.
- Owned the Dynamic Action Button as a signature mobile design pattern. Modernized a years-out-of-date mobile design system into a foundation the team could ship from.
- Player-coach across the chapter: hands-on design and prototyping balanced with strategic direction. Drove influence without authority across PM, engineering, and research to align on interaction paradigms and ship polished user interfaces at scale.
- Grew, managed, and mentored a global design team of 11, from early career through principal level.
Microsoft
MileIQ Post-Acquisition, SMB Incubation
Dec 2015 to Jan 2021. Senior Designer to Senior Design Manager
- Led design across SMB and consumer apps including MileIQ, Spend, and Visits. Ran user research and usability studies for evidence-based decisions, identifying product opportunities.
- As Senior Designer, led design for Money in Excel, a personal finance product that pulled banking data via Plaid into smart Excel templates. Met users in the spreadsheet workflow they were already using to budget.
- Supported hiring and growth of the team while balancing hands-on execution with product strategy. Stewarded through post-acquisition integration into Microsoft.
Mobile Data Labs (MileIQ)
Founding Designer
Jun 2015 to Dec 2015
- First in-house designer at Mobile Data Labs (MileIQ), working to invent the product vision for the IQ suite (Miles, Visits, Spend, plus a "super-IQ" shell) that turned mundane SMB tasks into ML-driven, suggested-action experiences. Designed novel interaction paradigms for ML-driven product experiences before the category had a name.
- Vision contributed to Microsoft's acquisition of the company in December 2015.
Projects
AI Focus Coach: Solo Builder
Dec 2025 to Present
- AI focus coach for iOS and macOS, live on the App Store since June 2026. Type what you are stuck on; a short conversation pulls you into a single focused timer. Solo product, design, and build.
- Ships design as working, production-quality code. Built in native Swift, OpenRouter (multi-model) + Supabase. Original "Warm Clay" design system. High-fidelity prototypes moved directly to live product using Claude Code.
Ghostty Terminal Fork: Developer Tool
Dec 2025 to Present
- Fork of the open-source Ghostty terminal built to manage many parallel Claude Code agent windows. Adds a multi-agent workspace sidebar, built-in browser for local testing, and an in-progress MCP/CLI task surface. Native macOS, Zig and Swift. Open-source community engagement via GitHub.
Open-Source Skill Extensions
May 2026 to Present
- Open-source extensions for Claude Code authored solo: impeccable-swift, wrap + wrap-continue, design quality, and orchestrator scaffolding pattern.
Contact
sean@seansmithdesign.com
linkedin.com/in/seansmithworks
github.com/seansmithworks
x.com/seansmithworks
seansmithdesign.com
linkedin.com/in/seansmithworks
github.com/seansmithworks
x.com/seansmithworks
seansmithdesign.com
Professional Development
Future London Academy
Executive Programme for Design Leaders ("Design MBA") | 2025-2026
Designer Fund
Design for Business Impact | 2019
Skills
Claude Code (authored)
impeccable-swift, wrap + wrap-continue, orchestrator scaffolding pattern, design quality
Leadership
Player-coach, design leadership, team management, hiring and team building, mentorship, design strategy, design operations, cross-functional partnership, influence without authority, stakeholder management, executive communication
Craft
Product design, interaction design, visual design, UI craftsmanship, design thinking, wireframes, prototyping, high-fidelity prototypes, user research, information architecture, end-to-end product design, onboarding flows, complex workflows, polished user interfaces, design quality, brand and storytelling, attention to detail, creative problem-solving, user empathy
Design Systems
Component libraries, design tokens, cross-platform parity, design system governance, design systems adoption, documentation
AI & Emerging
AI-native UX, AI model experiences, agentic systems, ethical AI experiences, AI-assisted development workflows, agentic workflows, interaction paradigms, generative design, prompt design, human-AI interaction, prototyping with AI, ML-driven product experiences, developer tools, developer tooling
Design Tools
Claude Code, Figma, Paper, Cursor, Codex, v0, Lovable, Remotion, Jitter
Build & Ship
Next.js, React, Swift, Xcode, iOS Simulator, Vercel, Supabase, GitHub, App Store Connect, Linear, PostHog, Expo
Domains
Productivity software, SaaS products, B2B, enterprise/B2B SaaS, fintech, consumer apps, API products, developer tools, mobile (iOS, Android), web, macOS, AI products
Links
seansmithdesign.com
brukas.app
ghostties.org
github.com/.../impeccable-swift
github.com/.../claude-skills
Outlook for iOS (App Store)
MileIQ (App Store)
brukas.app
ghostties.org
github.com/.../impeccable-swift
github.com/.../claude-skills
Outlook for iOS (App Store)
MileIQ (App Store)
Education
Art Institute of California - San Francisco
Graphic Design | 2007-2010
Academy of Art
Graphic Design | 2006-2007