I’ve worked as a UX designer for emerging tech for more than 10 years. I’ve been fortunate to work on many creative products, from 3D printing to VR and games. Unfortunately, I’ve also seen how the incentives of the tech industry lead to consumer technologies made to extract our attention and lock us in to a corporate platform.

AI is different. I think the best thing about AI is that it has created a turning point where anyone can build technology for themselves. Finally we can make personal personal computing and free our attention from misaligned algorithms and the notifications nudging us to use features we don’t want.

This summer, I’m replacing all my daily consumer apps and devices with self-built versions, and will use and iterate on them over several months. Many will be exceedingly minimal, since I only need to include features that I use. Some will have unusual forms or materials, since I seek to get away from the industrial utility of plastic and metal, and craft forms are more personal and malleable. I will incorporate AI with intention and low distraction. I will document extensively both as an act of self-reflection and to bridge the communities of open-source and DIY.

This is a research project to explore my own mental space and express it with the aid of computing. It’s also a rebellion against a tech culture that espouses domination and scale.

My plan is simple. Whenever I find myself frustrated with doing a computer thing and can imagine it better, I’ll build myself a little app that does exactly what I want, and maybe add a bit of a spin for experimentation. I’ve already made a few. With Claude Code, it’s possible to make a little personal app in less than a day, and that’s exactly the point. It is sometimes faster to build the thing you want rather than searching online and installing different apps from the App Store.

I’ve got a list of ideas but I’m trying not to plan so much. Build in the moment and don’t extrapolate. So far I’m going to keep my Mac and iPhone since I already own those, but I do want to try more open source hardware and seeing how much that can handle.

Consumer desktop 3D printing has finally become mainstream. I've met a 73-year old woman who owns a 3D printer and dads printing toys with their kids. There are plenty of amazing designs out there. But browsing for them sucks up time and creative energy. I just want that calm sense of organization you feel when walking into a Muji store. There are some things a marketplace will never achieve.

So I finally built it. First version alpha link: yuniku-gamma.vercel.app.

I've made 8 designs so far. Pick an object, adjust a few parameters, and download the 3D file. No infinite scroll, no likes, no tags-of-tags.

I made the whole thing with Claude Code, including all the 3D modeling. I never opened a CAD program. Sometimes Claude would get a design almost right away. Sometimes I would have to guide it step by step. Each design is 1 page of code, it's amazing how concisely it captures so much variation. The stack is plain functional CAD primitives composed in JavaScript, which turns out to be a beautiful way to think about objects. Each design is around one page of code, and it's amazing how concisely that captures so much variation.

Physical objects as code has been quietly enlightening on its own. It takes 1-2 hours to make a parametric design. I spend time thinking about when to add more parameters or when to split off a new design. I also wonder if the variation of household objects is more finite than it first seems. How many parametric designs would I need to create to achieve the feeling of a whole catalog?

A library of a few dozen products seems very doable. Printing, testing, refining takes longer. I built most of this across 3 days. A bit of a giddy sprint because it was so easy to make designs.

Now the real test is whether I'll use these things myself. I'm hoping a few friends will join in and test prints too — if you have a printer and want to try one, send me a note.

Even for apps I use regularly, there is no interface where I do not have to search to do the thing I want. The apps are always updating. The familiar button I have pressed for years is suddenly somewhere else entirely. There is ever more clutter of new features, on surfaces where I only use 10% of the current features.

I do not need more screen time. And yet every software experience seems to be designed to demand my time and my eyes.

I also don’t want to talk to the computer. At times it would be useful…when I’m driving, or cooking…the computer should be able to deliver on straightforward requests. But the car dash doesn’t see the text message for changing the meetup location. The Echo doesn’t know the recipe I’ve loaded on my phone. And they talk too much…paragraphs when I expect 10 words.

I love taking a walk without my phone. But then I want to take a photo of the clouds overlooking the ridge. I love drawing in my sketchbook. But then I want to undo that stray mark. I love seeing my friends in person. But many of them live thousands of miles away.

Technology eagerly shouts, “I am here for all of those needs!” Yet the experience is unsatisfying. A meal delivered that is too many empty calories.

Notifications notifications notifications. I’ve paid thousands of dollars for pieces of aluminum and glass that seem entirely focused on delivering notifications that I don’t care about. I turn all of them off. But then I miss my messages. How do I just get the messages. So many different settings. Yet impossible to achieve this simplest of intents.

I’m scrolling again. Why? I could be doing anything else. But I want to know what’s going on in the world. What are other people doing? I scroll. This video is so funny. Look at this cute thing! Wow this new product is impressive. This person is upset. No it’s just rage bait. Here’s a useful post. Bookmark. Now where did I save that to? Oh no I’ve been scrolling for 40 minutes.

I’m logging in to an account for something important. What did I put for these security questions? Mother’s maiden name, high school, pet’s name. But I didn’t put the real answers of course. What imaginary life did I conceive of when creating this account? I made a super secure password for this site. But now I can’t autocomplete it…I have to type it in. So I copy and paste this obscure incantation of characters into Notes, so that I can see it to type in on my device. I shouldn't admit that I do that.

There’s a storm and the power is out. The internet is out. Why do I sit down at my computer and open the browser? What is it that I need to do? Muscle memory that supersedes utility.

See it not as a tool but as a reflecting pane, and we grapple with ourselves. Do we equate our own identity with work? Do we measure ourselves by others? When do we make intentional choices? How freely do we share information? How do we organize the jumbled thoughts in our head? How do we perceive our own identity?

Ask an LLM to do a task and it hurriedly looks outward. How could I build a simple blog? "Here are the top 3 frameworks!" But couldn't you just make me a simple static site generator? "Sure. ~150 lines total, zero dependencies." The AI underestimates its own capability, offering the standard expected response instead of trusting its native fluency to craft bits on the fly.

Don't we do the same? Spending too many cycles on looking to what is out in the world, instead of trusting our own innate abilities to make for ourselves. We've now built this ultimate tool of tools. Now what will we do with it?