Welcome to Fundament, a weekly product design newsletter where we share actionable tips and insightful stories with the worldwide design community.

The composable software platform for AI-powered organizations

Transport Focus serves as the voice of passengers throughout the UK’s transport network, covering rail, bus, and tram services across England, Wales, and Scotland. As a government-funded watchdog, they deliver critical research, manage customer complaints, and advocate for better service across the national transportation infrastructure. If there’s a BBC news story on transport, you’re guaranteed the team at Transport Focus will have the data to support it.

During a recent holiday, I got the new Peugeot 3008 in the rental car lottery. It features Peugeot’s new Panorama i-Cockpit—a bold dashboard redesign with a beautiful display. But after a week of use, it became clear that the software couldn’t match the impressive hardware.

In this process we never think to ask if abdicating our creative judgment almost completely to the Large Language Model gods is a good idea. It’s like we’re a tribe of primitive Luddites offering up our drudgery in return for a magical oracle that only rewards the loudest acolytes.

I often nostalgically look back at products of the past — the colorful original iMac or the Palm Pilot — and wonder what it would be like if I could use them today. Of course, I can’t. They lack the connectivity, the power, and the software needed.

Generate heat-mapped reports to justify your earliest designs with AI drop off, miss clicks and duration.

Create WCAG-compliant infographics with expert tips on alt text, contrast, and screen reader support. Make your visuals accessible to all.

In the spirit of 12 Factor Apps. The source for this project is public at https://github.com/humanlayer/12-factor-agents, and I welcome your feedback and contributions. Let’s figure this out together!

AI is transforming the way we work — automating production, collapsing handoffs, and enabling non-designers to ship work that once required a full design team. Like it or not, we’re heading into a world where many design tasks will no longer need a designer.