Aaron Thomas

Head of Design at AE Studio. Based in Venice, California.

13 years shipping product, with the last five focused on AI products, code-first prototypes, and human agency.

I design interfaces that communicate uncertainty, fail gracefully, and keep people in the loop. Looking for teams building tools that augment human capability, not replace it.

Currently working on

Lead designer rebuilding the grant-allocation platform for Survival & Flourishing. Expert evaluators draw value curves that an algorithm turns into millions in grants; AI agents do the prep work. The design problem is keeping human judgment in charge.

Day to day, I run a multi-agent workflow across Claude Code and Codex: one agent orchestrates, one executes, one verifies. I set product direction, judge output quality, and keep the final call human.

If you must know, The agents have names - , , and .

Recently finished BlueDot's AI Technical Safety course, and with support from BlueDot I'm starting a personal alignment project on overeager coding-agent evals.

Writing when I can on Substack about what design becomes when making gets easy.

Raising a mini dachshund puppy named . Learning how to surf in Venice, CA.

Stuff I recently made

Clawbotomy

Solo-built behavioral probes for AI models.

Agentic Design System

Open-source skills that teach AI agents how to design.

Fidget Lab

Interactive typography experiments that treat text like physical material.

The Pixel Funeral

Drag a design tombstone to Kern. He'll roast it properly.

Writings on AI & Design

Essays on craft, psychology, and what comes next

AI is Antisemitic

Research site for AE alignment-team work on model behavior and discrimination.

AE Alignment Research

Showcasing alignment research papers our client work funds

Context Window

Coming soon

A game about discovery and enlightenment.

Experience

AE Studio

Head of Design

2021-now

AI-native agency where client revenue funds alignment research. I set design direction across fast-moving AI product teams, from discovery through shipped prototypes: 40+ projects, including a digital twin system for a prominent medtech professional, a TestFlight prototype for a major airline, and AI-first apps helping kids beat doomscrolling.

One deeper cut: Survival & Flourishing Fund moves millions in grants through expert judgment, and the tools evaluators used to express that judgment had not kept up. As lead designer I am rebuilding the grant-allocation platform, where evaluators draw value curves an algorithm turns into allocations and AI agents do the prep work. The rebuild is in active development; the core design problem is keeping human judgment in charge.

40+ AI products shipped. Building agent-assisted design practice.

Investor's Business Daily

UX Design Manager

2019-2021

Designed the primary website and trading tools for tens of thousands of subscribers. Shipped OptionsTrader from 0 to 1 and redesigned checkout for a 10% conversion lift.

IBD was acquired by Dow Jones for $275M in 2021; the flagship products I worked on were part of the company's core subscriber business.

First Capitol Consulting

Senior UX Product Manager

2016-2019

Built automation and data science tools for Affordable Care Act and Equal Pay offerings. This foundational work powers what Trusaic does today.

Tens of thousands served. Architected initial data science platform.

Let's Build LA

UX Design Consultant

2016-2018

Systems architecture and UX consulting for companies large and small.

SPORTalk

Product Designer & Manager

2013-2015

Founding designer and product manager. Built an entire social media system: mobile app and web platform with advertising and on-campus support.

Earmilk

Content Designer/Editor

2013-2015

Edited publications and coordinated releases with partners. Created 400+ stories: exclusives, features, interviews, reviews. Managed team of content writers.

Community

UXPALA

Content Design Director

2020-22

Ran weekly courses on content design and product design for 15-20 mentees.

Hack for LA

Design Lead

2018-20

Home Unite Us to help solve homelessness in LA. Built a public transit app for more accurate LA transit times.

How I Work

I work in Claude Code and Codex daily, usually across multiple workspaces at once, with tight loops between product direction, implementation, and QA.

I run local models like Gemma through LM Studio for utility tasks, quick comparisons, and jobs where I want a different model profile.

Every project gets skills, guidelines, and design.md files. Those living references hold principles, rules, and anti-patterns my AI tools pull from, so quality compounds over time.

I prototype in code on day one, then either bring it back into design tools for refinement or keep validating directly in code if that is the fastest path.