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.

Claude Code and Codex are open most days.

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.

Selected work

Protected case study

Survival & Flourishing

Grant-allocation tools that keep expert judgment in human hands.

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Protected work

Alpha School

Research-led student tools designed and shipped into schools across the US.

Email for access

Released redesign

PlanetPlay

A clearer game marketplace connecting purchases to environmental impact.

Visit PlanetPlay

Public case study

Options Trading App

Product strategy and design for a guided options-learning and trade-idea app.

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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

AE Alignment Research

Showcasing alignment research papers our client work funds

Experience

AE Studio

Head of Design

2021-now

I lead designers and product managers through hiring, mentorship, and performance management. I have also worked hands-on across 40+ client engagements in AI, blockchain, finance, alignment and safety, education, healthcare, and other complex domains.

My role changes with the problem. I set product and design direction, conduct research, prototype in code, build systems for teams and agents, and stay through implementation and QA.

Head of Design. People manager. Hands-on product partner across 40+ engagements.

Investor's Business Daily

UX Design Manager

2019-2021

Designed the primary website and trading tools for tens of thousands of subscribers. Led a separate redesign of IBD's main purchase flow that improved conversion by 10%. Took a new options-trading product from customer research through engineering-ready delivery, though it did not ship before I left.

The work spanned product management, product design, research, prototyping, design systems, and developer handoff.

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 across product direction and code.

I move between product direction and working code. I can go from a research session to opening the repo and trying the interaction the same day. That is usually faster than arguing about a mockup.

I give each project its own memory: skills, guidelines, examples, and a design.md file that says what good looks like and what we refuse to ship. That keeps the agents from starting from zero every time.

I still do the parts that require judgment: talking to people, deciding what matters, making tradeoffs, and knowing when a model is confidently wrong. I use local models through LM Studio when I want a second opinion. I am not trying to automate the role. I am trying to stay close to more of the work.