Product design & AI | Fintech, GreenTechWellington → Sydney
Designer to designer
I build the systems that make AI reliable.
The work I value most sits between product and engineering, closing the gap where design, code, and systems meet. Same instinct drives the tabletop games I design on the side.
I design and ship my own front-end PRs, in one loop.
I treat design systems as products, judged by whether a non-designer can build with them.
I make them machine-readable for AI agents, and stay honest about where the tools fall short.
Selected work
2026
Vetting installers took a month. Now half a day.
Product designAgentic workflow
Challenge
Vetting was thorough but slow - up to a month across four systems, with a backlog building and vendors left waiting.
Solution
I designed the whole accreditation system around an agentic AI workflow. Vendors are guided through onboarding by email into a structured intake that hands the agent clean data to act on, and an internal admin screen reveals the workflow results and AI recommendations as they land. Role-based permissions meant each admin saw only what their role should.
Role
Product Designer at Brighte. Reframed the brief and owned the design end to end, across every vendor and admin surface.
Impact
Approval to accredited went from 17.5 days to half a day. 208 applications reviewed, 89% form completion, 30+ automated checks per submission.
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2025
Design and code had drifted apart
Design systemsTokens
Challenge
The portal redesign was stuck because design didn't match the build. Designers and developers were describing the same components in different languages.
Solution
I built the token system on top of their real Tailwind codebase, names and scales matched to their conventions, so the thing in Figma and the thing in code were finally the same thing.
Role
Product Designer (freelance). Owned the audit, the token architecture, the component library and the handover.
Impact
The team designed 30-40% faster, and a non-designer marketer could ship on-brand without waiting on design.
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2023
One dashboard, two users who wanted opposite things
Product designDual-sidedData viz
Challenge
One dashboard serving two groups with opposite needs. Planters needed project tools and compliance, funders needed impact they could report on.
Solution
Same data underneath, so I didn't fork the product. I got the information architecture right and surfaced the one source differently for each side.
Role
Product Designer at Trees That Count. Led the redesign end to end: research, strategy, design, delivery.
Impact
Planter task completion went 73% to 96%, and funder engagement lifted 115%.
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2026
Financial lessons don't stick, so I made losing the lesson
Game designSystemsPrint
Challenge
Financial literacy gets taught and doesn't land. It arrives as homework, not as something relevant to your actual life.
Solution
A card game you learn by losing. Take a risk, occasionally get burned, and the consequence does the teaching, no lecturing required.
Role
Solo designer. Concept, mechanics, balance and production, publishing in 2026.
Impact
Over 90% of players who started high-risk shifted to cautious play after a few games.
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What I'm known for
Context engineering
Systems built for machines to read
The decision I'm proudest of: stop treating AI's inconsistent output as the problem and treat it as missing context. Every component spec'd with what an agent must never generate.
Opinion
AI is enablement, not deskilling
AI lets skilled people do things that were too hard before. The risk is real, but it sits with the person, not the tool.
How I work with it
A multi-agent stack, weighted to my gaps
I deliberately weight my stack toward technical agents because my engineering background is lighter, and I separate the thinking tool from the building tool.
Honest about it
I challenge what the AI hands me
These tools favour their own output and will happily agree with you. The moment you stop challenging that is the moment it quietly steers you.
Designer to designer
You've read the whole thing. Now ask the hard ones.
Craft, AI, design systems, the seam with engineering. Ask the brain anything, it answers in Tyren’s own words.
Ask anything, or paste a job description for an honest fit read. Pasted JDs aren't stored.
