Making things with intention,
not just attention.
Shakira Yanti
Lead Product Designer
What's currently living in my headphones
I've spent over the last decade learning that good design is mostly listening. I started in consulting at EY, moved into consumer gaming at Medal, then AI tooling at Kaedim, and now I lead design for GenAI products at VoyceMe. Different industries, same lesson: the work gets better when you slow down enough to actually understand the people using it.
Right now I'm deep in generative AI, designing how millions of people create stories, characters, and worlds with tools that didn't exist years ago. It's messy, fast, and genuinely new, which means I'm wrong a lot and learning constantly. I like it that way. The moment I think I've got something figured out is usually the moment I've stopped paying attention.
I care a lot about the small things, the wording on an empty state, the weight of a button press, the rhythm of a flow. Not because polish is the point, but because those details are where trust gets built. I want the people I work with, teammates and users, to feel like someone actually thought about them. That's the part I'm still trying to get right, every project.
Beyond the screen: bikes, food, places, and everything in between.
How I think
about my work
01
Sketch ugly, decide fast
Pretty mockups slow teams down. I'd rather make ten rough flows in a day and kill nine of them than spend a week protecting one beautiful idea.
02
Designers should write more
Component docs, decision logs, handoff notes, change rationales. Writing is how design scales beyond one person's head.
03
Tokens over taste
My personal taste isn't a design system. Tokens, rules, and audited components are what let a product feel coherent when ten people are touching it.
04
Defaults are decisions
The empty state, the placeholder copy, the unsorted list order. These aren't details. These are what users meet first, and they're almost always under-designed.
05
AI in the loop, not in the driver's seat
I use generative tools daily. They're great at first drafts, terrible at final judgment. The interesting work is still mine to do.
06
Question the new shiny thing
Every quarter there's a tool, a trend, a methodology promising to change everything. Most don't. The work that ages well comes from fundamentals, not fashion.
Curious about my work?
Find me on LinkedIn
Always up for a conversation about design, AI, or what you're working on.
