{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"State of Play","title":"How to Use AI Without Losing Your Craft: George Hastings","html":"<iframe width=\"100%\" height=\"180\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless src=\"https://share.transistor.fm/e/8800f250\"></iframe>","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":2490,"description":"George Hastings is the solo founder of Unicorn Studio, the no-code tool that turned WebGL and shaders into something designers can touch and play with. \nBut my favorite thing about George is that he built it alone, with no VC money, after years at IDEO and AREA17.\nThis conversation goes deep into deterministic chisels vs stochastic AI design and his advice to designers who want to build their own tools.\nGet the UX Tools Newsletter (written by me)\nJoin 100,000+ designers for weekly insights on creative software and the people shaping it: https://uxtools.co\nCHAPTERS:\n0:00 — Cold open and intro\n1:39 — The blank page and building your own inspiration\n4:48 — Making things vs building products\n6:15 — Falling in love with code: AREA17, CodePen, and the browser\n8:12 — Open canvas tools and the tension with code\n9:06 — Reverse engineering the happy accident\n11:02 — Knowing when it's done\n12:12 — A tool or a way of thinking?\n13:46 — The chisel vs stochastic design\n16:50 — Building at 90% agentic: you're the boss, check the work\n18:37 — Why AI struggles with shaders\n20:24 — An agent inside the walled garden\n21:35 — Charging money and the long closed beta\n22:37 — The pixel game, Khroma, and getting the building bug\n25:47 — Solo, no VC: \"I'm really just trying to be an artist\"\n26:58 — Advice for designer-builders: solve a sexy problem\n28:03 — Selling the workflow, not the outputs\n30:15 — Soul, special sauce, and letting the shaders go\n32:47 — OpenClaw, MCP, and agents using your tool\n37:19 — The controlled agent rollout\n38:22 — Orchestrators and mourning the old workflow\n40:51 — Outro: go play with it\nLINKS:\nUnicorn Studio: https://unicorn.studio\nGeorge Hastings on X: https://x.com/soulegit\nFOLLOW ME:\nNewsletter: https://uxtools.co\nX / Twitter: https://x.com/designertom\nLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/tommygeoco","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/Q4goNjMCyLVJblsVd-hc65Y9xpTGIkbjq5L00Huluhg/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9kZTM4/NTdjYjhlYmI5NzU0/YjRlNDNkMjFiNDgy/NTRhNi5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}