The End of the Designer–Engineer Divide

In this episode of Design Review, Ryo Lu, Head of Design at Cursor, discusses his background in design, starting from building websites as a child to becoming a design leader at companies like Notion, Stripe, and Asana. Ryo shares his journey of merging design and coding, emphasizing the importance of designers learning to code and engineers incorporating design principles. He details his work at Cursor, focusing on simplifying the user interface and integrating AI agents to streamline the coding process. Ryo also shares his design philosophy, advocating for a systems-first approach that prioritizes core concepts and adaptability over feature bloat, and how AI is changing the design process, allowing designers to sculpt and refine functional prototypes more efficiently.