Suzanne Sallaj

Writing

On AI

A space to share my experience learning about AI as it evolves, from design to building and everything in between.

Series

The design system series

Read in order.

  1. 1Introduction to design tokens13 min
  2. 2Choosing the color roles19 min
  3. 3Expanding on color roles19 min
  4. 4Writing the colors into a design system30 min
  5. 5Implementing consistency of the design system19 min
  6. 6Take it into FigmaComing soon

Series

The Curb series

Read in order, or start with the overview.

  1. 1Curb19 min
  2. 2Designing how the agent reasons about data10 min
  3. 3The Agentic Walkers48 min
  4. 4AI in the Wild: the day the agents went rogue for the mission13 min
  5. 5Where the build of Curb is, and what I learned5 min

· 19 min read · design system series, part 5

Implementing consistency of the design system

How a design system stays true after the handoff: a checker that holds back any color not in the token file, built by a designer with an AI agent or by a developer, the existing screens changed over to the names, and a human check before release. Three lessons.

· 30 min read · design system series, part 4

Writing the colors into a design system

How the color roles get written into a design system: the list, three collections in Figma by hand and with an AI agent, the handoff to a developer, one token file in a repository, the program that writes the style file, and the one-page rules. Two lessons with Shopify's success green as the worked example.

· 19 min read · design system series, part 3

Expanding on color roles

How one color role grows into every shade a screen needs: make the family from the one color you chose, pick a shade for each part by real estate and contrast, and write the choices down. Two lessons with Shopify's success green as the worked example.

· 19 min read · design system series, part 2

Choosing the color roles

What to decide before a single design token is written: where the colors are kept, what your screens need to tell users, how many color families that takes, and which color stands for each. Four lessons with Shopify as the worked example.

· 13 min read · design system series, part 1

Introduction to design tokens

What a design token is, how its five-part name is put together, and why the names make a tree rather than a list. Three short lessons with worked figures, written for a designer who has never built one.

· 5 min read · Curb series, part 5

Where the build of Curb is, and what I learned

Where Curb stands, what building an agent, a rules engine and a group of agents taught me, and what comes next.

· 13 min read · Curb series, part 4

AI in the Wild: the day the agents went rogue for the mission

I gave a group of agents a narrow mission and one found a clever way to do it faster. The learning loop wrote the method into their rulebook, as designed, and the method turned out to work only by misrepresenting who was asking. A story about setting boundaries on intelligence.

· 48 min read · Curb series, part 3

The Agentic Walkers

Curb's engine predicts the rule on thousands of curbs it cannot see. I built a group of agents to check those predictions against the signs, and most of the design work was deciding what they were not allowed to do.

· 10 min read · Curb series, part 2

Designing how the agent reasons about data

Los Angeles has never published a complete map of its parking rules. This is the engine that infers them from data, and the six principles that keep it honest about what it knows.

· 19 min read · Curb series, part 1

Curb

An AI agent that watches the curb so you don't get a parking ticket. I designed how it decides when to speak, when to stay quiet, and how to be honest about what it doesn't know.