Asif Aleem

On-demand creative partner for growing teams | Co-Founder & CDO, Brickclay | UI/UX · Web · Brand · Motion, on subscription

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

Shipping was never the hard part. The hard part is knowing when the thing is actually done, and AI has no instinct for that. It'll happily ship the version that demos clean and breaks on the second real input. Taste is mostly the judgment to cut, which is the one thing it can't fake.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@robjama Models get you to a working draft of the hardware fast. What they don't do is make it survive a grandparent pressing the button wrong at 7am. That gap, whether the thing holds up in a real person's hands, is still the whole job. Fun era though.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@waitin4agi_ The models closing the visual sense gap is real. But design sense in a model is how it looks on first render, not how it behaves on the tenth click. The advantage was never the tool anyway. It's whoever tabs through the thing and notices the states nobody generated.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@chapello @tryramp @diegozaks Taste shows up right after the screenshot looks done. The model nails the happy path, then you tab through and nothing has focus, the empty state is missing, contrast fails. That last mile stays human. Which is exactly the hire you're making.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

Everyone can generate a UI now.
Almost nobody checks if it's usable.

The AI draft looks finished.
Then you tab through it and nothing has focus.
The contrast fails.
The buttons are divs.

Speed got cheap this year.
Judgment did not.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

A decade of the editing work lives here, if you want to see what "cut to 3" looks like across brand, web, and product: https://t.co/ipWfPkCioY

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

Spent today doing the one part of design AI can't do for me: deleting.

A screen came in with 14 things fighting for attention.
The generated draft kept all 14. Busy, confident, helped no one.

The job was cutting it to 3.

Generation is free now. Subtraction is the work.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@anshumitasahu Refactoring settings into a sidebar is the kind of change nobody notices when it's right and everybody feels when it's wrong. Quiet work that compounds. Day 76 tired still beats day 1 motivated. Keep showing up.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@Ozama_Eliwa This tracks with enterprise and public sector work too. Consumer buyers move on emotion, institutional buyers move on risk. Name their pain and it reads as calling out their failure. The job shifts from "feel this" to "nobody gets blamed for choosing us."

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@ancaguiux @flowstep_ai @contra The strongest thing here isn't the build, it's the restraint. One job, one screen, one action. Most people bolt on streaks, feeds and notifications and kill the whole point. "Stop scrolling, start doing" only lands because the product actually does that.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@x14kernal Loading, empty, and error states on day 8 puts you ahead of most shipped products. I review AI generated UIs every week and those three are the first things that break. Real users always land in the state the demo never shows. Building that muscle now is the whole game.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

This is the layer I care about most. A look at the product and UI work where we sweat these details: https://t.co/ipWfPkCQew

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

I review AI-generated UIs every week. They break in the same 5 places, every time.

1. Empty states. AI fills every screen with perfect demo data. Real users arrive on day one to nothing: no first run, no guidance, no reason to stay.

2. Error and loading states. The happy path looks flawless. Then the network is slow or the input is wrong, and the screen freezes or quietly lies.

3. Hierarchy. Everything is styled, so nothing leads. Ten elements shouting at one volume reads the same as silence.

4. Real content. Short labels and lorem ipsum hide the truth. Drop in a 40 character name and a long address, then watch the layout buckle.

5. Accessibility. Contrast, focus states, tap targets. The generator skips them because they never show up in a pretty screenshot.

The gap between "looks like a product" and "is a product" is all of this. Closing it is the job now.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

A design day at brickclay in 2026:

AI drafts the screens before standup ends.
Then the real work starts.

We spend most of the day deleting screens, not drawing them.
Arguing which flow earns the user's attention.
Cutting the clever idea that helps no one.

Generating got free.
Judgment got expensive.
That is the job now.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

I just hit a new milestone on @Behance https://t.co/8DfryfSzMC

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

This is the gap. Most of what's shipping documents the current tool surface, stale in a quarter. The durable work is naming the patterns that survive the next model swap, with honest tradeoffs. Same on the design side: the interaction patterns for working with AI outlast any single model. Would read that book.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@ilyamiskov The weekend redesigns nobody asked for are where your real taste shows up. No brief, no deadline, just the itch. Figma still wins for that because the friction is low enough to keep playing. The work you revise for yourself is what moves your craft forward.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@GeorgeLampro20 The interesting part isn't shipping 3, it's that they landed. Anyone can spin up apps in a weekend now, so the scarce skill is picking which ones are worth building and who they're for. Speed is table stakes in 2026, judgment is the edge. What told you these three would stick?

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@alexcooldev Cloning your screens is the easy part now. What he can't clone is why each one exists, or the trust you built getting to 370K users. When shipping the UI costs a weekend, the moat moves to taste and distribution. Clones ship fast and age faster.

[Asif Aleem @asif_aleem]

@borrasque_ @X Hi Kevin. I run a design studio, UI/UX, web, brand, motion. The thing I keep chewing on lately: AI ships the screens in seconds now, so the real job is deciding which screen was worth building at all. Here for the design and build-in-public folks.