9-month learnings at Anduril
There’s a version of design work where the hardest decision you make on any given day is whether a button should be filled or outlined. Whether the corner radius feels right. Whether this shade of blue carries enough weight.
I don’t do that work.
At Anduril, I design software that operators use to command and control autonomous vehicles — drones, ground vehicles, maritime systems — in time-critical environments. The people using my interfaces are experts. They know what they’re doing. And if the design doesn’t hold up under operational pressure, there’s not really a “try again” button.
That context shapes everything.
1. Problems are almost never what they look like at first
The problem you’re handed and the problem you need to solve are rarely the same thing.
Our team sits above individual vehicle teams — we’re not designing for one vehicle, we’re designing for all of them, plus the downstream operators who use these systems in the field. That means “the user” is never a monolith. I have to build a real picture of who each of those people are, what they care about, where they conflict, and where their needs diverge. That’s not a UX challenge — it’s almost anthropological.
And so before I ever open Figma, I’m doing the work of figuring out what we’re actually trying to solve. What does the operator actually need in that moment? Where does the mental model break? Which part of this complex system is producing the most cognitive load?
Problem decomposition isn’t a phase of my process. It’s most of the job.
2. User research as the bridge nobody built
One of the stranger things about working at a company like Anduril is that user research can feel foreign. Not because people don’t care — they do — but because the org moves fast, the users are hard to reach, and “let’s go find out” isn’t always the default.
That’s exactly why I push for it.
My team serves multiple vehicle programs plus the operators in the field. Without research, it’s difficult to decide on feature direction. Only listening to one user group’s needs is incorrect; we have to design scalable features for all our different customers. So I’ve gotten comfortable advocating for access, building organic research frameworks that fit into tight timelines, and synthesizing messy, non-uniform data from wildly different user types into something actionable.
The muscle I’ve built here isn’t just “how to run a usability study.” It’s how to make the case for research in an environment that doesn’t always see it coming, and then how to use what you find to actually change what gets built.
3. What I don’t get to do as much
The things that make users feel something — the micro-interactions, the motion, the icon that’s been debated for three meetings because getting it right matters — that’s not the center of gravity at Anduril. We’re optimizing for clarity and correctness under pressure, not for delight or emotional resonance. Those are real constraints, and they make sense for the context.
But I notice the gap.
I can ship a flow that’s well-researched, logically structured, and operationally sound. What I haven’t had as many reps at is the fine-grained, taste-level craft decisions — the ones where the answer isn’t “does it work” but “does it feel right.” Typography debates. Motion curves. The texture of a hover state.
I’m not pretending those things don’t matter to me. They do.
4. Making room for it anyway
So I push where I can.
Within work, I advocate for polish in the places there’s space for it. When a feature has breathing room, I’ll spend it on visual refinement — not because anyone asked, but because I think it’s part of the job, even if it’s not the loudest priority. We are the only designers here; if we don’t sweat the pixels, no one will. I’ve learned to find the moments where craft is possible and not let them slip by.
Outside of work is a different story. I shoot on film. I make travel zines. I dance. I build little experiments just to see what happens — not for production, not for a portfolio, just to play. Some of the most useful design thinking I’ve done has happened when I wasn’t officially doing design at all — serendipitous moments that refine my taste.
There are designers who’ve spent years learning to obsess over the feel of a product. I haven’t experienced that environment yet. What I’ve had instead is the kind of complexity that sharpens other things — research instincts, problem decomp, systems thinking, the ability to move fast and hold a lot of context at once.
I know what I’ve built. I also know what I’m still building.
That’s not a weakness to manage around. It’s just where I am. And I have a hunch about where I want to go next.