I'm a designer who just did this.
My name is Zaye Flowers. I've been designing products for ten years — the injury claim you file at GEICO, the results map you watched on CNN election night, the checkout page at IHG. Big companies, regulated work, the kind of details that break if you get them wrong.
Then I did the thing I'd been telling other people to do for years. I built Before Us — a daily quote app of Black American and Black Diaspora voices, credited and in context — from a sentence in my notes to an app on the App Store. I designed it, scoped it, and built it with AI tooling. No engineering team. No funding.
The six weeks in this cohort are the six decisions that took. Nothing theoretical. I'm walking you down a path I finished walking this year, and I'm doing it from here — Baltimore, where I live and where I'd rather the next thing get built.
Designing products across insurance, media, hospitality and finance
Mentoring designers one to one — where this curriculum came from
Of the designers I mentored landed design roles
Of my own, shipped this year on the exact path you'll take
