I used to design for other people's dreams. Then I decided to build my own… Most

I used to design for other people's dreams. Then I decided to build my own… MostI used to design for other people's dreams. Then I decided to build my own… Most

The network for creativity

Join 1.25M professional creatives like you

Connect with clients, get discovered, and run your business 100% commission-free

Creatives on Contra have earned over $150M and we are just getting started

Back to feedPost

Nohelia Pereira

pro

• May 21

I used to design for other people's dreams. Then I decided to build my own… Most designers spend their careers making other people's visions beautiful. I did too. For years. Then something shifted. I started asking myself: what if I applied everything I know about product design to a problem I actually care about? That question led to two things: 💙 Push Studio is a design & development studio I co-founded in Switzerland to help startups and small businesses access senior-level design and development work without the cost of hiring in-house. https://thepushstudio.com 💚 heeyCoach is an AI-powered platform built for football coaches, created alongside my co-founder and two amazing football coaches to simplify planning, reduce admin work, and streamline coaching operations, giving coaches more time to focus on players and performance. https://heeycoach.com Two very different things. One shared obsession: building things that actually work for real people. If you're a founder, a football/soccer coach, or someone building something, I’ll be sharing what this journey really looks like. I’m always open to a coffee or a mate, so feel free to reach out. ☕️🧉 #ProductDesign #StartupLife #UXDesign #heeyCoach

Arjun Haridas

• Jun 1

Had a fun weekend building Merisole ☀️ Designed with Google Stitch.

I'm a senior product designer working on e-commerce sites every day, so my real question going into this challenge was practical: how easily does Stitch slot into my actual workflow? Could I use it to spin up a polished, client-ready option in a single sitting or even take it all the way to a shippable site? To test that, I asked AI to create a fictional footwear brand, Merisole, and treated it like a real client project from brief to launch.

How Stitch fit into the workflow Before generating anything, I wrote a custom design.md. Type scale, color tokens, spacing rhythm, the editorial tone I wanted Merisole to carry and uploaded it into Stitch as a design system. That single step is what made the rest of the build feel coherent. Every screen Stitch streamed onto the canvas already spoke the brand's language, so I wasn't fighting drift between sections. This is exactly the part of my normal e-com workflow that usually eats hours! Getting AI tools to respect a brand spec was something that Stitch handled cleanly. By the way, the stream on canvas feature was one of the coolest interactions I've seen so far! It was like having a designer design on your screen remotely through AnyDesk!

From there I worked mostly through in-place AI edits: clicking a section, telling Stitch "to add it to another variation," or "add a hover animation on the cards," and getting changes in seconds. The streaming generations meant I was reacting to a real interface taking shape instead of waiting for a static result.

The motion work is where Stitch surprised me most. Native hover states, shader backgrounds, and scroll-linked animation. All authored inside the tool, no handoff to a separate motion app, no code wrestling. Then I exported the build out to Netlify in one step.

New features I leaned on

Custom design.md - design system applied across the whole project (kept every screen on-brand from the first generation)

Streaming generations to canvas (the whole first pass)

In-place AI edits via prompts + point-and-click (most of the polish phase)

Native motion, hover states, and shaders on HTML canvas

Netlify export (final deploy)

Feedback on the platform Coming at this from a daily e-com design seat: Stitch genuinely shortens the distance between brief and client-ready. The design.md - design system flow is the underrated hero, uploading a brand spec once and having Stitch honor it across every streamed generation is the closest I've felt to "AI that respects a brand." The streaming canvas is amazing to say the least! It collapses the "describe - wait - judge - re-prompt" loop into something closer to direct manipulation. In-place edits felt the most like real design work. I stopped writing long prompts and just pointed at things. Two things I'd love next: An option to tweak elements without having to prompt it. And a way to save in-place edit "recipes" so I can reapply a vibe across sections without re-describing it.

Stitch didn't feel like an AI tool I was wrangling. It felt like a canvas that happened to understand what I meant. Merisole came together in a single sitting because of that, and I'm walking away convinced Stitch has a real place in how I'll pitch and build e-commerce work going forward.

Check it out:

Live site (really fun to click around): https://merisole.netlify.app

Stitch project: https://stitch.withgoogle.com/projects/834230787052196219

Stitch stitchchallenge Product Design Graphic Design UI Design Google Labs

Sharon Olusanya

• Jun 1

Amazing!

Dipal Patel

• Jun 1

What actually sells a product? 🤔

I've seen stunning landing pages with zero conversions. And ugly products with thousands of users.

So which one really matters?

→ A beautiful landing page gets you in the door → A great product keeps people inside

But here's the real question — If you had to pick just ONE to nail first…

🎨 Landing Page — first impression is everything 💡 Product — if it's good, word spreads anyway

Vote below 👇 and tell me why in the comments. Curious what builders actually think.

#WebDesign #ProductDesign #Founders #NoCode #Freelancing #BuildInPublic

2 voted

33%

4 voted

67%

6 votes

Closed

En Zuo

pro

• Jun 2

Great

Mauricio Pontual

pro

• Jun 1

Adidas "Grown Underground" — Spec Product Design & Campaign

Personal study exploring AI as a product design tool. A Superstar made from zero — texture, color and material conceived entirely through AI, then directed into a full campaign. No physical shoe existed. Shot like it already did.