Building First Culture

This tweet is making its rounds online. Here’s a perspective as a designer (and a technologist):

In 2017, I spoke about the rise of no-code and low-code. I also predicted that we’d soon see “no-design” and “low-design” becoming mainstream. From a neuroscience lens, visual thinking often triumphs verbal thinking. A picture speaks a thousand words. A prototype? A million. So yes, show-and-tell is culturally more powerful than write-and-tell. And I say this as someone who deeply values writing for thinking.

That said, building-first cultures come with a hidden cost.

Thinking is faster than doing. Vibe-coding or vibe-designing means you are already doing. And doing, especially without clear fundamentals, is heavy cognitive and creative work. When you don’t know what to build or how to steer, iterating endlessly becomes expensive - emotionally, mentally, and operationally. You spend more time scrapping than shipping.

Take tools like Replit, Cursor, or Bolt. They let you vibe-code, but if you don’t understand what the code does, you’re not clarifying. You’re compounding confusion. The same goes for AI-generated design. Prompting a visual is easy. Evolving it with intent is not, unless you understand the core design principles. Without that, you’re just circling with half-baked inputs and shallow outputs.

I’ve seen this play out even with grayscale wireframes. I share them to show direction, but stakeholders sometimes interpret them as final intent. Without a shared culture of directional thinking, vibe-coding doesn’t land. It misleads.

So while I’m all for moving toward visual and build-driven cultures, let’s not forget: clarity still precedes creativity. And thinking, when done well, saves you from cycles of avoidable doing.

That’s my two cents.