Learning the Part I Used to Hand Off: How Building the Systems Made Me a Better Designer
Summary
For fifteen years, Tristin drew the map: designing and prototyping the front end of complex systems at Intel, while engineers and data specialists built the part she used to hand off. Then she went solo, and that part became hers too. In "Learning the Part I Used to Hand Off," she walks through one real project in depth: a home energy system built from scratch on Raspberry Pis, pulling together four systems that each lived in their own separate app, none of which could tell her if her house was doing the right thing right now. Real screens, real failures, and the moment she had to override Tesla's own AI when it started making decisions about her house without asking. Learning that part didn't just mean she could build. It made her a better designer.
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