For me, this internship wasn't structured like a typical I've done before. There was no capstone, no preset project, and no hand-holding. I was simply treated as another member of the team, which meant I had to build everything from scratch down to my own Jira board. I had to chase down projects that genuinely interested me, schedule my own stakeholder calls, and define my own deliverables without anyone telling me what "done" looked like. That autonomy forced me to operate as a full product designer, not an intern, and it fundamentally changed how I view my role.

At the same time, I had a front-row seat to the launch of Figma's AI agent making me realize that our value is no longer in how fast we can execute visuals, but in how well we can curate, critique, and shape behavior. AI doesn't replace design thinking; it amplifies it, freeing us to spend less time on manual production and more time on the hard problems: usability, trade-offs, and user psychology.

Together, these two experiences—radical ownership and AI-enabled velocity—taught me that being a product designer today means being a strategic decision-maker who starts with problems, not artifacts, and who takes full responsibility for outcomes, not just outputs.