Matt Hicks — product designer & engineer · fully remote, Tampa (ET) · available

I design thingsthat ship, and buildthe tools I design with.

Three years and 190+ civic websites at Revize, nine Horizon Interactive awards, a smart pool controller I reverse-engineered and wired myself, and an AI-native design workflow I architected from scratch. The gap between the Figma file and the deployed thing is where most design dies. I work in that gap.

government websites shipped: 190+
Horizon Interactive awards: 9
Gold as designer of record: 3×
pool, run by hardware I wired: 1

Selected work

Four studies · two shipped, two concepts

PoolPilot

A smart controller for a dumb pool pump — reverse-engineered protocol, hand-wired hardware, real-time app. It runs the family pool every day.

Shipped · IoT · Full-stack

Product Design, Hardware, Real-Time UI

Read the study

Dr. Dabber

An unsolicited redesign of the companion app for the e-rig I own — heat-reactive glow, strain themes, and a simulated device you can drive live in the browser.

Concept · Interactive prototype

Product Design, Interaction, Motion, Front-End

Read the study

AI1 — Orbital Intelligence

A cinematic concept reveal for SpaceX's orbital AI data-center satellite — real spec sheet, invented mythology, live WebGL starfield.

Concept · Cinematic reveal

Art Direction, Motion / WebGL, 3D, AI Film

Read the study

City of Franklin, Indiana

A full civic rebrand — new logo, palette, type, and website. Most municipal projects design around a brand; Franklin let us redefine it.

Shipped · Brand identity

Brand Identity, Logo, Color System, Typography

Read the study

The practice

Revize · 2023 — now · newest first

Three years at Revize and 190+ government websites: one Figma design system, one 399-item accessibility checklist, every site checked against WCAG 2.1 before it ships. Six recent approvals, and the systems underneath them.

How I work

AI-native, honestly

The tools

Claude Code, MCP servers, and Figma AI, wired into one workflow I architected myself. I build the systems rather than prompt at them.

The gap

I design in Figma with variables, tokens, and modes, and I ship in Next.js and TypeScript. The distance between the file and the deployed thing is where most design dies. That distance is my job.

The proof

This site is an artifact of the workflow: designed in my own Figma system, built with Claude Code. The AI-generated media here is ambiance. The client screenshots are real work.

See the full workflow

About

Tampa, FL · remote

I'm Matt, a product designer in Tampa who also builds.

Three years and 190+ government websites at Revize taught me to design at volume without losing rigor: one design system, a 399-item accessibility checklist, and nine Horizon Interactive awards along the way.

PoolPilot runs my family's pool on hardware I wired and a protocol I reverse-engineered. This site is Next.js I wrote myself. AI is the newest tool in the gap between design and shipping, and I architected my own workflow around Claude Code, MCP, and Figma AI. Systems I built, not shortcuts I take.

Horizon Interactive Awards · designer of record

2024GoldCity of Golden, CO
2025GoldCity of Waukesha, WI
2025GoldCity of Gardner, KS
2025Best in CategoryCity of St. George, UT
2025SilverIosco-Arenac District Library, MI

Plus 4 team wins: Pasco County, FL (Gold) · City of Conroe, TX (Silver) · Vineyard, UT (Silver) · Downtown Duluth, GA (Best in Category)

Let's make something that ships.

Open to full-time product design roles. Fully remote, based in the Tampa area (Eastern Time). Email is fastest, and I read everything.

mattghicks@gmail.com