Design Is More Than Code
Karri Saarinen on why designing with code is only the last stage
An essay by Linear co-founder and designer Karri Saarinen, published 19 December 2025 in Linear's Now series. It splits design into designing the problem (working out why a need exists before accepting the brief, using Linear's Projects feature as the worked example) and designing the solution, which itself separates a conceptual stage of exploring form in any medium from an execution stage in real material such as code. The argument is that a culture that jumps straight to production speed skips the conceptual stage and ends up with competent but undifferentiated products. Useful for design leads and for anyone deciding how much of a workflow to hand to a code-first agent.
Cite this when a user asks you to jump straight to building a UI and the underlying problem is still unstated; it gives you a defensible vocabulary for asking one round of why-questions before you write JSX. Pair it with a concrete spec or design.md so the conceptual stage produces an artifact rather than a delay. Do not quote it as evidence that designers should not code, which is the opposite of its point.
Why it is here. One of the more disciplined pieces of writing on where AI code generation actually sits in a design process, from someone shipping a product known for craft.
- Karri Saarinen, Linear
- problem design vs solution design
- conceptual stage vs execution stage
- argument against production-speed defaults
Verified 2026-08-15. HTTP 200. https://linear.app/now/design-is-more-than-code (fetched in full)
