Source: https://imdennie.com/blog/shipping-apps-solo-with-ai.html Updated: 2026-10-08 [All writing ](https://imdennie.com/blog/) Building in public # I shipped two iOS apps solo — what AI changed about being a designer Dennie Ordynskyi · July 2026 · 8 min read For fourteen years I designed products that other people built. That's the deal, as a product designer: you shape the thing, you hand it over, engineers make it real. I was fine with that deal. Then, in 2025, I broke it — I designed and built an AI-powered nutrition app called [Numi](https://getnumi.app) and put it on the App Store. Alone. In 2026 I did it again with [Tysha](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tysha-baby-sleep-sounds/id6783016339), a white-noise app for new parents. No engineering team. No agency. A designer, an idea, and today's AI tools. This post is the honest version of how that went — what AI genuinely changed about my job, and what it turned out to change not at all. ## Why these two apps Both came from my own life, which I now think is the only sane way to pick a solo project. Numi exists because I wanted to track what I ate without the misery of manual food logging — search the database, weigh the portion, give up by Thursday. The design thesis was simple: **point your camera at the plate, and the app does the rest** — calories, macros, micronutrients, plus context-aware guidance it builds up over time. Tysha exists because of the 3 a.m. shift with a baby. Every white-noise app I tried had looping audio that clicked, ads (ads! at 3 a.m.!), or needed an account and a connection. So: real-time generated white, pink and brown noise, fully offline, no accounts, one-handed. The entire product is designed around a person holding an infant in the dark. ## What AI actually changed ### The prototype became the product My old workflow: mockups → clickable prototype → specs → wait → review builds → polish what survived. The prototype was a promise, not a product. With AI-assisted coding tools, that gap collapsed. I could design a flow in the morning and hold a working version on my phone in the evening. Not a simulation of the feature — the feature. ### Iteration got absurdly cheap When changing a real, running app costs minutes instead of a sprint, you stop guessing. Numi's photo-logging flow went through many working versions before launch — versions I could actually cook dinner with, not click through in a design tool. Some ideas I was sure about died in an evening of real use. That kind of learning used to cost weeks of someone else's time, so it rarely happened. ### The design tool changed shape I still design screens, but a growing share of "designing" now happens in the working product itself: adjusting motion, spacing, haptics, the feel of things — details that never survive the translation from mockup to build. For the first time in my career, what shipped is exactly what I designed, because there was no translation step. ## What AI didn't change This is the part the hype skips, and it's where fourteen years of design earned its keep: - **Knowing what to build.** AI will happily build the wrong thing faster. Numi isn't "an AI calorie app" — it's a position against the misery of manual logging. Tysha isn't "a sound app" — it's one-handed, offline, instant, because that's what 3 a.m. actually requires. Those decisions are the product. No tool made them. - **Taste and editing.** AI output — code or UI — trends toward the average of everything it's seen. Every screen in both apps had a generic version first. The job was saying no to it, over and over. - **The last 20%.** App Store review, edge cases, empty states, what happens when the camera sees a plate that's half in shadow. Shipping is still shipping. It's just that one person can now afford to do all of it. ## What this means if you're a designer I don't think every designer needs to become a founder. I do think the ground has moved under our role, in a direction that favors us: - **Designers are the best-positioned people in tech right now.** We've always known what to build and how it should feel; building was the locked door. The door is open. - **A shipped side project is the new portfolio piece.** Hiring teams now routinely ask for evidence of AI fluency. One live product answers every version of that question — it proves product thinking, craft, technical fluency and follow-through in a single link. - **Start smaller than feels impressive.** Tysha is a "small" app and it taught me as much as products with teams behind them. Pick a problem from your own week, scope it to one core loop, and take it all the way to shipped. All the way — the learning is disproportionately in the last mile. **The one-line takeaway:** AI didn't replace the designer. It removed the excuse that a designer can't ship. Fourteen years in, that's the biggest change to this job I've ever seen — and it's an upgrade. If you're a designer thinking about building something: my next post breaks down the actual design lessons from working on AI — [Designing AI products: lessons from building Numi](https://imdennie.com/blog/designing-ai-products.html). And if you're starting your design career from zero, start here: [How to become a product designer in 2026](https://imdennie.com/blog/how-to-become-a-product-designer.html). Read next [ AI & design · 7 min read ### Designing AI products: 6 lessons from building an AI nutrition app Read the lessons → ](https://imdennie.com/blog/designing-ai-products.html) [ Careers in design · 9 min read ### How to become a product designer in 2026 — advice from 14 years in Read the guide → ](https://imdennie.com/blog/how-to-become-a-product-designer.html) **Dennie Ordynskyi** is a product designer with 14+ years of experience, currently designing large-scale consumer products at DraftKings. He's also the founder and designer of [Numi](https://getnumi.app) (AI nutrition) and [Tysha](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tysha-baby-sleep-sounds/id6783016339) (baby sleep) on the App Store. More at [imdennie.com](https://imdennie.com/) · [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennieo/).