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Aero Interactive

Solutions

Forward-deployed product design, inside your repo

Forward-deployed product design is a senior designer embedded in a client's repository, tools and cadence who designs and builds the connective layer between research, design and engineering. Aero Interactive works this way for B2B software teams that have adopted AI-assisted development and need that speed to survive the handoffs between functions.

Who it is for

Product leaders at B2B software companies whose teams have adopted AI-assisted development and who have no senior owner for the layer between research, design and engineering.

Every step got faster and the seams got worse

Research, design and engineering each adopted AI and each got faster on its own terms. The cost moved to the handoffs: undocumented decisions, patterns that drifted between tools and prototype code nobody can safely build on. Improving one step without passing understanding to the next can make the next step harder than it was. The seams are where Aero works.

What gets built

The artifacts vary by team. The capability is the same: designing the system that produces the product, with the same rigor as the product itself.

  • A feedback-to-delivery pipeline: customer signal in, agent-drafted tickets and research, a working prototype, human review at each gate
  • Governance rules that agents follow, enforced in the repository
  • A design system built at production speed and made [agent-ready](/solutions/design-system-agent-readiness-audit)
  • The supervision layer for agentic features: see [agentic product design](/solutions/agentic-product-design)

Judgment stays at the gates

The agents do the throughput. A named person decides what gets built, what gets cut and what ships, and every gate in the pipeline records who approved it and why. That is what keeps AI-speed output trustworthy to the team that has to live with it.

The system stays when we leave

You keep a running pipeline, not a slide deck. Pipelines set like concrete: the operating layer is cheap to shape early and expensive to change once every team has built habits around it. That is the reason to start before the next wave of AI tooling lands, not after.

Proof and practice

Aero's own operations run on the same kind of agentic system, in daily production.

Lindsey, Aero's founder, is the designer deployed. Her client work includes NYU, GE, Samsung, Klipsch, Eli Lilly and the U.S. Department of State.

  • Agent-ready design systems

    Agents now build from your design system, and they bring none of your team's context. We engineer and audit systems with machine-readable metadata and explicit anti-patterns, using Figma MCP, Cursor, and Claude, so agents stay on-brand and on-system while your team ships faster.

  • AI-accelerated UX and UI design

    Pixels are commoditized. Brand-fluent, accessible systems aren't. Your team can ship the next screen. Keeping your fiftieth screen on-brand, on-pattern, and on-business-logic is a different problem - design system governance, and it's the discipline most internal teams haven't built yet. Aero pairs 15+ years of system practice with AI for what AI does well: parallel exploration, deep research, system-wide consistency. You get AI speed plus the discipline AI can't generate on its own.

  • AI product strategy

    The fastest teams decide with evidence, not opinions. We instrument products with tools like Pendo and run AI-assisted experimentation, turning real user behavior into a continuous loop of what to build, test, and sharpen next.

Further reading

FAQ

Common questions

What is forward-deployed product design?

Forward-deployed product design is a senior designer working inside a client's repository, tools and cadence, building the connective layer between research, design and engineering instead of handing over screens for someone else to integrate. The term borrows from forward-deployed engineering; the difference is that the pipeline, governance and design system are treated as designed products.

How is forward-deployed product design different from a design agency?

An agency typically delivers artifacts: files, prototypes or a design system package that your team then has to integrate. A forward-deployed designer works in your codebase and your rituals, so integration is the work itself. What you get at the end is a running system in your repository, with your team trained to run it, rather than a handoff that starts a second project.

Why not hire a full-time design lead instead?

Hire one if you can find and afford a senior person who works across design, engineering process and AI tooling. Many teams cannot, or need the operating layer installed before they know what role to hire. A forward-deployed engagement installs and documents that layer so your team runs it, and it often clarifies exactly what the eventual full-time hire should own.

What does a team keep after the engagement?

A working system in its own repository: the pipeline that turns feedback into reviewed prototypes, the governance rules and checks agents follow, the design system at production quality, and the documentation to run all of it. Aero's goal is that the tenth surface your team ships after the engagement holds together as well as the first one shipped during it.

Start before the pipeline sets

Book a 15-minute call. Tell us where work stalls between teams, and we will tell you whether an embedded engagement is the right fix.

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