# Monika Pawlak

> Product designer for AI, based in Berlin. I’ve been doing it for 5+ years, at the AI teams at Miro, McKinsey and Google X. For AI products, from zero to one, to one to many.

## Content formats
- HTML: every page at `https://monika.fyi/{path}`
- Markdown: the same page at `/{path}.md` (the home page at `/index.md`)
- Everything in one file: https://monika.fyi/llms-full.txt
- Sitemap: https://monika.fyi/sitemap.xml

## Pages

- [Work](https://monika.fyi/): Product designer in Berlin, making AI more actionable, meaningful, and trustworthy. Work at Miro, McKinsey and Google X.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/index.md
- [About](https://monika.fyi/approach): How Monika Pawlak works: thinking by building, product DNA before features, and designing for time to verify.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/approach.md
- [Writing](https://monika.fyi/writing): Essays on designing for AI, written from the work.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/writing.md
- [Ideas](https://monika.fyi/ideas): Short notes and a few essays on designing for AI, by Monika Pawlak.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/ideas.md

## Case studies

- [Miro AI](https://monika.fyi/work/miro) — Senior Product Designer, Miro, 2026–current: AI moved ideation and planning into single-player tools. Individuals got faster, but teams still had to review, discuss and align, and they kept bringing that work back to Miro: use through MCP nearly doubled in one quarter. I joined Miro to help the AI team further shape its AI vision, around one design question: how might AI behave like a collaborator on a multiplayer canvas? My role was defining what that means in practice.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/work/miro.md
- [Lilli](https://monika.fyi/work/lilli) — Senior Product Designer, McKinsey & Company, 2023–2026: Lilli is McKinsey’s internal generative AI chat, built to help consultants quickly search and synthesize knowledge using natural language. I lead user research and design for Lilli’s core agentic experiences, with a focus on improving response quality, and enabling more and more complex repeatable workflows.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/work/lilli.md
- [Google Moonshots](https://monika.fyi/work/moonshots) — Founding designer, X, the moonshot factory, 2020–2023: Google X is Alphabet’s Moonshot Factory that creates radical technologies to help solve some of the world’s hardest problems. I was a sole designer for a portfolio of early-stage projects developing state-of-the-art AI models for climate.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/work/moonshots.md

## Writing

- [The canvas is the prompt](https://monika.fyi/writing/canvas-is-the-prompt) — 2026-10-28: A year of asking what AI in Miro would look like if it were built from the canvas rather than borrowed from a chat app, and the four experiments that answered it.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/writing/canvas-is-the-prompt.md
- [From vibe-coded prototypes to how we work](https://monika.fyi/writing/vibe-coded-prototypes) — 2026-10-26: What changes for a design team when building gets cheap, and four habits that helped us turn prototypes into decisions, specs and shipped product.
  - Markdown: https://monika.fyi/writing/vibe-coded-prototypes.md

## Experience

- **Miro** — Senior Product Designer, 2026–current: I have been leading design in the AI stream for Miro, used by 100+M. I designed Intelligent Canvas 2.0, the experience shown in the Canvas26 demo: voice mode, the agentic Sidekick, and AI cursors for Miro and MCP.
- **McKinsey & Company** — Senior Product Designer, 2023–2026: I led research and design for Lilli’s agent experience, from reusable Agents to clearer sources behind each answer. Agent users came back 33% more often, and testing with 100+ users taught me that trust comes from showing the work, not from a better answer alone.
- **X, the moonshot factory** — Founding designer, 2020–2023: I was the only designer across five early-stage climate AI teams at X, shaping product direction with founders and building the first product versions. Those bets brought in $12M+ in funding and revenue, and I learned how quickly a concept has to become real to be worth anything.
- **AECOM, Eyrich-Hertweck, Gewers-Pudewill** — Architect, 2017–2021: I designed buildings and spaces before moving into product.

## Education

- M.Sc. and B.Sc. Architecture, TU Berlin
- Human-Computer Interaction, Georgia Tech

Languages: Polish, English, German.

## Contact

- Email: hi@monika.fyi
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monpawlak/