Well, I’ve had a dramatic start to the year.
Normally , the design agency I joined a short eight months ago, unexpectedly closed down in January. Despite running for a decade and working with almost every major tech company, client work slowed down and the founders decided to close up shop.

It’s been a sad time. Everyone I worked with there was exceptionally talented and kind. I’m thankful I got to build with them for a short while.

I was already due to start maternity leave in March, so Normally closing just moved that date up a bit sooner. But I managed to fit in a couple of months of work with Deep Mirror before taking my baby break. They’re a London-based startup using machine learning to speed up the drug discovery process, specifically by helping medicinal chemists generate ideas for new molecules.

While I was completely new to the field of drug discovery, many of the design challenges echoed the ones I’d worked on with Elicit – complex research workflows, information-dense interfaces, and making the inner workings of models and their reasoning process visible to users. I’ve learned I like this shape of work; AI/ML tools designed to help scientific researchers who have high standards and need to thoroughly understand how models “reason” and how answers are generated. It’s fertile ground for responsible AI interface design.

My baby break has now started. Only two weeks remain until the new human arrives. A terrifyingly short timeline. Luckily, the excitement of meeting our child and the physical discomfort of late pregnancy outweigh any fears about birth or the impending marathon of sleep deprivation. I’d happily start labour tomorrow if I had any say in the matter.

Given that I won’t be in a 9-5 job for the next six months, I’ve stocked up on new books. Though it’s naïve to think I’ll have the mental capacity to read any of them in between baby feedings and waking up a dozen times a night. But one can hope. I’ve added the full pile to my Antilibrary , but these are the ones I’m most excited about:

I’ve been using a bit of my pre-baby time to build as well. I added a new section to this garden called Smidgeons . These are teeny tiny posts: links with a bit of commentary, research papers I enjoyed, or one-liners that would otherwise go on Bluesky.

I’m also quite deep into a new research project and set of prototypes I’m calling Lodestone. It’s an exploration of how language models might be able to get us to think more, not less. Specifically, I’m interested in whether models can enable me to be a better critical thinker and rigorous writer. Not by writing for me, but by guiding me through a well-defined process of understanding what claims I’m making, what evidence I have to support it, and how my argument structure fits together. I’m tackling it from a few angles, but here’s some previews from the latest prototype:

The code is all open source on GitHub , though it’ll evolve a lot from here. I’ll publish more about it soon, but the ideas still feel early and my thesis is unproven. I’ll wait until it all gels together a bit more.

I should mention that starting this summer I’ll be looking for a new role as a Design Engineer or technically-inclined Product Designer. I’m planning to be on maternity leave until early September, but I’m happy to start talking to companies, teams, and founders now if you think we could be a good fit. Just email hello at maggieappleton.com or DM me on Bluesky .