AI-Native Design Engineer

Mike Chaves

I design and build product systems for workflows where software, automation, and human judgment have to work together.

My work sits between product design, front-end engineering, AI workflow design, and operational tooling. I am strongest in ambiguous environments that require both systems thinking and hands-on execution.

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Mike Chaves presenting at the Adobe Experiential Horizons Symposium
Public practice / 2023-2025Design systems in public
Projects indexed
11
Reviewed dossiers
11
Base
Pacifica, California
Operating loop
Frame / Build / Measure / Calibrate

Operating model

How I turn ambiguity into a usable system

One working loop across product strategy, interaction design, implementation, and evaluation.

  1. 01

    Frame the workflow

    Map the people, decisions, handoffs, constraints, and failure modes before committing to an interface.

  2. 02

    Build the system

    Move between product design and implementation to turn ambiguous requirements into an operable product surface.

  3. 03

    Instrument the work

    Make system behavior, human review, disagreement, and outcomes visible enough to evaluate and improve.

  4. 04

    Calibrate the loop

    Use evidence from real use to refine automation, interfaces, guardrails, and the division of human and machine work.

Selected evidence

Proof across systems, operations, and access

Open signal index
AF-01AI product systems / Intent to action

Wizzo

Designed and built an AI mentor product system connecting chat, work context, goals, and follow-up to actionable quests.

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AF-02Game UX / Creator systems

Playfold

Built an AI-assisted concept-to-play system connecting creator input, generated browser games, discovery, rankings, and direct play.

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AF-03Voice interaction / Accessibility

SpeakEasy

Designed a voice-controlled mixed reality system for users with low muscle tone, grounding emerging interaction in access needs.

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OPS-01Production / Evaluation / Prototypes

Confidential professional experience

High-level employment evidence preserves role, delivery status, and capability coverage while withholding internal interfaces, data, methods, and metrics.

Inspect evidence

Current focus

Where the work compounds

The recurring system problems behind the projects, not a list of disconnected tools.

  • 01AI-assisted workflows
  • 02Human-in-the-loop systems
  • 03Product and design engineering
  • 04Internal tools and operational UX
  • 05Moderation and QA calibration
  • 06Creator workflows
  • 07Accessibility-focused interaction
  • 08XR, voice UI, and emerging interfaces
  • 09LLM evaluation, reasoning validation, and training data
  • 10Model evaluation, expert annotation, and prompt engineering

Professional evidence

Selected professional experience

Some professional work was created inside confidential company environments, while other contributions may be described only through employer-approved public language. These summaries preserve role, scope, delivery status, and relevant capabilities without exposing internal interfaces, datasets, customers, methods, or metrics.

Confidential employment evidence

Astrocade

UGC Engineer, Temporary Employment / November 2025 - April 2026

Production AI game-quality operations

Supported production quality and publishing operations for an AI-powered game creation platform. Worked across UGC review, human evaluation, QA operations, creator feedback, documentation, and cross-functional issue resolution. Detailed interfaces, policies, datasets, evaluation methods, metrics, and operational procedures are confidential.

Human-in-the-loop AIEvaluation and calibrationModeration and QAOperational UXCreator systems

High-level employment summary only. Internal interfaces, review policies, datasets, metrics, taxonomies, and implementation details are withheld.

Approved public experience

Snorkel AI

Expert Contributor, Contract

Approved public contribution

AI training and evaluation contribution

Authored and validated original, high-difficulty, graduate-level exam-style problems; assessed AI-generated responses; identified reasoning flaws; and refined model outputs. Contributed to proprietary datasets used for LLM fine-tuning, benchmarking, and reinforcement learning.

LLM and model evaluationTraining data and annotationPrompt engineeringEvaluation and calibrationHuman-in-the-loop AI

Employer-approved public contribution summary. Project names, customer identities, model names, prompts, dataset examples, annotation guidelines, evaluation rubrics, internal systems, and performance metrics are withheld.

Confidential employment evidence

Ford Motor Company

Software Engineer II, Unity, Contract / October 2021 - March 2022

Production manufacturing system

Developed a production Unity3D and WebGL system for manufacturing time studies, operational analytics, and stakeholder review. Translated complex manufacturing workflows into interactive tooling used in production environments. Specific interfaces, factory data, plant details, implementation methods, and unapproved metrics are confidential.

Workflow designOperational UXDesign engineeringData visualizationInternal tools

Production system. Internal interfaces, manufacturing data, plant details, implementation methods, and unapproved performance or financial metrics are withheld.

Confidential employment evidence

Starbucks

Lead UX/UI Designer III, Contract / March 2022 - December 2022

Emerging technology prototypes

Designed exploratory mobile, Unity, and speech-to-text prototypes within an emerging technology team. The work tested spatial learning, retail operations, accessibility, and high-noise communication concepts through research, prototyping, and usability evaluation. These were experiments and prototypes, not production systems. Specific interfaces, pilot materials, participant evidence, metrics, and internal project names are confidential.

XR and spatial computingVoice interactionAccessibilityPrototypingOperational UX

Exploratory prototypes, not production deployments. Internal project names, interfaces, pilot materials, participant evidence, metrics, and implementation details are withheld.

Public practice

Research, accessibility, and emerging systems

Selected talks and panels extending project work into shared industry conversations.

Panelist

Futures Summit 2025

The Rise of Synthetic AI Companions: Promise or Peril

Panelist

GatherVerse XREvolve

AR & AI: The Intersection of the Future

Speaker

XR Access Symposium

Voice-Driven Mixed Reality for Accessibility

Host / Presenter

Adobe Experiential Horizons

Industry Roundtable and Demo Showcase

Location and availability

Start with the system you need to make usable

Based in Pacifica, California. Focused on Bay Area and remote product, design engineering, and AI systems roles.

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