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Personal · Embracing AI

I built this site with AI. The judgment stayed mine.

The interesting story isn't that AI made a portfolio. It's how I worked with it, the same way I'd want a learner to: as a fast collaborator that amplifies human judgment instead of replacing it.

  • AI Collaboration
  • Instructional Design Thinking
  • UX Decisions
  • Content Strategy
  • Visual Design
  • HTML/CSS/JS
RoleDesigner & director
CollaboratorAI (Claude)
Built withHTML · CSS · JS
Year2026

01 The challenge

I wanted a portfolio that felt unmistakably mine, and I was wary of the look that gives AI away: generic layouts, hollow polish, personality sanded off. The real challenge was never building the pages. It was staying in the driver's seat the whole way.

02 My thesis

AI is a tool, not the teacher. I treated it as a tireless collaborator for drafting and iteration, and I kept every decision that actually shapes the experience: the information architecture, the voice, the visual identity, and above all what to cut.

03 How it actually went

Six moves from blank page to the site you're reading.

  1. 01

    Start from values

    I named who I am and what I believe first, so every later decision had something true to measure against.

  2. 02

    Explore, then choose

    AI generated three visual directions in an afternoon. I picked lavender with a single highlight and rejected the rest. Speed of options, human taste on the pick.

  3. 03

    Fix the architecture

    The first draft was one long scroll. I split it into Home, Work, About, and Contact to lower cognitive load and let each page do one job.

  4. 04

    Cut the AI tells

    I audited the draft with a designer's eye and removed the giveaways: badge pills, a decorative cursor animation, em-dashes, and generic icon cards.

  5. 05

    Reframe the work

    I reorganized projects around capabilities instead of industries, and rebuilt case studies to show thinking, not just output.

  6. 06

    Make it human

    One intentional interaction, my own voice throughout, and accessibility treated as the baseline rather than a finishing touch.

04 Where I overruled the AI

The decisions that kept this site mine.

  • AI proposed

    A cursor-reactive grid animation across the hero.

    My call

    Cut it. Delight should mean something. I kept one heart that reveals a principle.

  • AI proposed

    Value cards with emoji icons and hover lifts.

    My call

    An editorial belief list instead. Less template, more voice.

  • AI proposed

    Leading the homepage with Harvard in the stats.

    My call

    Lead with human impact and my point of view. Credentials support, they don't headline.

  • AI proposed

    Polished, em-dash-heavy marketing prose.

    My call

    Rewrote it in my plain, first-person voice.

  • AI proposed

    Filtering my work by industry.

    My call

    Filter by capability. The thinking travels further than the subject matter.

  • AI proposed

    A serif, academic first draft.

    My call

    No serifs, soft lavender, casual pastel highlights. The aesthetic had to feel like me.

05 The outcome

1site that sounds like me
4+design iterations
0templates used
A11yaccessible by default

06 Reflection

What I'd carry forward

AI didn't replace my judgment. It shortened the distance between an idea and seeing it on the screen. Every decision that mattered was still mine to make, and that's exactly the relationship I want learners to have with these tools: in charge, curious, and accountable for the call.

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