I like turning complex ideas into delightful products. 

I'm an AI native product designer who likes to build. I'm happiest getting my hands dirty in the work.

Comfortable navigating ambiguity, evolving strategy, and large-scale transformation. I design for how people actually work, and today that means working alongside AI.

I started in fine art and illustration. Over the next decade I turned complex enterprise systems into things people actually want to use, and taught myself to ship software end to end along the way.

For the last few years I led design at FactSet, shaping the human-AI interaction models now used by tens of thousands of professionals. AI isn't simply a feature, it's the core interaction model: designing for ambiguity and outputs users can't fully predict, while maintaining a coherent experience.

The work I'm proudest of is the hands-on part. I design with current AI tooling, prototyping in real code to validate an interaction model in a matter of hours, instead of months.

Credit where it's due. Almost nothing here shipped alone. I work best as a partner inside a strong team, and this site reflects projects I've had the privilege to work on with very talented teams. 

If you’d like to connect, feel free to email me: john@johnmanicke.com

I've had some pretty good clients.