HOLD FAST STUDIO

Work

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Working with founders building 0→1 products where hardware, software, and AI meet.

Products that have to work and feel right. Where there's barely a category yet. Where the seams between disciplines actually decide whether the thing ships or dies.

This studio is just me, Kevin Korpi. I embed early, design products instead of decks, and work at 10,000 feet and 10 pixels in the same week. I've been straddling design & product for 25 years from enterprise to startup.

Built for early-stage chaos. Bad at big company process. Two clients at a time.

Book a 30-min intro

kevin@holdfast.studio

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/Now

April 2026

Designing a multi-agent computer-use platform. Agents running real work on their own computers.

Multi-stakeholder workflows for a medical AI platform used by Cedars-Sinai and a growing list of health systems.

Ongoing optimization on an AEO and AI platform that generates landing pages in real time.

Native iOS app for a connected furniture company. Gamifying real-time posture sensing and standing cues. First time I've gotten to design for a chair.

New camera in the rotation: the Hasselblad X2D II. Magical.

The Work

Featured Projects

GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini

GoPro wanted to ship a smaller, more durable Hero: no touchscreen, two buttons, 72×32 pixel two-color screen. The design problem was a full-featured camera UX on 8-bit hardware that a snowboarder in whiteout conditions could operate without looking.I led the UX end to end.

Product Design

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

GoPro Hero 11 Black Mini

GoPro wanted to ship a smaller, more durable Hero: no touchscreen, two buttons, 72×32 pixel two-color screen. The design problem was a full-featured camera UX on 8-bit hardware that a snowboarder in whiteout conditions could operate without looking.I led the UX end to end.

Product Design

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

Moment Pro Camera

Moment was a hardware company that needed a software business. I led that zero to one: a pro camera app built around the thesis that creators wanted real tools, not filters. Manual controls, RAW, focus peaking, zebras, a histogram that didn't lie. SLR feel on a phone screen without making the phone screen feel like an SLR.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

Moment Pro Camera

Moment was a hardware company that needed a software business. I led that zero to one: a pro camera app built around the thesis that creators wanted real tools, not filters. Manual controls, RAW, focus peaking, zebras, a histogram that didn't lie. SLR feel on a phone screen without making the phone screen feel like an SLR.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

Google Fonts Redesign

Redesign of the Google Fonts browse, specimen, and pairing experience. Tens of millions of designers and developers come through every month. The old surface was a grid of cards that hadn't kept up with variable fonts, icon fonts, or non-Latin scripts.

Responsive Web

Product Design

Design Systems

View Case Study

Google Fonts Redesign

Redesign of the Google Fonts browse, specimen, and pairing experience. Tens of millions of designers and developers come through every month. The old surface was a grid of cards that hadn't kept up with variable fonts, icon fonts, or non-Latin scripts.

Responsive Web

Product Design

Design Systems

View Case Study

Connected Action Camera

Before "connected hardware" was a common term, Contour created one of the first action cameras. The problem? The camera had no screen and only three buttons, forcing users to connect to a computer to change any of the settings, a non-starter in the field. The challenge was to solve this by creating one of the first-ever connected camera and mobile app experiences.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

Connected Action Camera

Before "connected hardware" was a common term, Contour created one of the first action cameras. The problem? The camera had no screen and only three buttons, forcing users to connect to a computer to change any of the settings, a non-starter in the field. The challenge was to solve this by creating one of the first-ever connected camera and mobile app experiences.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

View Case Study

Fleet Driver App

Straightaway was Mapbox's bet on a better experience for professional drivers: a turn-by-turn app for delivery fleets, plus the dispatch and planning console behind it. Clients included FedEx, UPS, and USPS.

Shipping/Logistics

Product Design

Mobile

View Case Study

Fleet Driver App

Straightaway was Mapbox's bet on a better experience for professional drivers: a turn-by-turn app for delivery fleets, plus the dispatch and planning console behind it. Clients included FedEx, UPS, and USPS.

Shipping/Logistics

Product Design

Mobile

View Case Study

Google Pixel Watch

Early concept work for the first Pixel Watch, well before it shipped. AI features on the wrist: what helps, what gets in the way, what a screen that small can hold without becoming useless. NDA on the specifics. Enough of the thinking ended up in the product that it's worth listing.

Concept

Wearables

Product Design

View Case Study

Google Pixel Watch

Early concept work for the first Pixel Watch, well before it shipped. AI features on the wrist: what helps, what gets in the way, what a screen that small can hold without becoming useless. NDA on the specifics. Enough of the thinking ended up in the product that it's worth listing.

Concept

Wearables

Product Design

View Case Study

Sai Computer Use Agent

A multi-agent platform where agents do real work on their own computers. Embedded early, designing the surfaces where humans and agents co-operate. Task handoff, inspection, interruption, repair.

The hard part isn't the clicking. It's making agents comprehensible enough that people trust them without babysitting every step. Legibility is the product. If you can't see what it's about to do and why, you can't let it run.

Agentic AI

Product Design

Design Systems

Sai Computer Use Agent

A multi-agent platform where agents do real work on their own computers. Embedded early, designing the surfaces where humans and agents co-operate. Task handoff, inspection, interruption, repair.

The hard part isn't the clicking. It's making agents comprehensible enough that people trust them without babysitting every step. Legibility is the product. If you can't see what it's about to do and why, you can't let it run.

Agentic AI

Product Design

Design Systems

Medical AI Platform

Multi-stakeholder workflows for a medical AI platform used by Cedars-Sinai and a growing list of health systems. Clinicians, ops, and patients all touching the same surface with very different needs and very different tolerances for friction.

Designing the system from the seams out. What a physician sees, what a scheduler sees, what a patient sees, and where the handoffs happen. Healthcare is where soft UX decisions have hard downstream consequences.

Agentic AI

Product Design

Design Systems

Medical AI Platform

Multi-stakeholder workflows for a medical AI platform used by Cedars-Sinai and a growing list of health systems. Clinicians, ops, and patients all touching the same surface with very different needs and very different tolerances for friction.

Designing the system from the seams out. What a physician sees, what a scheduler sees, what a patient sees, and where the handoffs happen. Healthcare is where soft UX decisions have hard downstream consequences.

Agentic AI

Product Design

Design Systems

Connected Posture Sensing App

Branch makes furniture with sensors in them. I designed the native iOS app that makes the sensor data worth having: real-time posture feedback via Airpods, standing cues, gentle streaks that don't guilt you into submission.

First time I've designed for a desk. Ship-shape gamification without the dystopian nudge. Released and in active use.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

Connected Posture Sensing App

Branch makes furniture with sensors in them. I designed the native iOS app that makes the sensor data worth having: real-time posture feedback via Airpods, standing cues, gentle streaks that don't guilt you into submission.

First time I've designed for a desk. Ship-shape gamification without the dystopian nudge. Released and in active use.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

Android Phone Dialer

Staff designer on core Android. Phone and contacts, primarily. Shipped to the better part of a billion devices. Material Design era, when the platform was still figuring out what it wanted to be. Not glamorous. Bread-and-butter OS surfaces used billions of times a day. The kind of design that disappears when it's right.

Product Design

Mobile

Design Systems

Android Phone Dialer

Staff designer on core Android. Phone and contacts, primarily. Shipped to the better part of a billion devices. Material Design era, when the platform was still figuring out what it wanted to be. Not glamorous. Bread-and-butter OS surfaces used billions of times a day. The kind of design that disappears when it's right.

Product Design

Mobile

Design Systems

Conversational AI Platform

I helped design Microsoft's first conversational AI platform, the work that became the Azure Bot Framework. Turn-taking, clarification, disambiguation, graceful failure, memory across turns. A lot of the patterns the industry rediscovered in 2023 were being fought about in that lab a decade earlier.

Product Design

Agentic AI

Design Systems

Conversational AI Platform

I helped design Microsoft's first conversational AI platform, the work that became the Azure Bot Framework. Turn-taking, clarification, disambiguation, graceful failure, memory across turns. A lot of the patterns the industry rediscovered in 2023 were being fought about in that lab a decade earlier.

Product Design

Agentic AI

Design Systems

Kindle Fire Table

On the design team for the original Kindle Fire. Amazon's first tablet, first color e-reader, first pass at a full-device operating system skinned over Android. Hardware and software shipping together on a deadline nobody wanted.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

Kindle Fire Table

On the design team for the original Kindle Fire. Amazon's first tablet, first color e-reader, first pass at a full-device operating system skinned over Android. Hardware and software shipping together on a deadline nobody wanted.

Product Design

Mobile

Hardware/Software

Ads, Analytics, Experimentation

I led design initiatives on some of the company's most complex and highest-revenue tools. AdWords when AdWords was the business. Analytics when Analytics was new. Experimentation surfaces inside Ads. And Google Website Optimizer, a separate 0→1 project: the landing page experimentation framework for the rest of the web.

Product Design

Design Systems

Ads, Analytics, Experimentation

I led design initiatives on some of the company's most complex and highest-revenue tools. AdWords when AdWords was the business. Analytics when Analytics was new. Experimentation surfaces inside Ads. And Google Website Optimizer, a separate 0→1 project: the landing page experimentation framework for the rest of the web.

Product Design

Design Systems

Testimonials

What People Say

"If I were starting a company and needed a kick-ass designer, Kevin would be the first person I’d call. I was especially impressed with how creative and thorough Kevin is in his design work. One of the best designers I’ve worked with at Google."

Director of Product Management, Google

"With a discerning eye for detail and commitment to excellence, Kevin consistently pushes the limits of product development, while simultaneously driving the process forward, unearthing numerous avenues for enhancing team dynamics and business efficacy. Kevin is a valuable asset to the world of product development, and his contributions to GoPro and the field of UX are elevated having worked with him."

"With a discerning eye for detail and commitment to excellence, Kevin consistently pushes the limits of product development, while simultaneously driving the process forward, unearthing numerous avenues for enhancing team dynamics and business efficacy. Kevin is a valuable asset to the world of product development, and his contributions to GoPro and the field of UX are elevated having worked with him."

Senior Principal Designer, Cameras & Hardware, GoPro

"Kevin was a critical asset in the relaunch of Google Fonts. He worked as the lead product designer collaborating with Research, Engineering, and Product under tight deadlines. His work was high quality and always on time. Although Kevin was remote, he had tremendous impact as the design lead and strategist. Our launch would not have been possible without his ability to quickly ramp up and fit into the team."

"Kevin was a critical asset in the relaunch of Google Fonts. He worked as the lead product designer collaborating with Research, Engineering, and Product under tight deadlines. His work was high quality and always on time. Although Kevin was remote, he had tremendous impact as the design lead and strategist. Our launch would not have been possible without his ability to quickly ramp up and fit into the team."

Director of UX, Material Fonts & Icons, Google

"Kevin brought maturity, perspective, and passion to evolving our software and hardware products at Katalyst.  In addition to refining our design language, he revamped our onboarding experience.  What I appreciated most was Kevin's end-to-end thinking, mapping out the user journey from when they see our product from the first time to completing their first workout."

VP of Product, Katalyst Fitness

"We hired Kevin to help with product incubation and future roadmap articulation. He delivered consistently with great quality and with a great attitude! I'd recommend Kevin without hesitation for his natural product acumen and collaborative approach."

Wearables Design Lead, Google

Let's Go

Your project starts today.

I work best with founders who are early, moving fast, and building something the world hasn't seen before. Especially if it touches the real world: hardware, sensors, agents, cameras, wearables. The stuff where the seams between disciplines actually decide whether the product ships or dies.

If you want an embedded design partner for 0→1 product work, someone who ships the thing instead of presenting decks about the thing, I'm probably the right kind of designer.

Two clients at a time. Three-month minimum. $15–25k/month. Fixed-scope projects from $25k if that's cleaner.

A few sentences about what you're building, where you are, and what's broken helps me show up ready.

Book a 30-min intro

kevin@holdfast.studio

2025

HFS

·

Kevin@holdfast.studio

·

Linkedin

·

I write on Substack

In Bend, Oregon

·

Top

Let's Go

Your project starts today.

I work best with founders who are early, moving fast, and building something the world hasn't seen before. Especially if it touches the real world: hardware, sensors, agents, cameras, wearables. The stuff where the seams between disciplines actually decide whether the product ships or dies.

If you want an embedded design partner for 0→1 product work, someone who ships the thing instead of presenting decks about the thing, I'm probably the right kind of designer.

Two clients at a time. Three-month minimum. $15–25k/month. Fixed-scope projects from $25k if that's cleaner.

A few sentences about what you're building, where you are, and what's broken helps me show up ready.

Book a 30-min intro

kevin@holdfast.studio

2025

HFS

Kevin@holdfast.studio

Linkedin

I write on Substack

In Bend, Oregon

Top