DU/ART · AI LAB The making-of Sign in ↗

◆ A private AI lab · case study

A working AI lab, built by a designer who doesn't write code.

Four real tools I use in my own design work — turning photos, floor plans and messy product feeds into finished visuals. This page is the making-of: the problems, the fixes, the output. The lab itself stays private.

See what it does ↓ Sign in — it's locked

Why you can't log in — and why that's the proof. You're already on it. The tools live behind a real login — try the button up top and you'll hit a locked door. It's a personal tool, not a product. Nobody can doubt something they're not allowed to touch. So here's the window instead — real screens, real output, the honest making-of.

01 The tools

Four problems from my own desk, each turned into a tool.

Not demos. Things I open on an iPhone or a laptop to get real design work done faster.

Spaces · the flagship

Photograph a room that doesn't exist yet.

The problem: a client wants to see their living room restyled — or a room that's still just a floor plan. Mock-ups take hours and never quite convince.

  • Three ways in: a photo, a hand-marked floor plan, or just a written description.
  • Floor-plan mode reads the drawing, you mark doors, windows, stairs and furniture, and it produces a photoreal shot from standing height.
  • Restyle around your own catalogue — drop in real products and it composes the room around them.
Spaces on iPhone — generated results, with Refine and Humanize
Cutout · everyday workhorse

Background removal that doesn't cost per image.

The problem: I was paying a subscription to remove backgrounds from product shots, and losing resolution.

  • Drop or paste a batch → transparent PNGs at full resolution, in a queue.
  • Runs on my own Mac mini engine — no per-image cost, and nothing is stored on the server.
  • Quietly replaced a paid tool in my daily workflow.
Cutout on iPhone — a product isolated on a swappable background
Product Catalog · the fuel

A reusable library of real products, tagged and ready.

The problem: a good interior render needs real furniture. Hunting product images every time kills the flow.

  • 81 products tagged by room, style and category, dropped straight into a generation.
  • Seeded through a data pipeline I built — pulling clean product images from a retailer's own API.
  • Turns "restyle this room" into "restyle it with these pieces".
Product Catalog on iPhone — grid filtered by room and style
Personas · identity, kept

Me, in any era or role — without losing my face.

The problem: AI portraits drift — change the outfit and you're a different person.

  • My identity is baked into the tool from a fixed set of base shots.
  • Pick a look, framing and angle; add only wardrobe and props.
  • Consistent character across a whole video series.
Personas on iPhone — the same face as an astronaut

02 The making-of

The interesting part is where it broke.

A few real problems I hit building this — and how I reasoned my way out. Product-level, the way a designer thinks about it.

→ fidelity

The plan came out mirrored.

The AI kept swapping walls — a window on the left ended up on the right, doors moved.

Fix: instead of asking the model to picture the camera, the app now computes exactly what the camera sees — far wall, left, right, behind you — and hands it that, pre-solved.

→ trust

The camera opened to a black screen.

On iPhone the preview stayed black — it read as broken, but it was an OS permission block.

Fix: a clear, touch-only warning that tells the user what's really happening, instead of a scary void.

→ resilience

A model vanished overnight.

A cloud model was retired and every call started failing with a cryptic error.

Fix: surfaced the real cause, migrated to the current model, and left a guard so it can't silently happen again.

03 Output

Real results, straight from the tools.

Everything below is generated or processed by the lab — no stock, no edits after the fact.

Drag to compare — the same real room, one tap apart.

The same room, fully restyled and furnished
The original, near-empty room
BEFORERESTYLED
The same room populated with people and a dog by Humanize
→ and Humanize drops in people — and the dog.
Persona — a 15th-century craftsman
Persona — a samurai
Persona — a wild-west character
Floor plan — marking doors, windows and furniture
Floor plan — choosing the camera direction
Spaces — the room populated with people

04 What it demonstrates

A designer who can ship the whole thing.

Built solo, end to end — product thinking, a real design system, and enough engineering to make it work.

Product design · problem → tool Own design system · DU/ART Mobile-first UX AI image generation Prompt engineering Data pipelines Accessibility · WCAG AA Self-hosted infra

◆ The lab stays private

Behind the door.

The tools are personal — the door stays locked. If you have the key, come on in.

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