Stefan Kovalik

Designer Engineer · Creator of Perception-First Design™

San Francisco, CA · (805) 708-9047 · admin@aurochs.agency

aurochs.agency · cognograph.app · github.com/skovalik · linkedin.com/in/kovalik

Designer-engineer with 15 years across consumer brands, startups, and my own agency. Created Perception-First Design, an open-source design tool grounded in cognitive psychology. Currently shipping Cognograph, a spatial AI canvas with four USPTO provisional patents.

Design focus: cognitive psychology applied to creative tools and visual-authoring environments; spatial substrates for AI-augmented creative work; brand systems that compound from marketing surface to product UI.

Selected Work

Cognograph

Spatial AI workflow canvas · brand to runtime · solo build · cognograph.app · github.com/skovalik/cognograph

Sole designer and engineer. Electron + React + TypeScript + React Flow + Three.js. Spatial context engineering: node-graph traversal feeds connected nodes into AI prompts. Provider-agnostic runtime: bring-your-own-key, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint or local model. Real-time multiplayer (Y.js CRDTs) planned. AGPL-3.0 with Defensive Patent Pledge. Shipped solo: spatial UI primitives, GLSL-shader rendering pipeline, design system, brand, marketing site, waitlist.

Four provisional patent applications filed with USPTO February 2026, covering graph-based context assembly, spatial-topology agent permissions, position-based trigger activation, and conversational plan refinement with atomic execution.

Perception-First Design

Open-source design tool grounded in cognitive psychology · github.com/skovalik/perception-first-design

People decide in 50 milliseconds. Changes design conversations from opinions to diagnosis. Names which perceptual layer is failing on any design, pitch, or system before anyone touches a pixel. Built on ~100 peer-reviewed citations across Lavie, Damasio, LeDoux, Sweller, and Lang. Open-source (CC BY-SA 4.0 + MIT), shipping as a Claude Code skill. v3.6.

Selected Writing

Make Me Think: Perception-First Design for the Post-Usability Era. Perception is upstream of cognition. 12-chapter counterpoint to Krug's Don't Make Me Think. Free PDF and EPUB. aurochs.agency/writing/make-me-think
The Multiplier. 108-day audit of solo AI-augmented output with method, math, and confounders disclosed. aurochs.agency/writing/notes/multiplier
You Wouldn't Vibe Code a Car. Video costs 10x the cognitive load of memes for the same information. Facebook paid $40M for inflating video metrics 150 to 900%. METR: AI users feel 20% faster while being 19% slower. 3,800 words on cognitive economics. aurochs.agency/writing/notes/you-wouldnt-vibe-code-a-car

Experience

Aurochs · San Francisco, CA · October 2025 – Present

Founder & Designer Engineer · aurochs.agency

Sole design and engineering function for Cognograph and Perception-First Design (above): brand, marketing site, product UI, runtime.
For client work: full-stack web builds, brand systems, and launch packages. Built and run VacuumSealersUnlimited.com; 63ms TTFB; the platform powered fourfold revenue growth over ten years to $5M+ annual.
Run production infrastructure for client sites: Cloudflare Pages and Workers, headless content workflows, server hardening, security audits, incident response for live commerce systems.

Simply Smart Home · Dublin, CA · October 2019 – December 2024

Director of Digital Design (Jun 2022 – Dec 2024) · Lead Product Designer (Oct 2019 – Jun 2022) · mysimplysmarthome.com

Sole design and engineering lead across brand identity, packaging, retail materials, mobile app, e-commerce UI, and marketing. One continuous design system from marketing surface to product.
Built a 3D product visualization library using virtual photography, replacing physical photo shoots for marketing, packaging, and retail materials. Designed and developed the e-commerce platform from scratch.
233% sales increase; revenue grew from $1.5M to $5M. DTC channel grew from <2% to 15% of revenue. Retail placement at Costco, Walmart, Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and Lowe's; Disney licensing deal.

QTBIPOC Design · August 2020 – Present (Part-time advisory)

Technology Director / Brand Strategist · 501(c)(3) nonprofit · qtbipoc.design

Founding member and Technology Director; co-host and organizer of the Creative Chats event series; built the first corporate website; trained five junior designers across initial cohorts.

The iO Theater · Chicago, IL · 2016–2019, 2023–2024

Website Designer & Contractor · ioimprov.com

Redesigned the venue's site across two ownership transitions. SEO overhaul drove 20% organic traffic increase; Ticketfly POS integration grew online ticket sales from 50% to 75%.

Tantum Technologies · Dublin, CA · June 2010 – April 2015

Co-founder & Website Designer

Co-founded an agency at 23. Sole design function for 15+ startup ventures backed by Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran. Delivered websites, branding, and marketing to broadcast timelines.
Built and operated POS-integrated commerce platforms; engineered for broadcast-driven traffic spikes (120K unique visitors within 10 minutes).

Education

University of California, Santa Barbara · 2011

B.A. Psychology · Focus: cognitive psychology, human behavior, decision-making.

Technical Skills

Design systems: Brand identity, UI/UX, interaction design, information architecture, prototyping, design tokens, component libraries, motion design, 3D product visualization.
Frontend: React, Zustand, React Flow, TypeScript, CSS (vanilla custom properties, Tailwind, CSS Modules, container queries, OKLCH). Testing: Playwright + custom scripts. Accessibility: axe-core, Lighthouse a11y, screen reader testing, manual ARIA.
3D & real-time: Three.js, WebGL, GLSL shaders, Substance 3D, Electron, particle systems, post-processing pipelines.
Backend & infra: Node + Python scripts, WordPress/WooCommerce, MySQL, custom CMS. Cloudflare (Pages, Workers, R2, DNS), Supabase. CI/CD: GitHub Actions, Cloudflare Pages git deploys, Fly.io for Python services. Custom Python SSG (htpy + Pydantic + Starlette).
AI / agentic tooling: Claude Code (daily user), Anthropic Agent SDK, MCP, plugin and skill authoring, prompt engineering, evals.
Methodology: Perception-First Design™ (creator). 5-layer diagnostic framework grounded in cognitive psychology. Applied to any design problem or surface area.
Strategy: User research, A/B testing. Analytics: Cloudflare Web Analytics, Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity, custom instrumentation.
Tools: Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects), Figma, Notion, Jira.
Languages: English, Spanish (conversational).
Citizenship: United States.