Cory Hymel

VP of Product & Research @ Gigster | Innovating on the Future of Work

//--In my own words
Washed software engineer that was better at telling stories and painting visions that writing code. I usually find myself working in research or innovation teams due to attention deficient and boredom with solvable problems. I very much enjoy speaking, teaching, and sharing things I've learned with others. 


//--In my PR teams words
The root of Cory’s passion for the connected nature of tech enhancing the future of work began in the early 2000s in robotics research initiatives for the FedEx Institute of Technology. He went on to pioneer mobile helping enterprises develop strategies to mobilize staff workflows and collaboration in the pre-enterprise project management app era of “BYOD to work” in the mid-2010s. Seeing the promise of physical and digital integration, Cory brought physical products to life leading the Connected Technologies division at a hardware development firm. Beginning in 2018 Cory began researching and leading the Future of Work at Gigster as VP of Product and Research advocating for leveling outdated hierarchical structures within organizations. Cory is a futurist with the goal to continuously question the status quo. His research answers the questions that will define how the innovations of today will impact the work of tomorrow.

Head of Academic Partnerships

Helping lead research with Stanford and Berkeley into how distributed teams work at scale.

Adam Kyle Wilson

I build and scale product organizations that turn frontier technologies into consumer-ready platforms.

Over the past 15 years, I’ve led design and product orgs from 15 → 75+ people, navigated multiple acquisitions, and shipped dozens of products at the intersection of consumer tech, retail innovation, and R&D.

Enterprise & Scale → Head of Product at Jungle Scout, where I scaled the company from a single tool into the #1 SaaS suite for Amazon sellers, helping secure a $100M Series A.

Innovation & R&D → Early product leadership at FNX (3D garment pipeline, acq. by Li & Fung) and innovation roles with Lululemon, Uniqlo, Nike, Disney, and Amazon Devices.

Entrepreneurship → Founded Polyform, a 40-person design & product studio serving Nike, Fortnite, Red Bull, UN, and Olympics, acquired in 2025. Built SKINNER, a counter-surveillance outerwear brand generating $2M+ in sales.

Global Impact → Directed teams delivering large-scale consumer products, from wearables and hardware to SaaS platforms and immersive experiences, across industries from fashion and retail to AI, AR, and Web3.

What drives me:

Turning complex technologies into intuitive, scalable products.

Leading cross-functional teams to deliver measurable impact.

Building strong product and design cultures inside organizations, where strategy and craft meet.

Co-Founder & CEO

We design award winning consumer products for startups and big brands. 
Apps, Augmented Reality, Experiential Retail, and more. 

Select Clients: 
Coca-Cola, Uniqlo, The Olympics, Nooks, Interactio, RTFKT, Red Bull, Wisdo, ToolBX, CVS, Nordstrom, and more

Junior Designers! Share your portfolio below. 
I have a TON of folks in my network looking for talent. Focuses: Branding, Motion, Vibe Coding, and Visual Design. Looking for the obsessed & talented.

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Head of Design at Lazer

Sad news: Claude can’t design in Figma. 

Sure. It can make new components, or variables of existing ones….

If you set up the Figma MCP server in terminal… 

Then connect the Figma Console MCP….

And then craft perfect prompts to run in terminal to get the exact outcome you want without hallucination. 

But we’re talking about making 6 more buttons like the 4 you already have. 

Not designing an app. 

Not designing a user flow. 

Sure there are other AI tools that can do that. Like UX Pilot etc. 

But they’re just OK. 

Great for inspiration and starting from something other than a blank page. 

But if you’re looking to sit down at Claude or any other prompt based interface and talk your way into a design in figma with great UX and a stunning UI…. 

I’m sorry to say that’s not possible today. 

But the reason I can say that so confidently is that I’m working with these tools every day. 

I’m learning & growing with the tools, so when they CAN do these things, I can do them too. 

So even though it’s not going to solve all your design problems today… go try it out. 

Start getting comfortable. 

This is what design will look like for the rest of your career, you might as well dig in.

Adam Kyle Wilson 

If you’re a designer using Figma and you’re not building to MCP standards for integration with AI code tools like Clade, you’re behind. 

A great place to start is reading the Figma docs and blog articles. Also, Anthropic recently dropped a MCP template which is great to use for file structure inspiration. 

I’ll drop some links in the comments.

Freelance Sr.Brand Designers! Share your portfolio below. I have a TON of folks in my network looking for help. Looking for the obsessed, explorative, & talented.

Also - drop your tool stack with your link. Keen to see what people are using for exploration & execution.

Games & digital product executive, xDisney, xUniversal, xfrogdesign

Incredible tool for moving a camera in 3d space on a generated 2d image. Absolutely insane - and its free!

https://lnkd.in/g9PayCVM

AI is changing the design process. 
Here are 5 of my favourite voices on the topic & 7 great articles by them: 

Sara Vienna  
CDO at Metalab  

Marie-Claire Dean  
Design Leader at Google   

Julie Zhuo  
Co-founder at Sundial 
(former VP Product Design at Meta)

Paige Costello 
VP of product at Figma  
(former head of AI at Asana)

Mia Blume 
CEO & Exec. Design Coach at Design Dept.
(former Pinterest and IDEO )

Article links in the comments

The CDO of Figma, Loredana Crisan, on the Claude to design workflow & I couldn’t agree more. Link to original post in comments…

graphical user interface, text, application

View group: Visual Artists and their Advocates

🌹😍 Artist: @blossom_siii 

Awesome painting process 🌹

This group is for visual artists to discuss art and promote their work and generate and share ideas. This group is for people who love fine art whether as creators and/or collectors.

Product design from the archives: Lululemon 
Discovery - Concept - CX - UX - UI - IxD - Hardware

Designers, what side quests are you on?
Mine below:

- Been working on a board game for over a year called “Plated”. You play as chef’s going head to head building menus to capture the Michelin star. 

- New SKINNER spring/summer collection of hard goods and soft goods 

- I’ve been working on a series of kids board books (age 0-3).

- Been thinking about using AI agents to launch and mostly automate a streetwear brand where all the profit goes to coral restoration. Inspired by Western Hydrodynamic Research.

Some of you have never read The Elements of Typographic Style and it shows. Vibe coding prototypes is awesome, but let's get back to the basics.

Creator (1.6M+) | TED Tech Curator | Ex-Google PM (XR & 3D Maps) | Spatial Intelligence, World Models & Visual Effects

Now that Gemini 3.1 and Claude 4.6 are both out, I wanted to see what happens when you throw them at a real spatial project. Built a geospatial command center with live flight tracking, real satellite orbits, CCTV feeds projected onto 3D building geometry, and a procedural traffic system. Skinned the whole thing with FLIR, night vision, and CRT filters. Got a bunch more stuff on the roadmap. This is fun.

Product design from the archives: Boost Savings
Discovery - Concept - Brand - 3D - UX - UI - IxD

Going deep on AI may change how you do production, but going deep on these will change how you design: 


- color theory 
- typography 
- layout grids
- hierarchy 
- proportion 
- copy writing 
- space 
- art/design history 
- data visualization 
- user / usability testing 
- discovery 
- information architecture 


It’s amazing to me how few designers just skipped over this part of their design education / craft building. 

You wanna be a “10X Designer”?

10X these skills. 

Become a great designer first. 

THEN start using AI to accelerate. 

Don’t accelerate mid design craft.

Founder The AI Corner | Scout A16Z

Your timeline convinced you AI is in a bubble😳  
Talk to anyone above 35 for 5 minutes... 

Each dot is ~3.2 million people.

▪️ 84% of the world has never used AI (~6.8B people)
▪️ 16% have used free chatbots (~1.3B)
▪️ 0.3% pay $20/month for AI (~15-25M)
▪️ 0.04% use it for coding (~2-5M)

Most people still have no idea what Claude is.

We are so early it's wild.

by the way, here are AI RESOURCES you'll love:

• Claude workflows, prompts and templates to make it your coworker: https://lnkd.in/ettUa_YU

• 45+ AI Decks (Eleven Labs, Artisan, etc.): https://lnkd.in/etqM3-ik

• OpenAI’s New Playbook for Product-Market Fit in AI Startups
https://lnkd.in/dy-HgVtX

• 2,500+ Angel Investors Backing AI Startups - https://lnkd.in/djjN-TD2

• Clawdbot guide - https://lnkd.in/eihFZASX

• Humanizer Prompt - https://lnkd.in/edrfFWGC

• 30 Claude in Excel Prompts  - https://lnkd.in/d2cnuRGR

Why do people write LinkedIn profiles in the third-person? Who is this narrator talking about “Ryan learnt to code at age 13…”?

Product design from the archives: The Olympic Games
Discovery - Concept - AR - UX - UI - IxD
Emmy Award Nomination: Outstanding Digital Innovation in Sports

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Every designer on LinkedIn right now: 
“MCP has changed design forever.“

Product design from the archives: BeatBox Karaoke
Discovery - Concept - Game Design - 3D - UX - UI - IxD

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Cory Hymel

Adam Kyle Wilson

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The Battle

Cory Hymel

Adam Kyle Wilson

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Adam Kyle Wilson's LinkedIn Performance

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