- Joined
- Dec 2025
- How they joined
- Directly
- Before Cognition
- NotionProduct Designer
- Status
- Current
- Freelanced with Cursor's founding team in August 2023 exploring how to visualize what AI was thinking and doing; he now leads design at a direct Cursor competitor, while Cursor's design is led by former Notion colleagues (Ryo Lu), so the two leading AI code editors are both shaped by Notion design alumni.Aug 2023
- Teammate Natalie Almosa announced joining Cognition's 'stacked design team' in July 2026 and he amplified it; he also wrote '@alessio_joseph and I are making Cognition cool' (June 2026), identifying designer Joseph Alessio as a close collaborator on the Cognition design team.Jun 11, 2026@alessio_joseph and I are making Cognition cool
- Freelanced with Cursor in August 2023 before the world knew who they were.Nov 2026
- During his time with the founding team, explored features that helped users visualize what AI was thinking and doing.Nov 2026
- Joseph Zhang is listed as Designer for Thinkspace, a speculative concept aiming to reenvision the role of conversational agents in discussion-based contexts.Nov 2026
- Joseph Zhang designed a Lighting Engine as a form exploration during his time at Carnegie Mellon's School of Design; the prompt was to design a lamp/lighting engine that eased a person's ability to sleep, inspired by organic forms of shells and the hues of a Himalayan salt lamp.Nov 2026
- Joseph Zhang is listed as a speaker at Design Meetup x Notion NY, with the title Head of Design @ Cognition.Nov 2026
- Joined Cognition to lead Design and build out their Design team.Dec 16, 2025
- Skiff was acquired by Notion as of February 2024.Aug 2022
- Product Designer at Azuki, leading design for all digital interactive experiences.2022
- Led design at Skiff, a productivity company building E2EE collaboration tools; was the first full-time design hire and helped scale Skiff from a beta product to over +1,000,000 users.2022
- Interned at Apple as an Interaction Designer during summers of 2020 and 2021.May 2021
Foundations
Notion Calendar Meeting Notes
First design hire. Built the core Design Team. Designed interactive experiences for Azuki IP and early contributor to Anime.com.
Design consulting for emerging software companies. Notable clients include Rox, Cursor, Paraform, Endex, 0xPARC, Brain Technologies.
First full-time design hire 0→1 design for Email, Editor, Drive, Calendar Scaled Skiff Mail to 1M+ users
Multimodal interaction patterns for Siri (now Apple Intelligence)
Voice Interfaces for Siri
talk to devin like he's your homie https://t.co/5pRUiHTOMK
Devin has a new home page. https://t.co/UFiQaLWFSM
With love from Design Team https://t.co/kv4HduEAYW
oh btw I'm hiring https://t.co/Iwxb69GyAC
@alexkaplan0 no cognition is
@alessio_joseph and I are making Cognition cool
Devin is tired https://t.co/lb5FAjnKF5
Devin the monster https://t.co/DRtluwQXEs
Privileged to work together 👊🏻
What does Art Center feed their graphic design kids
Bless the new designer working on Venmo
Mavis Beacon made me who I am today https://t.co/ErETq5Grei
