# Joseph Zhang

![Joseph Zhang](/resources/cognition/portraits/joseph-zhang.webp)

![Joseph Zhang 2](/resources/cognition/portraits/joseph-zhang.webp)

Head of Design at Cognition (Devin, Windsurf); ex-Notion, founding designer at Skiff and Azuki  
Cognition  
New York, New York, United States

## At Cognition

- Role: Head of Design (Design)
- Joined: Dec 2025
- How they joined: Directly
- Before Cognition: Product Designer, Notion
- Overlapped before Cognition with other Cognition people at: Apple (https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/worked-together)

## Identity
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz
- X: @josephhhhz
- Website: https://joseph.cv/
- Domain: cognition.ai

## Notes
- 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. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- 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. (https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2065148101233377495)
- Freelanced with Cursor in August 2023 before the world knew who they were. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- During his time with the founding team, explored features that helped users visualize what AI was thinking and doing. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- Joseph Zhang is listed as Designer for Thinkspace, a speculative concept aiming to reenvision the role of conversational agents in discussion-based contexts. (https://joseph.cv/thinkspace)
- 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. (https://joseph.cv/lightengines)
- Joseph Zhang is listed as a speaker at Design Meetup x Notion NY, with the title Head of Design @ Cognition. (https://luma.com/dmnny)
- Joined Cognition to lead Design and build out their Design team. (https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2001040102827454510)
- Skiff was acquired by Notion as of February 2024. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Product Designer at Azuki, leading design for all digital interactive experiences. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- 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. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Interned at Apple as an Interaction Designer during summers of 2020 and 2021. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Worked on two core Siri teams: the Understanding team with Garrett Weinberg and the Knowledge team with Maria Cordell. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Designed platform-level voice UI patterns and disambiguation behaviors for various hardware platforms. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Role was Interaction Design Intern. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Interaction Designer intern at Apple in summers 2020 and 2021 working on voice interfaces and multimodal interaction patterns for Siri; together with 2 years prototyping multimodal search at Brain Technologies (Natural AI), this is the root of his stated interest in 'how tools act on our behalf' that now applies to agentic Devin. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Public headline says "Head of Design at Cognition". (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz)
- Founding designer at Azuki (Jul 2023-Mar 2025, product designer from Mar 2022): first design hire, built the core design team and was an early contributor to Anime.com. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz)
- Independent design practice 2020-2025 with clients including Rox, Cursor, Paraform, Endex, 0xPARC and Brain Technologies. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz)
- Role on Cursor project: Product designer. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- Duration on Cursor project: 2 months. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- Former Notion collaborators now shape Cursor's design language. (https://joseph.cv/cursor)
- Thinkspace advisors listed: Jonathan Chapman and Steve Stadelmeier. (https://joseph.cv/thinkspace)
- Thinkspace duration: 7 weeks. (https://joseph.cv/thinkspace)
- Designed/built AIGA Hue, a desktop web experience visualizing career data from the 2019 AIGA Design Census. (https://joseph.cv/aiga)
- AIGA Hue role: Frontend Developer and Visual Designer. (https://joseph.cv/aiga)
- Synthesized +9400 data points from AIGA's census and interactively visualized them through Matter.js, a Javascript physics engine. (https://joseph.cv/aiga)
- Joseph Zhang was a panelist alongside Jin Park (Designer @ Notion), Adam Ho (Head of Design @ Fal), and Dennis Jin (Design Engineer @ Meta). (https://luma.com/dmnny)
- The neural network series from 3Blue1Brown got him into AI about 8 years ago. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/silasalberti_the-neural-network-series-from-3blue1brown-activity-7479791564005969920-WD5u)
- He chatted with 3Blue1Brown (Grant Sanderson) at Cognition. (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/silasalberti_the-neural-network-series-from-3blue1brown-activity-7479791564005969920-WD5u)
- At Notion, he designs for the time layer of the Notion ecosystem, primarily focusing on turning Notion Calendar into the most powerful calendar application in the world. (https://joseph.cv/notion)
- He also works on core Notion features that build connective tissue between Notion, Mail, and Calendar, including AI Meeting Notes and Notion Agent. (https://joseph.cv/notion)
- Teams listed: Calendar Team, Product Design Team. (https://joseph.cv/notion)
- Helped transform Skiff's visual design language, working with Pentagram on an initial rebrand and evolving it into a usable design system, complete iconography set, and visual graphic style. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Led design for the Skiff marketing site relaunch, a 2.5 month project. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Designed the Collector's Profile, a platform for the Azuki community to display NFTs, badges, emblems, and memorabilia, including a Collector's Status gamification layer that scores and ranks members. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Designed Token Equipping, an equipping system allowing users to unite Azukis with their Bean companions. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Designed the Elementals Sale + Unboxing reveal experience with live Twitter feed, compose Tweet functionality, drag and drop, and Chat-GPT integration. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Designed the Ambush x Azuki Collab purchase experience, gated through an on-chain raffle system for presale access. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Designed Azuki Lore World page interactive chapters, each different in format and interactivity. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Co-designed the Proof of Skate Auction experience, a 24 hour auction focused around 9 gold-plated skateboards. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Focused mostly on Skiff Pages, Drive, and Mail. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Pitched ideas to high level leadership such as Robby Walker. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Held weekly syncs with Machine Learning engineers. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Duration was 24 weeks total. (https://joseph.cv/apple)
- Previous roles include Product Designer at Notion; Founding Designer at Azuki; Product Designer at Azuki; Independent Practice at Personal; Founding Designer at Skiff (acquired by Notion); Interaction Designer at Apple. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz)
- Thinkspace tools: Javascript. (https://joseph.cv/thinkspace)
- Thinkspace complete documentation available at https://josephz.notion.site/Thinkspace-24f3dc1c62904b0da412b0a4230cc92d. (https://joseph.cv/thinkspace, https://josephz.notion.site/Thinkspace-24f3dc1c62904b0da412b0a4230cc92d)
- AIGA Hue duration: 2 months. (https://joseph.cv/aiga)
- AIGA Hue tools: HTML/CSS/JS, Figma, Cinema4D. (https://joseph.cv/aiga)
- Tools used at Notion: Figma, React. (https://joseph.cv/notion)
- Co-designed four skeuomorphic icons, one for each product, with Jason. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Created 20 interactive graphics scattered across the marketing site, each individually coded in React. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Created +200 hand drawn icons combining angular and soft features. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Designed a global app switcher for navigation between products and workspaces. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Worked on Skiff Mail: search, sorting automation, compose editor, web3 wallet email, etc. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Worked on Skiff Pages: text styles, tables, navigation sidebar, format bar, sharing features, enterprise controls, public documents, etc. (https://joseph.cv/skiff)
- Designed a three phase sale with dynamic graphics and UI; Bobu the Bean Farmer manages purchased inventory and ongoing transactions. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Azuki set the record for the most expensive skateboards sold in history via Proof of Skate. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Proof of Skate exhibition held at K11 Musea in Hong Kong. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Azuki has worked with brands including Line Friends, Patrick Mahomes, Ambush Streetwear, Epik High, and RedBull Racing. (https://joseph.cv/azuki)
- Location is New York, New York, United States. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz)

## Experience
- Head of Design at Cognition (Dec 2025 - Present): Foundations
- Product Designer at Notion (Mar 2025 - Dec 2025): Notion Calendar
Meeting Notes
- Founding Designer at Azuki (Jul 2023 - Mar 2025): First design hire. Built the core Design Team. Designed interactive experiences for Azuki IP and early contributor to Anime.com.
- Product Designer at Azuki (Mar 2022 - Jun 2023)
- Independent Practice at Personal (Jan 2020 - Jan 2025): Design consulting for emerging software companies. Notable clients include Rox, Cursor, Paraform, Endex, 0xPARC, Brain Technologies.
- Founding Designer at Skiff (acquired by Notion) (Aug 2022 - Jul 2023): First full-time design hire
0→1 design for Email, Editor, Drive, Calendar
Scaled Skiff Mail to 1M+ users
- Interaction Designer at Apple (May 2021 - Aug 2021): Multimodal interaction patterns for Siri (now Apple Intelligence)
- Interaction Designer at Apple (May 2020 - Aug 2020): Voice Interfaces for Siri

## Education
- Carnegie Mellon University - Bachelor of Design, Human Computer Interaction

## Sources
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephhhz
- https://x.com/josephhhhz
- https://joseph.cv/
- https://joseph.cv/lightengines
- https://joseph.cv/aiga
- https://joseph.cv/thinkspace
- https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2061898505514303514
- https://www.linkedin.com/posts/silasalberti_the-neural-network-series-from-3blue1brown-activity-7479791564005969920-WD5u
- https://joseph.cv/notion
- https://joseph.cv/cursor
- https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2001040102827454510
- https://joseph.cv/apple
- https://luma.com/dmnny
- https://joseph.cv/skiff
- https://joseph.cv/azuki
- https://x.com/ScottWu46/status/2021360962511741140
- https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2103206496372695301
- https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2065148101233377495
- https://x.com/josephhhhz/status/2088319062262657511
- https://josephz.notion.site/Thinkspace-24f3dc1c62904b0da412b0a4230cc92d


Researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-04. Profile: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people/joseph-zhang · Everyone at Cognition: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/cognition/people