Energy Monitoring Kiosk

Portfolio, Ventures & What I Build

Product/systems design that turns AI tech into business results

I'm Gil, an AI Product Design Engineer. I take complex workflows and turn them into AI-native systems, from discovery through shipped product.

My north star is the complete practitioner: the idea that the best AI-native products are shaped by one mind that can hold design, engineering, and AI logic simultaneously, not handed off through layers of interpretation.

When the same person who defines the workflow also builds the prototype and wires the AI, translation loss disappears. Teams move faster and the gap between what we designed and what shipped closes.

What I Bring

Enterprise Systems

Enterprise End-to-End Systems Builder

I've designed complex product ecosystems at enterprise scale — multi-product platforms, multi-role workflows, and long-running transformation initiatives as a solo designer. Systems thinking, not just screen design.

AI Product Engineering

AI-Native Product Design Engineer

I design and prototype AI-native product systems — RAG pipelines, agentic workflows, human-in-the-loop interfaces, structured outputs, and context-aware products. AI product work grounded in real systems, not demos.

Education & Evangelism

Technical Educator & Evangelist

I help people understand, adopt, and build with new technologies — through demos, workshops, tutorials, and product systems thinking. Teaching as adoption; adoption as product design.

A consistent practice across technology cycles

Tech Speaker Microsoft · 5,000+ developers

Co-founder 8th Light · Digital transformation

Startups + Enterprise Engine Yard · ThoughtWorks · Dev tools

Founder Skowak · Design engineering · Teaching

Enterprise Focus SunPower · Digital transformation · Ecosystems

AI Eng Focus Craftal · CareDash · Multi Agent Systems

Now Contextus · Craftal v.2 · AI-native systems

How I Work

I don’t start with AI. I start with how work actually happens.

The method works in cycles. Each one scoped small enough to prove value fast, wide enough to compound across the whole system.

Each cycle makes the next one faster, safer, and more valuable. Real workflows before AI use cases. No baseline, no proof. No proof, no scale.

01 — 03

Understand

Discover
Model
Baseline

Know before you build

04 — 06

Intervene

Design
Adapt & Script
Measure

Build small, prove value

07 — 08

Promote

Promote
Orchestrate

Make it durable and connected

09 — 10

Scale

Govern
Reuse & Expand

Govern and compound

Where most AI projects break down

Most AI failures aren't technical. They're structural: siloed teams, AI built without real workflows, ideas that can't survive contact with production. The method closes those gaps.

Design, engineering, and AI in separate rooms

Work lands in three different hands. Every handoff is a translation, and translation is where ideas lose fidelity.

One practitioner across all three layers

I lead design, write code, and wire the AI as one strategic partner across all three disciplines. No handoffs, no interpretation layers, no gap between what was designed and what shipped.

AI built without a workflow to plug into

Teams rush to launch LLM features with minimal ROI. Without mapping real workflows or solving real problems, the result is unused chatbots and shallow automation.

Bridge between LLMs and real work

I map how work actually happens first, then wire the AI stack into those real decisions. The result is automation that runs, not a chatbot no one uses.

Technical Toolkit

The full stack, from workflow model to deployed AI system.

My stack spans the full system: AI engineering (OpenAI & Anthropic APIs, LangChain, LangGraph, DSPy, RAG pipelines, vector stores, structured outputs, agent orchestration), frontend and prototyping (React, Angular, Vue, TypeScript, API-connected interfaces), backend and tooling (Python, FastAPI, Rails, PostgreSQL/pgvector, Docker), and product and design (systems modeling, workflow mapping, information architecture, interaction design, design engineering).

As a product generalist, I choose the right tool for each layer (design, front end, data, or model) so ideas travel from workflow model to shipped system without unnecessary handoffs.

Getting personal

Things I do when I'm not building

Still-life sketching, coastal hiking, PC teardowns, and slow travel through cities with good architecture.

I draw to stay sharp. I travel to stay curious. I take things apart to stay honest about how they work.

Back

Energy Monitoring Kiosk

A lobby-scale energy dashboard that helped commercial clients visualize solar production, system performance, and environmental impact.

Skills applied:

Visual Design Frontend Dev Information Arch Data Viz

Commercial solar clients invested in large systems, but the value was often hidden inside technical dashboards, reports, or operational data that visitors never saw.

I designed a lobby-scale monitoring kiosk that turned real-time solar production, storage, weather, energy mix, and system performance into a clear public-facing sustainability display.

The Problem

Commercial solar value was hard to see after installation.

Commercial clients could invest heavily in solar infrastructure, but the daily impact of that investment was often invisible to employees, visitors, tenants, and executives.

The system produced energy, reduced grid dependency, and supported sustainability goals, but that story was usually buried in backend monitoring tools or periodic reports.

SunPower needed a way to make commercial solar performance visible, understandable, and impressive in the physical spaces where people could actually see it.

diagram kiosk 01 — Solar impact was real, but most stakeholders could not see it.

Without a public-facing display, commercial solar risked feeling like infrastructure in the background instead of a visible proof point for sustainability, innovation, and brand leadership.

Solution

Designing a kiosk that could explain solar at a glance.

I approached the kiosk as a public information experience, not a traditional analytics dashboard.

The interface needed to work from a distance, communicate quickly, and feel polished enough for commercial lobbies, retail spaces, campuses, and corporate environments.

sunpower energy kiosk 04 — Early sketches explored kiosk layout, hierarchy, and long-distance readability.

The early layout work focused on hierarchy: weather and location on the left, energy production over time in the center, production capacity on the right, and supporting metrics below.

This structure helped the display answer the main question quickly: “What is this solar system doing right now?”

Mapping the story before polishing the interface

The kiosk had to serve multiple audiences at once. Facility teams needed performance visibility. Executives needed proof of investment. Visitors needed a simple story. Employees needed a reason to care.

The whiteboard exploration helped clarify the content model: inform, engage, build trust, educate, and inspire action.

The design had to balance data accuracy with visual simplicity. Too much detail would make the kiosk unreadable. Too little detail would make it feel decorative.

diagram kiosk 02 — The kiosk organized solar data into location, production, storage, and impact.

Turning raw metrics into a visual energy narrative

The final interface used large numbers, strong contrast, and simple visual groupings to communicate solar performance quickly.

sunpower energy kiosk 01 — The kiosk translated commercial solar data into a public-facing energy story.

The top section showed energy production over time, giving viewers a sense of recent performance. The right-side production gauge provided an instant reading of current system capacity.

The lower section broke the system into understandable pieces: system size, energy produced, power produced, energy consumed, stored energy, and today’s energy mix.

Each piece supported the larger narrative: the building is actively producing and managing clean energy.

Designing for the physical environment

The kiosk was meant to live in a real public space, not just inside a web browser.

That changed the design priorities. Typography needed to be readable from several feet away. The layout needed to stay calm. The display needed to feel premium without becoming visually noisy.

sunpower energy kiosk 02 — The display was designed for lobby-scale visibility and ambient engagement.

The wall-mounted context made the product feel like part of the building experience. It became both a monitoring tool and a sustainability artifact.

Outcome

The kiosk made commercial solar performance visible and memorable.

The Commercial Energy Monitoring Kiosk helped transform technical system data into a visible, public-facing experience. It gave commercial clients a way to show employees, visitors, and stakeholders that their solar investment was active and measurable.

diagram kiosk 03 — Real-time energy data became a shared sustainability touchpoint.

Estimated impact based on project context:

Increased visibility of commercial solar performance
Made sustainability investments easier to communicate
Helped clients showcase energy production in public spaces
Strengthened SunPower’s commercial brand perception
Created a reusable visual pattern for monitoring dashboards
Turned operational data into an engaging physical experience

This project reinforced an important design principle: data becomes more valuable when people can understand it in context. The kiosk made solar impact visible where it mattered most, inside the customer’s environment.