Carley Hart is a kindred spirit in every way. She is a maker, builder, tinkerer, ideator, entrepreneur, educator, and sooooo much more. Having worked with Carley at Autodesk and Business Models Inc., I can say unequivocally that her energy and intelligence compel everyone around her to pick up a whiteboard marker, a screwdriver, or a keyboard and just start creating.

Having been in each other’s orbits for some time, I know that Carley, like me, has dozens of ideas spinning up and spinning down at any point in time. And…some of those ideas stick out from others.

Just a couple of weeks ago, Carley posted about one of those ideas (now a fledgling solution), called Fix Hudson Link. What immediately caught my attention with this one was two things: 1) the story about how Carley immediately set to solving a problem for EVERYONE while she was experiencing that problem herself, and 2) how Carley subtly set an example for us all about how to amplify our impact where civic engagement is concerned, by using the resources at hand…in this case, AI tools and gumption.

If you’ve thought about solving a problem in your community and need some encouragement to get your idea/solution out there, you should definitely read on (below) and listen to the recording of our full conversation on the Design Shift podcast on Spotify and Apple and the Design Shift YouTube channel.

— Justin Lokitz

What happens when one missed bus turns into a civic movement?

This week, I sat down with Carley Hart for a conversation that started with AI tools and side projects, but quickly became something much bigger: a discussion about agency, speed, and what happens when ordinary people, albeit ones with a lot of energy, realize they can now build systems that used to require teams, funding, and institutional backing.

My good friend and sometimes colleague, Carley, currently leads partnerships for Runway Startups at Cornell Tech and has spent years working across startups, corporate innovation, and product strategy at organizations like Techstars and Autodesk. But…besides all of the amazing projects she is juggling at the moment, the main reason I wanted her on Design Shift was Fix Hudson Link, a project she launched after repeatedly dealing with “ghost buses” on her commute between New York City and Rockland County.

One evening, after waiting for a bus that never arrived, she did something most people don’t do. She started building a civic engagement app to help EVERYONE who has experienced the same problem as her. And…unlike most of us, myself included, she didn’t wait until she got home, nor did she start by co-creating some grand strategy a la ChatGPT.

Nope! Right there at the bus stop, Carley started speaking into her phone, using Wispr Flow, an AI transcription app, and Claude Code, to start building the first prototype of a digital civic solution. What followed is one of the clearest examples I’ve seen recently of how AI is changing the relationship between individuals and systems.

Now, where most of us may have started with a vibe-coded website, Carley took the time (whilst waiting for the next bus) to reframe the problem. From her experience, most public frustrations die in the same place they begin: complaints, tweets, venting, and group chats. This amounts to emotion without structure, and/or noise without leverage. Carley realized that the real issue wasn’t merely that buses were disappearing; it was that riders had no mechanism for turning isolated experiences into visible evidence.

So instead of building another complaint platform, she built a system. Fix Hudson Link enables riders to report missing buses, track failures over time, and visualize patterns publicly. It also gives commuters a direct way to contact decision-makers with data instead of anecdotes (and emotion-driven complaints). That distinction matters because while institutions can and do ignore complaints (often!), they struggle to ignore patterns…especially when they’re elected officials.

Within weeks, the project gained traction, generated media attention, and led to conversations with transportation officials and state representatives. Carley created a signal, where others use political juice/influence.

To me, this is an ultra-important shift happening right now across industries and communities. Individuals who can rapidly organize information, structure participation, and create visibility suddenly have far more leverage than they did even a few years ago. In other words, the same tools that myriad influencers are purportedly employing to make a mint sans employees are available to ANYONE who wants to change their community for the better. And…we can do so at speed!

Carley talked openly about using tools like Claude and voice workflows to rapidly prototype, organize, and launch the project. What previously might have required developers, designers, and weeks of coordination became something she could stand up herself in a remarkably short amount of time.

AI is collapsing coordination costs for us all, enabling each of us to execute on ideas in a way that would have been tremendously expensive only a year ago. In this way, increasingly, it is judgment, initiative, and the willingness to act before certainty arrives. That changes who gets to build, and it also changes what “building” means.

To be fair, Carley DOES have a background in computer science, human-computer interaction, startups, and innovation strategy. But…what stood out most in our conversation wasn’t technical depth. In fact, Carley admitted she has never really coded before. Instead…it was her orientation toward action. She did not wait to become “officially qualified” to intervene in a broken system. She treated the problem as designable.

That mindset is becoming increasingly important because AI tools are making execution dramatically more accessible, but they do not tell people what is worth building. They do not create urgency, perspective, or conviction. Those still come from humans paying close attention to the world around them and deciding to do something about what they see.

Another reason this conversation resonated with me is that Carley did not leave her career to become a founder. She built (and continues to build) alongside it. That distinction matters because so much startup culture still frames creation as an all-or-nothing leap: quit your job, raise money, and go full founder mode. But increasingly, some of the most interesting work is emerging from people, like Carley, who continue operating inside careers, communities, and institutions while simultaneously building things on the edges.

Side projects are becoming bigger than portfolio pieces or creative outlets. They are laboratories for human agency. Side projects allow us all to test ideas, learn systems, develop new skills, and create leverage without waiting for permission. AI dramatically increases the surface area of what one motivated person can now do.

This is part of why I believe designers, strategists, operators, and systems thinkers are uniquely well-positioned right now. The people who can identify friction, frame problems, synthesize information, and move quickly across disciplines suddenly have much more leverage than they did even two years ago.

The deeper idea underneath this conversation is that design itself is shifting upstream. Fix Hudson Link is powerful because it changes the structure of participation. It transforms disconnected frustration into collective visibility. That is design writ large. Not simply interface design, but systems design.

As AI accelerates production and execution, the value shifts toward people who can frame the right problem, organize signals from noise, and create systems that help groups coordinate, decide, and act together.

Carley’s project is a small but important example of that shift. One person. One frustration. One system. And suddenly, a public agency has to pay attention.

Want more? Check out the conversation about Fix Hudson Link on LinkedIn, and connect with Carley…and tell her Justin sent you!

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