Design was nevermeant to be a department.
Somewhere along the way, design became a room you had to book. A queue you joined. A file someone else owned. We think it should be a conversation the whole team is already having, and we built Otto to put it back there.
Design happens in conversation.
The best design decisions your team makes don't happen in a design tool. They happen in a thread: someone asks, someone pushes back, someone says "what if." Then the conversation ends, and one person goes off alone to render it.
We think the rendering should happen inside the conversation, where everyone can see it.
Anyone should be allowed to ask.
Most teams ration design. There's a queue, a ticket, a two-week wait. So the PM ships a doc, the engineer ships a form with default styles, and the designer inherits both.
Asking for a design should cost about as much as asking a question. Mention @otto, describe the thing, and get a first draft back in the thread you're already in.
Design in the open.
Show the page, not a picture of the page.
A static mockup asks people to imagine. A link asks them to click. Every request Otto takes ends in a real, clickable preview, so feedback is about the thing itself, not a JPEG of it.
Build in the open.
Otto works where the whole team can watch. Every step is visible, every comment lands mid-build, and anyone can steer. No black box, no big reveal at the end of the week.
Design in the open is faster. It's also more honest.
Designers stay in charge.
Otto is not a replacement for a designer. It's the first draft: real, editable, and importable into the tools your designers already use. When a pro's hand matters, they pick it up and keep going.
No redraws. No lock-in. Taste is still a human job.
In short.
Otto is our attempt at all of this. It's early, it's a private beta, and we're letting new teams in every week. If any of the above sounds like your team, we'd like to build it with you.
Otto