KAGI
Designing clarity for the privacy-minded
At-a-Glance
Kagi’s search engine is built on privacy, polish, and precision.
Our challenge was to bring live data into results without breaking trust.
Widget Design System
Highlights
Widgets load instantly, trigger only on clear intent, and reveal nothing beyond what’s searched.
Premium Minimalism
A design language of restraint and rhythm: typography, motion, and spacing carry meaning.
One Language- Many Domains
Weather, Sports, Stocks, Currency share a single interaction and system logic.
Discover
Design was meant to be a finishing touch, something to add once the logic was solved.
It quickly became clear that design was not decoration, it was definition.
How the widgets looked, felt, and appeared would shape trust and identity within a privacy-first search experience. We began exploring how to make data feel alive without feeling loud.
- Must load instantly and respect privacy
- Minimal UI, calm motion, mobile + desktop
- Trigger only when user intent is clear
The Realization
After the first design round, it was clear we missed the mark.
It was an oversight that we skipped an important part of the process.
What we did next
I convened a joint workshop with Kagi’s internal design team to mood-board and define a shared language we called Premium Minimalism: quiet, precise, human.
That north star realigned scope, staffing, and decision-making around a design-forward outcome.
It was about restraint and polish.
Clarity over clutter.
The System
A shared model structured each widget into three tiers:
Core — essentials only (current temp, live score, price)
Interactive — expansion, toggles, graphs
Context — added depth (AQI, fundamentals, alerts)
That modular framework became a repeatable pattern for Weather, then Sports, Stocks, and Currency
Trigger Logic
A good widget is the one that knows when not to show up.
We built intent-aware rules to decide when widgets should appear.
Entity + keyword combinations (“Paris weather,” “AAPL stock”) triggered results only when user intent was certain.
Because in privacy-first design, a good widget knows when not to show up.
Rules of thumb
- Entity + keyword (e.g., “Paris weather today,” “AAPL stock price”)
- Confidence thresholds and disambiguation (Giants team ≠ giant squid)
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Fail-safe defaults (no widget beats a wrong widget)
Design Principles
Quiet intelligence
Information is present, never pushy.
Human rhythmMicro-animations echo natural transitions (sunrise, wind, momentum).
Tactile minimalismStructure, spacing, and typography carry the weight; color and motion support meaning.
ContinuityOne interaction language across widgets — fewer patterns, better muscle memory.
Outcome
What began as a data-rendering engagement became a design language for Kagi’s product ecosystem.
The widgets didn’t just display information, they helped define how Kagi feels.
Privacy and polish weren’t trade-offs; they were symbiotic.
The result set a new standard for how information could appear: private, precise, and beautifully understated.
What we delivered
- Design strategy, moodboards, and Premium Minimalism spec
- Weather, Sports, Stocks and Currency Conversion Widgets.
- Cross-widget feature matrices (MVP → Future)
- Triggering decision matrix + test cases
- Developer-ready documentation and design library
My Role
I led the product vision and design strategy, reframed the brief around experience quality, and defined the modular widget architecture.
I directed the visual and interaction language of Premium Minimalism and built interactive prototypes, logic matrices, and developer documentation to ensure the system scaled with coherence and grace.
How I led
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Design Strategy: Set the product vision and success criteria; reframed the brief around experience quality.
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System Thinking: Defined a modular widget architecture to scale across Weather, Sports, Stocks, Currency.
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Creative Direction: Established the Premium Minimalism tone — typography, motion, color, density.
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Cross-Discipline Leadership: Bridged design, development, business analysis, and research to keep velocity and coherence.
- Hands-on Craft: Prototyped interactions, graphs, and states; specified triggers, units, and error cases.