Alle afleveringen
226 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
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Mariana Castilho - Evolving from designer to builder
25 september 2024 · 50 min
Mariana Castilho has one of the most impressive career trajectories of any designer I’ve ever met. Lees meer
I first saw her while mentoring through Shift Nudge and within a few years she’s landed roles at Universe, Vercel, and most recently as the first designer at Pierre.
One of the keys to her growth has been investing in her skills as an engineer. So a big part of this interview is learning what it takes to transition from designer to builder.
Some highlights:
The future of design engineering
What makes designing dev tools unique
How Mariana has grown as a visual designer
What it’s like working with design celebrities
What it means to care deeply about implementation
How she finally succeeded her 3rd time learning to code
How teams like Vercel consistently hit a high bar for craft
a lot more
Save $200 and join me in enrolling for UI Engineering 101 for designers
Mariana’s component library UI Labs
Mariana led the original design for v0 by Vercel
Vercel’s Geist Design System
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Janum Trivedi - What makes a software product feel great
18 september 2024 · 49 min
This week’s episode is with Janum Trivedi who makes some of the most stunning prototypes in all of design. So the main goal of this conversation is to answer the question “what makes a piece of software feel great?” Lees meer
Some of the key talking points:
The 3 levels of animation
Shipping a major refresh of the Netflix iOS app
Why shaders are a big deal (and how they work)
How Janum built the download animation for Arc
Why Janum built his own animation engine (Wave)
Learning the principles of fluid design working on the iPad pointer
a lot more
Check out Janum’s demos on his website
2018 WWDC talk “Designing fluid interfaces”
The Book of Shaders website
Disney’s 12 principles of animation
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Ben Blumenrose - Investing in the next wave of design founders
12 september 2024 · 52 min
Ben Blumenrose was one of the earliest designers at Facebook and has spent the last 12 years as a co-founder and Managing Partner of Designer Fund. That’s allowed him to invest in many of the design founders that you’ve heard from on this shown (like Jorn from Framer or Colin from Visual Electric). Lees meer
So the goal of this conversation is to tap into Ben’s perspective as a designer turned investor. This episode creates a blueprint for people interested in designing for startups or maybe even building a company of your own.
Some highlights:
The story of investing in Framer
How second-time founders think differently
Understanding your gaps as a design founder
What it looks like to truly act as an owner at a startup
What Ben looks for when investing in design founders
What types of market opportunities Ben is most excited about
How Ben transformed customer support in his first month at FB
The things you should be learning on the job before launching a startup
a lot more
Apply for the Designer Fund Partnership program
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Henry Modisett - Designing a unicorn AI startup from nothing
4 september 2024 · 53 min
Imagine leading the design of an AI product that skyrockets to a billion+ dollar valuation in under two years… Lees meer
That’s the story of Perplexity and today we get to hear from their founding designer and current Head of Design, Henry Modisett. Some of the highlights from this conversation:
What it takes to thrive as a founding designer
Why Henry likes hiring designers who can code
The challenges of designing dynamic interfaces
Why Henry didn’t want to anthropomorphize the AI
The initial creative direction for the Perplexity brand
The keys to making a consumer product cognitively fast
Why Henry built a mini design system as his very first step
a lot more
SHOW NOTES
Ivan (CEO of Notion)’s tweet about not having a design system
Perplexity’s incredible brand designer named Phi
We talked about how booking.com is a masterclass in optimizing UI
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Starting with a design system
Before Henry had any idea what the Perplexity product would become, he built a component system in React as the first step. The goal was to give himself a toolbox to make it easy to assemble new features. Many components are obvious (ex: you know you’ll need a grid, type system, color system, buttons, etc.). We don’t have to overcomplicate design systems. They’re the thing you invest in to move fast… not the thing you invest in once you have most of the interface figured out.
Empowerment through code
When you write code, you develop a stronger emotional attachment to the product. You’re also empowered to continually make improvements without having to go through engineers. The more removed you are from what ships, the easier it is to dish blame on someone else for an experience being janky.
“Having designers that can code is a hack…quality just happens”
Velocity is everything
Henry makes a point to prioritize velocity over exploration, debate, visual design, etc. And a big part of what makes that possible is empowering designers to make decisions. If it’s a UX question, t…
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Ryan Scott - Making strategic impact as a designer
29 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 7 min
This week's episode is with Ryan Scott who was an early designer at Doordash and then spent years as a design lead at Airbnb. Nowadays Ryan teaches hundreds of designers ranging from seniors to VPs how to make a bigger impact at your company. Lees meer
This episode is jam-packed with insights about:
What it’s like presenting at Airbnb CRIT
Ways to unlock your credibility as a designer
How to mitigate risk when presenting your ideas
What it takes to speak the language of the business
Types of “PM-y” questions that designers should be asking
How Ryan led a massive redesign of the Airbnb booking flow
The right (and wrong) way to make a case for investing in UX debt
How to talk about your work in a way that resonates with non-designers
a lot more
Get $100 off of Ryan’s course “Describing the ROI of design”
Ryan’s case study on redesigning the Airbnb checkout flow
Past interview with Alex Schleifer (Chief Design Officer at Airbnb)
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Oliur - Grow your personal brand and get noticed as a designer
28 augustus 2024 · 58 min
Investing in my personal brand has been the best investment I’ve ever made in my career. So I wanted to find the perfect designer to give a personal branding masterclass and I think it’s Oliur. Lees meer
He’s built a massive audience across YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, etc. and he shares his hard-earned knowledge in this episode:
Oliur’s keys to growing on social media
Different ways to create leverage in your career
How he (accidentally) landed a billion-dollar client
How you can get more confident putting yourself out there
Specific ways to build meaningful connections with other designers
What designers need to know to get better at marketing themselves
a lot more
Oliur cites James McDonald as an example of someone sharing their work
Oliur’s iPhone presets and high income streams videos
We talk about his friend Ali Abdaal (YouTuber, Podcaster, NYT bestseller)
Jason Levin’s iMessage screenshot of Travis Scott performing
I referenced Jack Butcher’s “this is pointless” graph
Dan Petty’s “That Marker Pack”
The old Audience Building course on Maven (RIP)
Turkish designer Oguz (Oliur talked about the power of his aesthetic)
Gabe Valdivia’s new app Almanac that he built with Cursor
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Maheen Sohail - Navigating ambiguity in AI design
22 augustus 2024 · 46 min
This week’s episode is with Maheen Sohail who is a senior staff designer working on generative at Meta. She joined as one of the earliest designers on both the VR and AI teams, so a big part of this discussion is about navigating ambiguity when there’s no clear playbook to follow. Lees meer
We go deep into:
New types of interface patterns for AI
The unique ways she thinks about prototyping
Ethical considerations when designing AI produdcts
How Maheen explores AI models through side projects
Why the goal posts for what it means to be a designer are shifting
a lot more
⭐ KEY TAKEAWAYS
Nobody knows what they’re doing
This is especially true when you’re designing products for emerging technologies like AI. It’s easy to look at people working on these AI-native products and assume they have it all figured out… but we’re all still learning and exploring what’s possible. This came up in George Kedenburg’s episode too.
Curiosity > everything
I asked Maheen what traits are more important than curiosity for people interested in designing AI products. Her answer? Nothing.
The importance of passion projects
There’s a trend I’m noticing in these interviews… the designers who are creating cutting edge use cases for AI are the ones actively exploring the technology with side projects. Reading essays isn’t the way to learn. You have to want something to exist in the world and use that as a reason to figure out what’s possible. For Maheen it was using AI models to colorize images of Pakistan. For Nate Parrott it was using AI to hallucinate in HTML.
Maheen references Alex Cornell’s storytelling abilities
Maheen’s demo for animating drawings (it’s very fun)
We referenced Colin Dunn’s episode about the importance of naming in AI products
Maheen’s colorized photos of Pakistan
Maheen’s FakeID podcast
Meta’s AI release
Maheen raved about the Rosebud journalling app
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George Kedenburg - Pushing past the pixels
15 augustus 2024 · 49 min
After 8 years designing at Meta, George Kedenburg III pulled a 180 and joined Humane as a design lead. So this conversation is a deep dive into designing AI products and how the role of product designer evolves in an AI-native company: Lees meer
How to become a creative problem solver
How George navigates ambiguity at Humane
Why there’s no such thing as an edge case with AI
What George learned while using AI to learn Python
How AI is reshaping the landscape for software design
Why George created a Slackbot to prototype his ideas
Why designing AI products is a bit like designing a kitchen
a lot more
Pushing past the pixels
The real value of design is being able to look at an ambiguous situation and understand what you should explore.
Rectangles so happen to be the most common way to express that value. But the real skill is creative problem solving.
Working at a company like Humane forces designers to contribute design thinking beyond the pixels.
Prompt design > prompt engineering
If the AI model is a chef, then you’re responsible for designing the kitchen.
You don’t know what the user will order, so it’s a lot of trial and error to ensure you have the right data on hand at the right moments.
It’s no different than thinking through drop-off in an onboarding flow. Which is why George views working with these models as “prompt design” rather than “prompt engineering”
There are no AI edge cases
When you’re prototyping AI products, your prototypes don’t “break” or “fall over” like they do in Figma. That’s because the boundaries of what exists in the prototype become much blurrier.
Instead of designing contained flows, you’re laying a foundation and allowing the model to extrapolate out from there. There are no more hard edges.
George mentions Claude Artifacts as an example of someone putting the pieces together in the right order
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Colin Dunn - What it takes to design a breakthrough AI product
8 augustus 2024 · 51 min
Visual Electric has quickly become my go-to product for image generation and in this week’s episode we get to learn from the founder and designer, Colin Dunn. The whole discussion is an excellent look at the design founder journey as well as a deep dive into AI-native creative tools. We get into the weeds about: Lees meer
Visual Electric’s big bet to take on Canva
The hidden challenges with designing AI products
Colin's approach to early user and market research
The art and science of raising funds for your startup
Where the value will accrue in the landscape for creative tools
Where Colin draws the line between abstraction and power in UX
The wild backstory of how the company was named “Visual Electric”
Lessons learned learned from early startup ideas that were shot down
Key takeaways:
AI is like electricity. Once we gained access to this new form of power, we immediately replaced candles with outlets. But it took 50+ years before the microwave and other staple household appliances were invented. When electricity came on the scene in the late 19th century it would’ve been impossible to imagine these types of products. Colin believes the electricity layer will quickly become commoditized, and instead is solely focused on building “appliances” for AI. Because someone is going to build the oven, the sewing machine, the coffee percolator, the electric can opener, etc. It might even be you 😉
Choosing the level of abstraction is one of the core challenges with designing AI products. Most users don’t want to be burdened by all of the knobs and levers of the AI model. That’s why it’s essential that we define new patterns and mental models that make AI easy to understand. But you have to be careful, because “the more you abstract something, the less control users have over it”. One example Colin shares is why they’re considering combining the “reference slider” and “creativity slider”. It simplifies the UX but at the cost of control. And striking that balance is one of th…
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Nate Parrott - Going from engineer to founding designer of Arc
1 augustus 2024 · 52 min
The Arc browser is one of the best products I’ve downloaded in the last few years which is why I’m so excited about this interview with their founding designer, Nate Parrott. Lees meer
This conversation, we get an inside look at what makes design at the Browser Company so unique. We discuss:
How Nate went from engineer at Snap to the Browser Co.
Why design at Arc prioritizes fingerprints > consistency
How Nate collaborates with engineers on Arc
The story behind Arc Search’s hook feature
The Browser Co’s culture of prototyping
How Nate balances intuition and data
a lot more…
Nate’s gamified personal website
A24 film studio
Nate references the Co-Star astrology app and the old Zenly app
Patrick Moberg (the designer on Boosts)
Karla Cole (the designer who pulls inspiration outside of tech)
Nate’s feeeed RSS app
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Dan LaCivita - A glimpse of the future of design tooling
25 juli 2024 · 42 min
This week’s episode is with Dan LaCivita who is a co-founder of Play—a new way to design mobile apps using native iOS materials. As soon as I saw this app clip I knew it was a big deal and that I had to interview him to learn more. Lees meer
So in this conversation we go deep into:
How to unlock the skill of interaction design
What Apple’s sandbox unlocks for designers
Why they decided to launch Play as a mobile app
The importance of keeping your hands in the clay
How AI might impact the future of interaction design
a lot more
Dan mentions his cofounder JoonYong Park
The App Clip that first blew my mind
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Gavin Nelson - Prototyping, interaction design, and learning SwiftUI
18 juli 2024 · 57 min
Gavin Nelson is currently designing the Linear mobile app in addition to the best app icons on the internet. So this episode is a deep dive into prototyping and interaction design: Lees meer
Gavin’s journey learning SwiftUI
How Gavin got into designing app icons
How to design physics-based interactions
What it’s like designing for power users at Linear
Why interaction design is so important for mobile apps
Why Gavin uses code almost exclusively for prototyping now
When it makes sense to prototype at the beginning of your process
The interplay between custom and stock components in mobile design
Things by Cultured Code
Janum shows interactions in the Netflix mobile app
Episode with Brian Lovin (who Gavin worked with at Github)
Episode with Alex Cornell (who started the design of the Linear mobile app)
Parallax effect from the Linear onboarding screen
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Vincent van der Meuelen - The story of Figma’s big AI pivot
11 juli 2024 · 43 min
If you watched last week’s episode, then you heard Jordan Singer say how visual search was actually the “killer feature” (not generative AI). What’s interesting is that this feature was actually a mid-project pivot. Lees meer
So in this episode we get the full behind-the-scenes of visual search from design engineer Vincent van der Meulen:
Why they decided to pivot
How Vincent went cowboy mode
A look at the future of design engineering
What good design looks like in an AI world
Why visual search is a big deal for future AI tools
How Vincent used video to get Figmates excited about his idea
a lot more
Marco and Jordan from the old Diagram team
Matt Dailey was the engineer that proved designs can be represented as images
2024 Config Keynote showing Vincent’s Uber example for visual search
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Jordan Singer - The future of AI in Figma
5 juli 2024 · 49 min
Live from Config, this episode with Jordan Singer follows his journey from the Diagram acquisition all the way to Figma’s 2024 AI release. We go deep into: Lees meer
What didn’t ship at Config and why
How they navigated the early idea maze
How the role of designer will be impacted by AI
What it will be like designing dynamic interfaces
What makes Jordan’s new role at Figma so unique
Why renaming layers was such a big internal debate
Why the sparkle icon will become the new floppy disk
The surprising pivot that led to Jordan’s favorite AI feature
How Jordan prototypes by hacking on top of the Figma code base
The old Diagram website
Figma’s new AI landing page
Figma’s blog post introducing AI
Figma’s 2024 Config Keynote
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Kathy Zheng - How to make the jump to staff designer
26 juni 2024 · 49 min
This week’s episode is with Kathy Zheng who is currently the Head of design at a Web3 protocol called Optimism. But before that she was the first designer at Patreon and went on to spend over 6 years at Github. Lees meer
So the goal of this conversation is to look at how Kathy grew as a designer while at Github and identify the specific milestones on her journey to reaching senior and eventually staff designer.
We get into the weeds about:
How the role of staff and senior designers differ
The traits shared by the best designers at Github
How to give your ideas a chance to become memes
How to avoid conversational spinout on your project
How to identify opportunities using systems thinking
How Kathy is growing as a design leader at Optimism
Specific techniques for storytelling and presenting ideas
Some of the people mentioned in this episode:
Max Schoening (former Head of design at Github)
Brian Lovin (bookmarking repo project)
Kat Fikui (coworker at Github whose .readme we mentioned)
Connor Sears (old manager at Github)
Jack Conte (Cofounder of Patreon)
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Alex Cornell - Mastering the art of influence
20 juni 2024 · 55 min
When you think about storytelling in design... Alex Cornell is often the person that comes to mind. And that's a big reason why he's one of the most requested guests on the show. So this episode is a deep dive into the finer details of communication. We talk about: Lees meer
The story behind his startup Cocoon
How Alex leverages his background in video
Alex’s precision and obsession with language
Why Alex left linear to work on generative AI at Meta
Why getting buy-in for your ideas is kind of like a math proof
Behind-the-scenes of the wild videos Alex made at Facebook
Lessons learned designing the Substack and Linear mobile apps
The mental models Alex uses to construct compelling narratives
a lot more
Alex’s startup Cocoon
Alex’s famous Chevron vs. 3 Dot video from Facebook
Alex’s favorite monospace font is Jet Brains and his favorite serif font is Tiempos
Klim is Alex’s favorite type foundry
We discussed the dual-panel approach in the Amie mobile app
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Maggie Appleton - Becoming an AI-native designer
12 juni 2024 · 53 min
This week’s episode with Maggie Appleton is a deep dive into designing for AI products and LLMs. Maggie shares about her experience as the first designer at Elicit (an AI assistant for research papers) and all of the unique challenges surrounding helping users interface with LLMs. Lees meer
We also go deep into:
How Maggie’s grown as a frontend developer
Why Maggie feels like she’s in a short-run limbo
Strategies for improving your technical literacy
How writing online has impacted Maggie’s career
The AI-native tools that Maggie is drawing inspiration from
How advancements in AI will redefine her role as a designer
How Maggie’s new understanding of LLMs is shaping the way she designs
Why Maggie is more interested in the cognitive applications of AI rather than generative AI
Maggie is currently leading design at Elicit (they’re hiring)
“How Trello is different” is where Joel Spolsky explains the differences between horizontal and vertical software
OpenAI’s introduction of ChatGPT-4o
We talked about the product tldraw
The expanding dark forest and generative AI: Maggie’s talk about the possible futures of flooding the web with AI-generated content
Episode with Soleio where he talks about looking for “time to proficiency” in design candidates
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Ian Wharton - The secret to great storytelling
6 juni 2024 · 53 min
Remember how Michael Wandelmeier told us Metalab hired a storytelling coach? Well that coach is Ian Wharton. He’s an Apple Design Award winner, CEO of Aide Health, and he teaches storytelling techniques to teams like Dyson, BBC, Huge, etc. Lees meer
So this episode breaks down the key storytelling concepts that he shares in his course Sell the Idea. We talk about the importance of the inciting incident, how to empower others to share your ideas, and a lot more…
But he also presents some compelling ideas about why designers are the most suited people to start companies that solve societal level challenges. All you need is a bias toward action. So if you’ve been considering starting your own thing, there’s a lot we can learn from Ian’s journey as a design founder.
Ian’s course Sell the Idea (use the code RIDD at checkout for 30% off)
Ian’s personal website
Ian’s business Aide Health
Mackinnon and Saunders (the stop motion company Ian worked with)
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Amy Lima - How to turn a layoff into a dream job
4 juni 2024 · 52 min
~6 months ago Amy Lima was laid off and has been preparing for this episode ever since. So in this interview she gives us an inside look at her process for landing a dream role at Duolingo. If you’re looking for your next role then this conversation is quite the playbook. She has the job hunt process down to a science. Lees meer
Some topics covered:
Avoiding burnout amidst the chaos
How Amy negotiated her Duolingo offer
Amy’s advice to proactively prepare for a layoff
The ways Amy iterated on her portfolio presentation
How Amy’s career coach shaped her interview strategy
Some hard lessons learned during her job hunt process
How Amy measured everything in her application process
a lot more
Show notes:
Amy’s layoff announcement post
Career Compass
Charlotte Burns (Amy’s job hunt coach)
Levels (transparency database + salary negotiation tools)
Amy’s job announcement post
Sponsors:
Framer: How I build websites
Jitter: How I animate my designs
Raycast: How I do everything on my computer
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Julius Tarng - Dissolving the line between design and engineering
30 mei 2024 · 50 min
Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer. Lees meer
He started the design tools team at Facebook where he made a massive impact on products like Origami.
He then freelanced as a design engineer for companies like Felt, Anthropic, and even prototyped some of the early AI features for the Arc browser.
Now he’s in his first-ever engineering role at Linear.
So this conversation is a deep dive into what it looks like for designers to approach their work with an engineering mindset. We talk about Julius’s deep background in prototyping, how he collaborates with designers at Linear. And we also get into why the current state of design engineering is a missed opportunity.
If you’re looking to grow as a software designer then you’ll love this episode.
Show notes:
Julius’s twitter
Felt — a better way to work with maps
Daniel Smith (Linear designer that Julius pairs with)
Origami (Facebook’s prototyping tool)
Brandon Walkin (ex: Facebook, Apple, now at OpenAI) who made the adaptive pointer for iPad.
What are GPUs and Shaders? (Julius’s tutorial video)
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Raphael Schaad - Designing a startup from 0 to acquisition
23 mei 2024 · 48 min
When it comes to design founder stories, Raphael Schaad’s is one of the best. So this episode is the first-ever telling of how Raphael designed and built Cron (which became Notion Calendar). We talk about: Lees meer
Sketching on paper vs. sketching in code
Why shipping quality software is like camping
How Raphael identified the MVP of the problem
What it was like building Cron in YC during COVID
Why you should design dialogues as first-class citizens
Why Raphael didn’t invest much in the Cron landing page
The differences between a design toolkit and a design system
a lot more lessons from a successful first-time design founder
Raphael’s Twitter
The OG Cron website
Screenshot of the Cron dialogues in Figma
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Alex Schleifer - How design at Airbnb creates a culture of craft at scale
16 mei 2024 · 48 min
Alex Schleifer was the long-time Chief Design Officer at Airbnb where he grew the team from ~35 to over 600 people. So this conversation is an inside look at what makes design at Airbnb so special. We discuss: Lees meer
How to create a culture of decisiveness
Why great design leaders are like chefs
How to succeed in executive CRITs at Airbnb
How designers should prepare for an AI future
What it means to operate with a “first team” mindset
What it takes to achieve Airbnb’s level of craft at scale
Which elements of the Airbnb culture you can instill for your team
a lot more
Alex’s Twitter and Linkedin
Alex’s “People vs. Algorithms” podcast
Mentioned Airbnb alumni:
Katie Dill (Head of Design at Stripe)
Ethan Eismann (SVP Design at Slack)
Karri Saarinen (CEO at Linear)
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Noam Segal - Tools and tactics for modern user research
9 mei 2024 · 56 min
Noam Segal has led research at companies like Meta, Airbnb, Wealthfront, Twitter, and most recently Upwork. He also teaches the #1 user research course on Maven. So this episode is a masterclass in user research. We discuss: Lees meer
How to conduct better interviews
The keys to an effective research plan
How to become a masterful research storyteller
How AI is creating a new wave of research tools
When to rely on qualitative vs. quantitative tactics
The modern user research tools you need to know about
How to ensure research is integrated in the product process
Noam’s modern research tech stack:
Sprig
Genway
Dscout
Steve Portigal’s book: Interviewing users (how to uncover compelling insights)
Mr. Beast’s YouTube
Lenny’s Podcast with Judd Antin: The UX research reckoning is here
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Helen Tran - Designing with a founder mindset
2 mei 2024 · 46 min
Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startup for three years. So the goal of this conversation is to figure out how that period of time impacted her design practice so we can all learn how to design with a founder’s mindset. In this episode we discuss: Lees meer
- How Helen is approaching design leadership differently this time around
- How Helen constructors hypotheses to influence product strategy
- Why Helen made sacrifices to her production skills
- The keys to designing in a pre-PMF company
- The #1 way to help founders
- + a lot more
Helen’s website - https://helentran.com/
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub N
ow you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Hunter Hammonds - Positioning pt. 2: How to scale to $1M+
25 april 2024 · 54 min
Today we're talking with designer and entrepreneur, Hunter Hammonds, who has grown 5 different agencies to millions in revenue in less than a year. So in this episode we walk through the different stages of building an independent design business—starting from positioning yourself as a solopreneur all the way to scaling operations to 7 figures. We get into the weeds about: Lees meer
- Hunter’s framework for selling yourself on a landing page
- The tactics OffMenu uses to convert more leads to customers
- Why Hunter thinks MRR is a misguided metric
- What operational fat you can trim to increase margins
- How you can improve your sales calls
- + a lot more
- Petr Knoll - https://twitter.com/iampetrknoll (design partner OffMenu)
- Christian O’Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/obrienchristian/ (CEO OffMenu)
- Sahil Bloom - https://twitter.com/SahilBloom (partner OffMenu)
- Agencies
- Instrument - https://www.instrument.com/
- Basic - https://www.basicagency.com/
- Ueno - https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/06/twitter-acquihires-creative-agency-ueno-to-help-design-new-products/
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Nick Pattison - Positioning pt. 1: How to make $15k/week
24 april 2024 · 42 min
Ready for a masterclass in positioning? Nick Pattison has been working for himself for well over 10 years... but recently he's laser-focused on running 1-week brand sprints (and it's working). So this episode is a deep dive into his new freelance playbook: Lees meer
- The automations that allow him to focus on sales and creative direction
- Lessons learned from running 25+ brand sprints at $15k each
- How Nick focuses on growing his creative muscles
- His strategies for presenting work to clients
- Why he stopped writing proposals
- + a lot more…
- Nick’s agency: Primary Studio - https://primary.studio/
- Nick’s talent company: Stellar - https://www.stellar.work/
- Nick’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/thenickpattison
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Dennis Müller - Designing with soul
18 april 2024 · 48 min
This episode is the ultimate design founder story. Dennis shares all of the ups and downs along his journey to build Amie—a new productivity tool that captures your emails, calendar, and to-dos in a single beautiful product. Some of the highlights: Lees meer
- Where Dennis draws inspiration
- The traits Dennis looked for in early hires
- What Dennis looks for in design candidates
- The backstory behind Amie’s viral website launch
- How Dennis balances his intuition with product feedback
- How Dennis thinks about innovating vs. capitalizing on familiarity
- Things 3 app - https://culturedcode.com/things/
- Stefan - https://twitter.com/_animify the Amie design engineer
- Devin - https://www.cognition-labs.com/introducing-devin—AI coder
- Brian Chesky interview - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach on Lenny’s Podcast
- The Amo app - https://amo.co/
- Dennis’s custom Amie pants - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEoOIsjW0AUYiTj?format=jpg&name=900x900
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Vercel’s Glenn Hitchcock & John Pham - Design engineering deep dive
11 april 2024 · 42 min
Over the last few months, design engineering has by far been the #1 most requested topic. So I wanted to get the inside scoop from the team at Vercel to learn more. In this episode we get to hear from: Lees meer
1. Glenn Hitchcock - https://twitter.com/glennui (Director of design engineering)
2. John Pham - https://twitter.com/JohnPhamous (Lead design engineer)
The goal of this conversation is to help people understand the role that design engineers play and to outline a path you can take to develop some of these skills. We talk about:
- The strategy behind Vercel’s new website
- Why Vercel built a design engineering team
- How designers collaborate with design engineers
- What Vercel looks for when hiring design engineers
- How Vercel is always building with re-usability in mind
- + a lot more - Maggie Appleton’s quote on software creation from our group interview
- https://anthonyhobday.com/blog/20240122.html
- vercel.com/ship
- Framer components - https://drams.framer.website/ (inspired by Dieter Rams’ design principles)
- Screwball scramble - https://us.tomy.com/screwball-scramble/
- Dead Simple Sites - https://deadsimplesites.com/
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Michael Wandelmaier - Envisioning the art of the possible
4 april 2024 · 54 min
Since the beginning of my design career, I’ve looked up to Metalab. So this interview is a special one because we get to learn from their Head of Design, Michael Wandelmeier. We go deep into how design works at Metalab and talk about specific strategies around: Lees meer
- Mike’s go-to storytelling tactics
- The importance of opinionated design
- When they ignore constraints on a project
- The unique way they map out user journeys
- Tips for driving alignment on complex projects
- How they use the “ridiculously early hypothesis”
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Adam Mura - How to design and build websites faster with AI
3 april 2024 · 28 min
One of the tools I'm most interested in right now is Relume. 200k+ people are using it to design and build websites faster with AI. They have a massive set of Figma/Webflow components which allows them to take a unique approach that “respects the process” of web design. In this bonus episode, their co-founder Adam gives us an end-to-end demo where he sitemaps, wireframes, designs, and builds a full website in ~30 min. We then get into the weeds about: Lees meer
- How the web design process will evolve with AI
- What this means for the role of designer
- His journey as a design founder adapting to AI
- Where Relume is headed next as a company
👀 Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
- Relume’s Figma library - https://www.relume.io/figma-library
- Relume’s Webflow library - https://www.relume.io/components
- Galileo - https://www.usegalileo.ai/explore (another AI tool we mentioned)
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Rich Arnold - Becoming a creative problem solver
28 maart 2024 · 38 min
Rich Arnold was the Head of Design at Vine, a design lead on the early Instagram Stories team, and now he works as a design manager at Coinbase. So this episode goes deep into: Lees meer
- How Rich grew as a storyteller at IG
- Why we cant let data be the designer
- The importance of “zooming out” in your work
- How to grow your creative problem solving muscles
- What it takes to design successful consumer products
- Ian Spalter (Old Head of Design at Instagram) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianspalter/
- Rus Yusupov (Cofounder of Vine and HQ Trivia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus_Yusupov#:~:text=Rus%20Yusupov%20(born%20May%204,and%20CEO%20of%20HQ%20Trivia.
- Lapse (Mobile App) - https://www.lapse.com/)
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Brad Frost - The new frontier of design systems
21 maart 2024 · 51 min
If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems teams around the world. So in this discussion we talk about the types of challenges he faces at Big Medium and how he’s envisioning the future of design systems: Lees meer
Why we should build a universal design system
How Brad is using AI to elevate design systems
How design systems designers can succeed in an AI world
The highest leverage activities for DS designers to do
How designers can communicate better with engineers
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Gabe Valdivia - Storytelling, freelancing, and designing 0 to 1
14 maart 2024 · 45 min
One of the most requested guests has been Gabe Valdivia. He was an early designer at Facebook, a designer manager at Google, and has led design for different startups over the years most recently as the head of design for Patreon. But in the last year he's made the jump to start his own practice and position himself as a fractional design partner for early stage teams. So a lot of this conversation gets into the weeds about what it's like to design 0 to 1 experiences. We talk about tactics for speed, storytelling, prototyping and a lot more... Lees meer
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿
🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Andy Allen - What’s wrong with software design today
7 maart 2024 · 48 min
As soon as I read No More Boring Apps I was hooked. Andy Allen immediately became one of my design heroes and now I use his Not Boring apps daily. So this conversation is a behind-the-scenes of his journey, an analysis of the state of software design, and a glimpse of where we’re headed next as an industry. Some highlights: Lees meer
- The design tools Andy is most excited about
- Andy’s advice for people wanting to learn 3D
- The differences between good and great design
- The 4 things needed for design to have cultural impact
- How AI will empower us to deliver tailored software at scale
- Why the future of design tooling might mirror the game industry
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Jenny Wen - The art of designing for delight
29 februari 2024 · 41 min
In this episode we get to hear from Jenny Wen who is the person who originally designed and brought Figjam to market. This conversation is full of inslights like: Lees meer
How Jenny attacks ambiguity early in the design process
What we can learn from Figjam’s product strategy
Jenny’s framework for adding delight to a product
How to create visuals that stand out in a sea of confetti animations
Strategies for facilitating live workshops in Figjam
What Jenny looks for in design candidates
Jenny’s vision for the future of Figjam
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8 key takeaways from season 4
22 februari 2024 · 24 min
This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc. Lees meer
1. A unique way to stand out as a design candidate
2. How to grow as a vision caster
3. The question every freelancer should ask clients
4. The curse of knowledge in web design
5. When systems thinking is most important
6. Strategies for Figma variables
7. The Craft Flywheel
8. How to know which details matter
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Soleio - What makes a truly great software designer
14 februari 2024 · 53 min
Soleio made a name for himself as the 2nd design hire at Facebook and eventually went on to lead design at Dropbox. Now he invests in extraordinary software startups like Figma, Framer, Vercel, Perplexity, Replit, Universe, tldraw, and dozens more worldwide. So in this discussion we go deep into: Lees meer
- The fascinating story behind project Motion
- How Soleio’s skillset evolved during his time at Facebook
- When it makes sense to invest in craft (and when it doesn’t)
- what Soleio looks for when hiring designers
- How startups can attract the top design talent
- Why Soleio is so excited about spatial computing
- The type of companies Soleio is looking to invest in next
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Bonus Episode: Helen Zhou - How designers can get the most out of AI tools
13 februari 2024 · 31 min
Galileo recently broke design twitter with the launch of their new generative AI tool for builders. So in this episode we talk with their co-founder and lead designer, Helen Zhou about: Lees meer
- Her journey as a design founder
- Why user research for AI tooling is unique
- How AI will change the day-to-day role of a designer
- Her response to concerns about LLMs and creativity
- The potential breakthrough use case for UI generation
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Kevin Wong - How design works at Webflow
8 februari 2024 · 41 min
Webflow has had as big an impact on design as any company over the last decade. So this episode is an inside look at their design culture, rituals, and key insights from their Head of Design, Kevin Wong. Here’s a preview of some of the ideas we cover: Lees meer
- How Webflow executed a massive rebrand leading up to their conference
- The different types of prototypes for driving alignment
- The role of design systems in their latest visual refresh
- How designers can handle situations where stakeholders disagree
- Ways to improve the way you share your work via Loom
- The rituals and processes used by designers at Webflow
- How design casts vision with “north stars”
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Ryo Lu - Systems thinking for product designers
1 februari 2024 · 32 min
In this episode we get to hear from Ryo Lu who was one of the very first designers at Notion. This conversation is an inside look at the Notion design process, how they think about product, and a lot more: Lees meer
- How Notion approached the user research process for AI
- Strategies for improving your systems thinking
- How design at Notion sources feedback on meaty problems
- How Notion thinks about their design system
- What Ryo is looking for in your portfolio
- How to operate outside the traditional “design” role
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning
🤿 🌐 dive.club
🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Molly Hellmuth - Building design systems with variables in Figma
25 januari 2024 · 46 min
In this episode we’re talking with Molly Hellmuth who is the creator of UI Prep where she has an incredible newsletter, design system, and course where she’s taught hundreds of designers all over the world. This discussion gets into the nerdier side of Figma 🤓 We talk all about: Lees meer
- When it does and doesn’t make sense to adopt variables
- How to make sure you don’t invest in a Figma strategy that you later regret
- Molly’s favorite Figma plugins for design systems
- How she’s building components differently in V8 of her UI Prep design system
- Her journey as an independent creator
- + a lot more
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Derek Briggs - Creating a culture of craft
18 januari 2024 · 41 min
There’s a new design super team emerging at Clerk and in this episode we get a behind-the-scenes from the leader, Derek Briggs. We get into the weeds about: Lees meer
- How Derek assembled an A-list team from scratch
- Why Derek pushed for a dedicated UI engineering team
- How Clerk is approaching their massive redesign
- Why Derek doesn’t believe in design deadlines - The business case for prioritizing quality - Derek’s #1 piece of advice for younger designers - + a lot more Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
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Tommy Geoco - How designers can bring their ideas to life
10 januari 2024 · 52 min
In this episode we get to learn from Tommy Geoco who has launched countless projects, sold a startup, and built an audience of almost a million designers online. This conversation has everything—here’s a little taste of what you can expect: Lees meer
- The wild story behind Tommy selling his first company
- Why design tools matter more than ever
- How to become better at selling yourself
- Tons of strategies for your next side project
- Tommy’s mental model for learning as a self-taught designer
- Why Tommy doesn’t care about being novel
- Ways to improve your “taste” as a designer
- Why Tommy acquired UX Tools (and his plans for it)
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Kevin Twohy - How to build an independent design practice
4 januari 2024 · 50 min
This episode looks at Kevin Twohy’s 10+ year journey going from solo freelancer to independent design studio. We cover a LOT including: Lees meer
- Strategies for cold outreach and pricing
- Tips for getting aligned quickly with clients
- How Kevin gets plugged into a new team
- Why Kevin has started positioning himself as a studio
- A better way to take equity in client projects
- Why you should be wary of starting a productized agency
- + a lot more
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Lauren LoPrete - Inside design systems at Dropbox and Cash App
3 januari 2024 · 39 min
Lauren LoPrete shares lessons from her experience leading design systems at Dropbox and now at Cash App. We talk about: Lees meer
- What design systems actually look like at scale
- Why she’s approaching documentation differently at Cash
- Her experience in the Figma variables beta
- Why Lauren is so excited about string variables
- Traits of successful DS designers that we don’t talk about enough
- + a lot more
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Kate Syuma - Designing with a growth mindset
27 december 2023 · 44 min
Kate Syuma was the 3rd designer at Miro and went on to become the Head of Growth Design during her 6+ years at the company. This episode is a masterclass in designing for business impact. We discuss: Lees meer
- Her process for identifying the aha moment in your product
- How Kate overcame imposter syndrome in her first year
- Ways designers can ask better data questions
- Insights from researching onboarding at 80+ companies
- The importance of designing for emotion vs. solving problems
- + a lot more
If you want to learn more about Kate definitely check out: Growthmates - https://katesyuma.substack.com/ ✌️
Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub
Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪
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Soren Iverson - Training your creative muscles
21 december 2023 · 37 min
If you’ve opened Twitter in the last year then you’re definitely familiar with Soren Iverson’s satirical designs like Uber Hotbox and the iMessage typing indicator. So in this episode we get an inside look at his process and lessons he’s learned throughout his career: Lees meer
How he overcomes creative blocks
Strategies for being consistent
What it was like collaborating with Duolingo
How to jumpstart your network online
Tactics for growing your product sense
Why Soren is learning to code
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Kathryn Gonzalez - Defining the visual language for DoorDash
14 december 2023 · 46 min
In this episode, Kathryn Gonzalez walks us through how she built the DoorDash design language as the first designer and frontend engineer. We talk about what it's like designing for a 3-sided marketplace, how to figure out the right level of craft for your product, and get an inside look at how DoorDash structures their design system. Lees meer
Kathryn spent almost 7 years at DoorDash and eventually became the Head of Design Infrastructure so this episode is chalk full of wisdom ✨
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Figma prototyping masterclass (from the team who designed it)
7 december 2023 · 49 min
This Deep Dive is a special one because we get to hear from Niko Klein and Garrett Miller from the prototyping team at Figma. Lees meer
We get a behind-the-scenes look at everything that led up to the advanced prototyping release at Config 2023 as well as:
How Niko collaborates with engineering
The prototyping feature they didn’t think they would release
How they balanced power and simplicity while designing the expression builder
Traits of a prototyping culture
Strategies for prototype fidelity
The future of prototyping in Figma
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Marco Cornacchia - The man who broke design Twitter
30 november 2023 · 48 min
In 2022, Marco Cornacchia was coming off of a failed startup and started working on his new portfolio. Little did he know this project would land him a role as the founding designer at Diagram, lay the foundation for design Twitter’s most viral website, and spawn a talk at Webflow’s conference 🤯 In this episode, Marco shares how he (accidentally) created a new trend of animated bento grids. And we also get a behind the scenes of what it was like being the founding designer of Diagram and ultimately getting acquired by Figma. If you’re interested in designing at a startup then you’ll love this episode ✌️ Lees meer