Dive Club 🤿 (Ridd)

One of the most impressive things I’ve seen a designer make all year is Meng To’s Dreamcut.

It’s the perfect example of what it looks like to transition from traditional designer to builder 💪 So if you’re interested in becoming a designer who ships then this is the episode for you.

Meng gives a highly practical breakdown of what it looks like to go from 0 to 50,000+ lines of code as a designer. And Meng is the perfect person to onboard you into tools like Claude and Cursor because he’s spent 10+ years teaching designers how to code through Design+Code. So in this episode we go deep into:

• Meng’s tech stack and go-to AI tools
• How to fine-tune visual details in code
• The secret to an effective first 10 prompts
• How to find the perfect first project to build
• How much code you need to know to build with AI
• What parts were easier/harder than Meng expected
• Why Meng considers Claude the newest design tool
• a lot more…

• Meng uses Claude + Cursor to build his ideas
• Meng’s original .svg pattern product that he build to get started
• Meng’s new Dream Cut editor
• Meng previously used Screen Studio (which is awesome), CapCut, and Eleven Labs for videos
• AI typically uses TailwindCSS (Meng also mentioned the Shadcn component library)
• Meng also mentioned V0 and Bolt as alternatives to Claude
• Scratch is visual programming for kids

My #1 source of imposter syndrome is when I see designers prototyping beautiful interactions like this or even this.

It’s one thing to create gorgeous interfaces, but crafting complex interactions from first principles is designing on expert mode. And it’s a big reason why Linear lists interactions as a requirement three separate times in their job description for principal designer.

So this week’s episode is all about how to unlock the skill of interaction design 👇

• Gavin Nelson (Mobile designer for Linear)
• Janum Trivedi (Prototyping specialist at Airbnb)
• Alex Cornell (Gen-AI designer at Meta)
• Dennis Muller (Founder + designer at Amie)
• Dan LaCivita (Co-founder of Play)

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.

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

In this deep Dive, James gives us a behind-the-scenes of his creative process and how he is reimagining every pixel of the Clerk brand. We get into the weeds of how he establishes visual languages, his approach to animation, and what he looks for in a motif.

We also discuss which design trends are worth jumping on, which ones have peaked, and which ones to avoid. If you're into branding, visual design, or landing page techniques then you'll love this episode.

How do designers from today’s top teams collaborate with engineers?

After many interviews I'm starting to notice a trend…

The highest functioning product teams throw away a lot of code and it’s a good model for what the new “handoff” process will look like. So this video highlights how it works at teams like Figma, Vercel, Perplexity, Airbnb, and more.

• Jenny Wen (OG designer of Figjam now at Anthropic)
• Teo Connor (VP of Design at Airbnb)
• John Pham (former design engineer at Vercel)
• Vincent van der Meulen (design engineer at Figma)
• Balint Orosz (cofounder of Craft Docs)
• Derek Briggs (Design + Code at Hypermode)
• Anthony Menecola (Staff designer at Shopify)
• Ammaar Reshi (Head of Design at ElevenLabs — episode coming soon)

I’m designing a new product and a few months ago I would’ve confidently said it’s not an AI product. But I was wrong.

This new technology creates endless opportunities… we just have to be able to see what AI makes possible. And that’s what this episode is all about.

• Maggie Appleton (former design lead at Elicit)
• Joel Lewenstein (head of product design at Anthropic)
• George Kedenburg III (designer at Humane)
• Michael Wandelmaier (designer at Dropbox)

This week's episode is with Anthony Menecola who is a longtime staff product designer at Shopify so we’re going to do a deep dive into ways you can make a bigger impact at your company as an IC.

One of the big themes of this episode is Anthony’s journey becoming more technical and contributing to the Shopify code base so if you’re interested in building your ideas I think you’ll get a lot out of this one.

We also talk about:

• The archetypes of staff designers at Shopify
• What it takes to create an impactful proposal
• Ways to build strategic relationships at Shopify
• How to strategically circulate your design ideas
• The art of sharing effective async video updates
• How Anthony identifies future-facing ideas to explore
• a lot more

• Anthony’s website and Twitter
• The Shop app

The pendulum has swung too far with design systems. Somehow they’ve become synonymous with scale. But I believe they’re the perfect first step for startups. So this episode looks at stories from Perplexity and Cron to reframe design systems as the key to speed in the early days.

Henry Modisett (Head of Design at Perplexity): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/henry-modisett

Raphael Schaad (founder of Cron / Notion Calendar): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/raphael-schaad

Brad Frost (author of Atomic Design): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/brad-frost

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.

Kathryn spent almost 7 years at DoorDash and eventually became the Head of Design Infrastructure so this episode is chalk full of wisdom ✨

Did you know that the very first interface designer at Adobe was also the first designer to work on Figma? 🤯

His name is Andrei Herasimchuk and he knows a lot about design tooling…

So this week’s episode is jam-packed with stories about designing the earliest interfaces for Illustrator and Photoshop, as well as what it was like seeing the original seed of an idea that became Figma.

Not only that… Andrei gives us a behind-the-scenes of his new design tooling startup and shares his vision for where software creation is headed next 👀

Some highlights to expect:

• How AI fits into his new product strategy
• The bizarre story of Andrei’s first day at Adobe
• The 3 types of designers that will exist in the future
• What it was like joining Figma as the first designer in 2012
• How Andrei defined the initial keyboard shortcuts in design tools
• The #1 trait of designers he’s worked with over the last 3 decades
• When to break out of the familiar interaction patterns for design tooling
• a lot more

• Bryan Lamkin was Andrei’s first manager at Adobe
• Mark Hamburg was who he collaborated with on the original keyboard shortcuts

Lovable has quickly become the go-to way I build my ideas with AI and this week we get to hear from their first designer Nad Chishtie.

We go deep into what it takes to succeed as a founding designer and all of the ways AI is shaping modern product teams.

Some highlights:

• Nad’s tips for collaborating creatively with AI tools
• How designers can be enablers instead of bottlenecks
• How Nad balances Figma with new AI tools like Lovable
• Why Lovable built and deleted a Figma-like layers panel
• What it’s like at the fastest growing startup in European history
• a lot more

• Nad mentions one of his favorite AI tools Granola
• I talked about Unicorn Studio

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:

• 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

You can have the greatest design concepts in the world, but none of that matters if they don't make it into production.

So this episode is all about how to create an aura of inevitability around your ideas.

It features stories from early Facebook, Webflow, and Figma 👇

• Vincent van der Meulen (Design engineer at Figma)
• Soleio pt. 1 / pt. 2 (second designer at Facebook)
• Kevin Wong (Head of product at Webflow)

In this episode, Jorn shares the full Framer story starting with his journey as an early designer at Facebook. He also provides insights into Framer’s 9-year overnight success story and a sneak peek of their plans moving forward. We also jam on the potential impact of AI on design—just wait until you hear Jorn's take on the future of design systems ✌️.

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:

- 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

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.

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)

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.

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

Most designers fall into the same trap when presenting their ideas.

So this ~5 min episode breaks down how to pitch your designs like a pro.

• Chris Abad
• Gabe Valdivia

🗣 This interview was special because I got to reconnect with former team member at Maven — Yuan ✌️

Yuan led design at Twitter, Airbnb and Maven and actively coaches creative leaders in the industry ✨

In this interview we talk energy through your career, how we organize our portfolio websites and strategies for presenting work to stakeholders.

In this Deep Dive, David Hoang gives us a peek into where he thinks the industry is headed and how product designers can prepare for the future. We talk about:

• What AI in Figma might look like
• How to create a more accessible web
• The rise of the design founder
• How dynamic interfaces impact design systems
• Why the title “software designer” is trending up 📈

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:

• 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

It’s impossible to overstate the impact that Linear has had on the design world. So you can imagine how excited I was to have the opportunity to learn from their founding designer, Adrien Griveau 🙌

This Deep Dive is an all-access pass to design at Linear including Adrien’s approach to collaborating with the engineering team, the traits that Linear looks for in design candidates and a behind-the-scenes of Linear’s product process.

Enjoy :)

This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc.

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

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:

• 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

This week’s episode is with Joel Lewenstein who is the Head of Product Design at Anthropic where he works on cutting edge AI products like Claude. After 80+ episodes, I can honestly say this one’s “juice per minute” score is off the charts.

Some of my favorite highlights:

• How the team prototyped Claude Artifacts
• New mental models for designing AI products
• The way designers shape strategy at Anthropic
• How to master the dark art of prompting as a designer
• The future of language as the dominant interface for AI
• Designing for infinite degrees of freedom vs. user journeys
• How Joel designed his interview process at Airtable/Anthropic
• a lot more…

• The CEO of Anthropic (Dario Amodei)’s essay: Machines of Loving Grace
• A new 3 minute video showing how the team built Claude Artifacts
• Chad Thornton was the Head of Design at Airtable
• Everett Katigbak is the Brand Creative Director at Anthropic
• Kim Bost is the design leader Joel collaborates with a lot
• Joel mentioned Jason Yuan’s interview about designing AI products with soul

I’ve spent a lot of time studying how the best design teams operate and two of my favorites are Ramp and Plaid.

So this episode shines a light on specific practices they put in place to create a culture of craft 👇

This episode of Deep Dives highlights the 5 things I learned from interviewing designers like Dan Mall, Grace Walker, Adrien Griveau, Yuan Wang, and Luis Ouriach. You'll learn:

1) How to organize variables in Figma and think strategically about primitives vs. semantic tokens

2) How to price yourself as a first-year freelance designer

3) How the best design systems teams operate

4) How to level up your design portfolio and rethink your case studies

5) How to collaborate with engineers like the founding designer at Linear

In this episode, Brian Lovin talks about his journey as a second-time founder and gives a behind-the-scenes of building his new startup, Campsite. He also shares key insights from hundreds of interviews he’s conducted to learn more about what makes a great design process. We talk about: - Strategies for sharing your work and getting feedback - Why Brian thinks we’ve gone too far with landing page design - Finding the right level of craft as a design founder - Why Brian no longer thinks every designers should start a company - The problems with post-COVID design process - What he’s doing differently as a second-time founder - The three values he’s instilling in the design culture at Campsite + a lot more

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:

• 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

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:

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 💪

This week’s episode is with Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, the cofounder and Chief Design Officer at Runway—one of the leading generative AI companies in the world today.

The way they work is incredibly unique. So a big focus of this interview is digging into how AI is shifting the way products get built and what it all means for designers:

• How the lines are blurring between roles
• How AI flips the order of building new features
• What it means to “carve” AI products vs. build them
• How Alejandro believes the role of design will change
• Why the embed frontend engineers on the design team
• Where the film and video industry might be headed next
• a lot more

Being able to think like an engineer helps you collaborate with developers more effectively, design UIs that make sense, and empowers you to build your ideas with AI tools like v0, Claude, etc.

So this video is going to break down a few traits of designers who I believe are already doing this at a high level.

It includes insights from:

• Mariana Castilho (designer at Vercel/Pierre)
• Julius Tarng (prev engineering at Linear)
• Meng To (Founder of Design+Code)

• 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:
  • 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

Jack Brody joined Snapchat as one of the early designers where he spent 10 years and eventually became Head of Product.

So this week’s episode features a lot of lessons learned from the early design team at Snap and an inside look at what makes their culture so special.

But we also go deep into Jack’s new role as the Chief Product Officer at Suno where he’s helping design the future of music. So we end up having quite the discussion on creative launchpads and the impact of AI.

Some highlights:

• Suno’s vision for the future of music
• How AI flips the design process on its head
• Jack’s viral Kim Kardashian moment at Snap
• How Jack grew his strategy muscles at Snap
• The 3 types of competitive advantages with AI
• The big unlock while designing Suno’s creation UX
• a lot more

Suno is hiring!

In this episode, Mia shares stories and lessons learned from her time as an early design leader at Square and Pinterest. We discuss all sorts of practical ways to increase your influence as a designer including strategies for CRIT, how to learn from your PMs, how to prepare for an AI future, and much more... if you're looking to become more of a leader at work (even if you're not interested in management) then this episode is for you ✌️

Tuhin Kumar has designed at some of the most prolific companies in the world (early Facebook, Airbnb and Apple).

But everything’s changing in his new role…

Because now he’s the Head of Design at Luma AI which is one of the companies leading the charge on generative AI.

So this episode goes deep on how the value prop of design is shifting.

Some highlights:

• The #1 trait of craft-oriented companies
• Why you can’t think of AI products as just a tool
• How to invest in the right skills as a designer today
• What created Tuhin’s career tipping point at Airbnb
• What Tuhin is pulling from Apple and Airbnb’s culture
• How working with AI as a material is changing everything
• The biggest lesson Tuhin learned while writing system prompts
• a lot more

Tuhin mentioned Maheen Sohail’s “Unprompted” podcast with AI

Ammaar Reshi (former Head of Design at Eleven Labs)

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:

• 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:

1. 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 😉
2. 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 the challenging parts about designing Visual Electric.
3. Language is an awkward medium for visual ideas. We need more effective ways to provide visual inputs if we want to generate high quality visual outputs.Want to get early access to Visual Electric’s new product? 👉 Click hereColin talks about his great his experience with User InterviewsGreg Rosen was the investor who helped Colin in the early daysJess Lee is the Sequoia partner they met withTom from Manual led the branding and chose the name “Visual Electric”Here’s Manual’s case study on designing the Visual Electric brandVisual Electric’s brand story page (which Ellis Hamburger helped with)

Fons was the one who originally designed the Dive brand 🤿 so this episode is a branding masterclass. We walk through a mock project and Fons goes deep into each phase of his branding process. We also discuss spatial computing, how to make you designs stand out, and strategies for leveling up your visuals 😎

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 ✌️

This episode is a panel discussion hosted by Maven where we talk about specific strategies that you can use to become more valuable as an individual contributor on your team. We cover a lot of ground including:

• Becoming a conduit for ideas
• Traits of the best ICs
• Framing your ideas successfully
• The fastest ways to grow as a designer
• Receiving feedback more effectively
• Moving up the value chain of ideas
• a lot more

How do the best staff designers influence and lead as individual contributors?

I interviewed Catt Small to answer that question and it turned into one of the most practical episodes yet. She pulls from her 14+ years of experience designing products like Etsy, Asana, and Soundcloud to share techniques you can use to level up your influence and scale your impact as an IC.

Some highlights:

• Ways to get out of the execution trap
• The key to having “executive presence”
• Catt’s advice for better time management
• How designers can encourage people to think bigger
• How Catt has evolved the way she does async videos
• Understanding the different archetypes of staff designers
• Behind-the-scenes of the massive “Goals” project at Asana
• a lot more

• Check out Catt’s course Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor (Dive Club listeners get $100 off)
• Catt mentions the books Radical Candor & 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
• Micah Bennett was the designer she learned so much from

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.

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

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.

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

Over the last few months, I’ve interviewed the people designing cutting edge AI products like Perplexity, Claude, Dot, Humane, Visual Electric, and more…

During that time I’ve created a running list of all the metaphors and mental models they’ve used to explain what it’s like.

So this episode breaks down 7 mental models for designing AI products.

Maggie Appleton (Design engineer at Normally): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/maggie-appleton

Henry Modisett (Head of Design at Perplexity): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/henry-modisett Joel Lewenstein (Head of Product Design at Anthropic): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/joel-lewenstein George Kedenburg III (Designer at Humane): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/george-kedenburg-iii Colin Dunn (Co-founder of Visual Electric): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/colin-dunn Jason Yuan (Co-founder of Dot): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/jason-yuan

Chapters 0:00 AI as an organism we grew 1:49 AI as the middle of a field 6:24 AI as a chef in a kitchen 7:37 AI as a new child 8:42 AI as a new material 10:20 AI as the meat of our design deliverable 12:11 AI as electricity

When I say high stakes design project, what comes to mind?

How about Ryan Scott redesigning the Airbnb checkout flow right before a  $3.5 billion IPO? Now THAT is a big time project…

So this episode is all about tactics you can use to make big ideas happen at your company (even as an IC).

And if you want to go even deeper you can use these links to get $100 off Ryan Scott’s top rated Maven courses 👇

1️⃣ Describing the ROI of Design (https://join.dive.club/ryan-scott-roi-course)

2️⃣ PM Masterclass for Designers (https://join.dive.club/ryan-pm-masterclass-course)

• Ryan Scott (design lead at Airbnb + DoorDash)
• Tyler Angert (1st designer at Replit and founder of Patina Systems)

This episode is all about engineer turned designer Grace Ling, who scored her dream job as product designer at EA and is also now the founder of the biggest design community online, Design Buddies. Grace jumpstarted her career by putting herself out there as a content creator and using some unique tactics when applying for roles. In this interview we talk about how Grace fast-tracked her learning journey, her playbook for breaking in to a new company and practicals to stand-out as a designer in today's job market.

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:

- 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

Mariana Castilho has one of the most impressive career trajectories of any designer I’ve ever met.

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

In this episode, we analyze four different websites (Lemonade, Formcarry, Stella Domo + Runway) to help you confidently write and design landing pages that sell 💪 Listen to learn how to:

• Design a top-notch hero section
• Use layout techniques that make your design stand out
• Avoid the biggest animation and copywriting mistakes
• Showcase testimonials effectively
• + a lot more

If you want to go even deeper 👉 check out Erik's new Landing Page Academy 💻

When comes to brand design, Mike and Cara from Smith & Diction are pretty much top of the game (you might recognize them as the ones who did the brand identity for Perplexity).

During our interview, it didn't take me long to realize that these two have more hacks and mental models for creativity than just about anyone I’ve met.

So here are a few of my favorites.

Watch the full episode with Smith & Diction here: https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/smith-diction

If you're looking to level up how you use variables in Figma then this episode is for you ✌️ Luis goes deep into strategies based on team size, provides naming guidance, and even breaks down how he thinks about structuring libraries with variables in Figma. Lastly, Luis shares a behind-the-scenes of his journey as a designer advocate and even gives a unique prediction for how AI will take shape inside of Figma.

Don't forget to follow Luis on Twitter and check out his awesome files in the Figma community

Imagine joining an early stage startup as the first senior designer and within a few years, it becomes the fastest growing company ever.

Well… that's the story of Diego Zaks who is now the VP of design at Ramp.

This week’s episode is all about how they were able to win with design and what makes their culture so special. We go deep into:

• Why velocity is the key to quality
• The impact of “truth seeking pods”
• How Diego creates a culture of collaboration
• What it takes to be a great founding designer
• The #1 trait Diego looks for in design candidates
• How Diego has changed the way he gives feedback
• How designers are empowered to make strategic calls
• a lot more…

Want to work with Diego at Ramp? They’re hiring ✌️

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).

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

Systems thinking is often mentioned as the #1 trait teams are looking for in designers.

But what does it look like to be great at it?

This episode answers that question by highlighting stories from Notion, Anthropic, and more 👇

Craft is so much more than a shimmering landing page or micro animation…

It’s sweating all of the tiny details and having a thorough understanding of the edge cases in your product.

But there’s one detail most designers miss… 👀

So this episode highlights one of my favorite ideas ever shared on the show from Raphael Schaad (founder of Cron and now the Head of Calendar at Notion).

It’s a fantastic example of what it looks like to obsess over the craft of your product

You can find his full episode here — https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/raphael-schaad

And this episode also pulls in part of my conversation with Julius Tarng about his time at Linear — https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/julius-tarng

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:

- 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 💪

Steph Golik was an early design leader at the self-driving car startup Cruise 🚗 But 2 years ago she left to launch her own company Huddle. In this episode we're talking all about how designers can take the leap to start that next project or even raise venture funding like Steph. If you're interested in entrepreneurship or even just want to get better at selling your ideas... you're going to love this episode. 🧡

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:

- 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 💪

If you’re familiar at all with design systems then I definitely don’t need to introduce you to Dan Mall. He’s as OG as it gets.

In this Deep Dive, Dan shares his take on Figma variables, where design systems are headed in the coming years, and a lot more…

If you asked me “who has the best taste in design right now?” one of the first people I’d mention is Thiago Costa.

His product Fey is in the S-tier of design and I’ve studied his visual techniques for many years.

Finally, after over a 12 months of pestering he agreed to share his secrets in a interview 🙌

We go deep into:

• Mastering the finer details of craft
• Putting AI at the heart of the new Fey 2.0
• Where Thiago draws inspiration outside of UI
• What it looks like to have a “heightened awareness”
• How Thiago evolved the Fey aesthetic from 1.0 to 2.0
• Specific visual techniques for making your UI more lifelike
• a lot more

• Caravaggio is the painter who Thiago calls the “master of light”
• The Local Project interior design channel on YouTube

• Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer.
  • 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)

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:

• 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

AI introduces an opportunity for all kinds of novel interaction patterns.

But it creates a whole new category of design challenges too…

And this episode breaks down the biggest challenge of all.

• Colin Dunn (Founder and Designer of Visual Electric)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen-AI designer at Meta)
• Tyler Angert (Founder of Patina Systems)
• Maggie Appleton (Design engineer at Normally)
• Ammaar Reshi (Head of Design at ElevenLabs)

There are two goals that designers almost always group together:

1. Make a useful product
2. Make it easy to understand

But my interview with Sam Stephenson changed my thinking completely 👀

So this episode breaks down Granola’s go-to-market strategy and why I’m copying it for my own startup.

• Sam Stephenson (Co-founder of Granola)
• Colin Dunn (Co-founder of Visual Electric)

Making the jump and diving into that first year of freelancing can be pretty daunting… 🥲

I wish I could’ve had this chat with Grace about 5 years ago because she was very transparent about the lessons she learned in that first year.

In this Deep Dive, she breaks down her strategies for pricing, balancing project work, her tool stack, and a lot more...

In this episode we get to go backstage with the design team at Loom! They teach us all about their design process and share takeaways from their recent AI launch including stories about:

- Prototyping and researching early concepts

- Collaborating with engineers and other cross-functional teams

- Using Figjam to gather feedback live

- Developing a visual language for AI

- Documenting edge cases and all the potential user states

- Pivoting mid project 👀

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...

Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿

🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

This week’s episode is with Christophe Tauziet who is the Head of Design at Plaid—one of today’s leading fintech companies.

We go deep into the ways he’s building a culture of craft and the rituals they’ve evolved to consistently sweat the details. There are a lot of practical processes and ideas in this episode.

Some highlights:

• Keys to a great async video share out
• How to foster a winning CRIT environment
• Why Christophe implemented “polish reviews”
• Ways to foster collaboration within a design org
• Practical advice for giving better design feedback
• How Christophe changed what he looks for in design candidates
• a lot more

Brian Lovin’s article “Teams should work with the garage door up”

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:

- 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 💪

This week's episode is with Sam Peitz who quickly became one of my favorite designers to follow in 2024.

He regularly shares experiments like TextOS, his scribble running app, and assorted letter prototypes. So this conversation is a deep dive into his creative process and how he’s redefined his career path over the past ~10 months. We go deep into:

• Sam’s go-to source of design inspiration
• The power of setting the right constraints
• What Sam has learned about building with v0
• How to think creatively and design out of the box
• How to position yourself for the type of work you want to do
• a lot more

• Koto branding studio is where Sam worked previously
• Sam likes Arena for design inspiration
• We talked about the episode with Dennis from Amie

This week's Deep Dive features early-career designer, Perry Wang. Previously at Google and now working at Discord. This Deep Dive is a masterclass for junior designers looking to jumpstart their career. We cover a lot👇

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.

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

Fonz gives a masterclass on growth design in this episode as he pulls back the curtain on designing at Netflix and what it takes to ship to millions of users. We also discuss our journies as entrepreneurs, dealing with ambiguity at work, and the importance of growing as a writer. Fonz is truly a lifelong learner and this episode is gold for anyone who wants to grow in their understanding of business 💪

This week’s episode is with Tyler Angert who was the first design hire at Replit. So we get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like designing for a hyper growth startup. However in early 2024, Tyler left to pursue a startup of his own, so a good chunk of this discussion focuses on his vision for Patina and the future of “spontaneous software”.

Some highlights:

• Why the camera roll is pivotal for AI
• Tyler’s advice to his 23 year old self
• Tactics for learning to code with Claude
• What it takes to design complex systems
• The skills that will be most valuable in 2025
• The biggest design challenges for AI products
• Strategies for learning more technical skillsets
• How to succeed as a young designer at a startup

• Tyler’s Freezeframe app with Jason Yuan
• Genesis physics announcement
• Granola meeting recordings
• Daylight computer

I’ve interviewed a lot of designers who have landed some pretty high profile roles and I’m starting to notice some trends 👀

So this video breaks down 6 portfolio tips that you can use to stand out.

I’ve followed Mike Smith ever since he designed the Perplexity brand identity and quickly realized he’s one of the most creative designers I’ve ever seen. Turns out his wife Chara is a positioning mastermind too so it makes sense why Smith & Diction is one of the hottest agencies in the game today.

So this week’s episode is a deep dive into brand strategy and what it takes to stand out in 2025 and beyond. We get into:

• What it takes to stand out in an AI world
• Their hacks for cracking a brand strategy
• Why the best brands have lots of “moves”
• Mike’s #1 piece of advice for younger designers
• What people really mean when they say “timeless”
• Their experience using Visual Electric in brand design
• Positioning Smith & Diction in today’s agency landscape
• a lot more

• We talk about how they used Visual Electric for their latest project (Alma Food). ⭐ Don’t forget you can use the code DIVECLUB to get your first month free.
• You can also check out the episode with Colin Dunn (CEO of Visual Electric)
• Mike says to make sure you watch the episode with Phi from Perplexity
• We talk about Topo, Cotopaxi and Steady bags

In this episode, Charli takes us behind the scenes of her role as Creative Director at ConvertKit. She shares all kinds of insights about brand and marketing strategy, how to tell data stories, and how to level up as a copywriter. If you're looking for creative inspiration or ways to advance your career, then this episode is for you ✌️

There's a parallel I'm noticing between what's happening today with AI and what happened way back in 2013.

So this episode studies the early days of Snapchat, the emergence of high-fidelity prototyping tools, and answers the question “what does it look like to have agency in 2025?”

• Jack Brody (Chief Product Officer at Suno)
• Jorn van Dijk (CEO of Framer)
• Julius Tarng (Research engineer at Anthropic)
• Tuhin Kumar (Head of Design at Luma AI)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen AI at Meta)
• Meng To (Founder of Design+Code)

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:

- 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 💪

What are the best teams looking for in design candidates?

That’s become one of my favorite questions to ask so this episode shines a light on some of those traits and what you can do to stand out.

It includes insights from:

• Diego Zaks (VP of Design at Ramp)
• Soleio (2nd designer at Facebook)
• Pranathi Peri (designing v0 at Vercel)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen AI at Meta)
• Mariana Castilho (Designer at Poolside)

Lauren LoPrete shares lessons from her experience leading design systems at Dropbox and now at Cash App. We talk about:

- 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 💪

Airbnb is making 3 big design investments to bring soul back to the app. So this episode pulls from interviews with their VP of Design, Teo Connor, and prototyping specialist Janum Trivedi. Learn why Airbnb is investing in 3D, motion design, and leaders who still have their hands in the clay.

Teo Connor (VP of Design at Airbnb): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/air-bnb

Alex Schleifer (former Chief Design Offer at Airbnb): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/alex-schleifer

Janum Trivedi (prototyping specialist at Airbnb): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/janum-trivedi

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:

- 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

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:

- 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/)

What do Raycast, Daylight, Amo, The Browser Co, and Mainframe all have in common?

They all hired Ellis Hamburger to help tell their story.

So this episode is a bit different...

We're going to get away from the pixels and go deep into how you can use language to tell a compelling story about your product.

Some highlights:

• How to tell a story that people care about
• Lessons from the Language team at Snapchat
• Breaking down specific copywriting strategies
• Questions to help you figure out your product’s story
• What we can learn from the CEOs of Snapchat vs. Browser Co.
• How to make your product onboarding unforgettable
• a lot more

• Ellis talks about the Browser Company’s “Peek” video
• Jordan Singer’s Mainframe website
• Daylight computer website
• Ellis mentions the 222 onboarding
• The Permanent website (”design is how its made”)
• Ellis quotes the Build book
• Amo’s “Where did our friends go?” manifesto
• Raycast’s “Why” page and Focus mode

We've heard a lot on this show about designers becoming builders using tools like v0 and today we get to do a deep dive with Pranathi Peri who is leading the design of v0 at Vercel. We discuss:

• Growing your taste and intuition quickly
• How Pran thinks about the design language of v0
• Pran’s personal experiments using 3D and physics
• Why Pran wants to bring “onboarding roulette” to v0
• How Pran showed potential without having extensive experience
• What it’s like collaborating with engineers like ShadCN and Rauno
• a lot more

• Manuel is the VP of Design at Vercel
• We discuss what it’s like collaborating with Shadcn

I remember the exact moment where I first explored MercuryOS. It was clear Jason Yuan was one of the most skilled design thinkers I'd ever encountered. No wonder he landed a role designing AI products at Apple shortly after.

But the main reason I wanted to interview him was to learn more about his new product called Dot. It's by far my favorite personal AI and a beautifully designed experience. So this conversation is a behind-the-scenes of his latest journey and a fun glimpse at what the future might hold for software products. We go deep into:

• What it looks like to design with soul
• What makes Jason’s design process unique
• Why Jason left Apple to build New Computer
• How Dot is the spiritual successor to MercuryOS
• How more designers need to become AI engineers
• Why Jason thinks dynamic interfaces are over-hyped
• How to design a product based on one magical interaction
• What Jason learned about storytelling from his background in theatre
• a lot more

• Download Dot or check out the website
• Jason's original MercuryOS project
• The original Dot website featuring Mei’s story (from the Wayback machine so give it a minute to load)
• Jason references Shigeru Miyamoto (the creator of Super Mario Bros)

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:

• 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

A little over a year ago, Joey Banks and I were DM’ing each other in Slack about leaving our W-2 jobs and going independent.

So this week’s episode is a reflection on his journey working for himself and it’s as human and relatable as any conversation I’ve ever had on this show. We go deep into:

• Managing your pipeline of clients
• Creating a personal knowledge system in Notion
• Finding companionship as an independent designer
• Structuring your schedule and maintaining momentum
• Communicating your services and pricing yourself effectively
• Dealing with uncertainty and all of the unknowns in your first year
• a lot more

• Get a special offer on Joey’s “Level Up with Figma” course
• Joey’s Baseline website and newsletter
• Paul Millerd’s “Pathless Path” book and his episode on Lenny’s podcast
• Joey mentioned Oliur’s episode as one of his favorite YouTube creators
• He also mentioned Stephen Robles YouTube channel

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.

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)

I’ve interviewed a lot of staff designers to figure out what it takes to have real influence at companies like Shopify, Github, Airbnb, etc.

One thing is clear… if you want to make strategic impact as a designer then you have to get to a place of altitude that allows you to see the bigger picture.

This episode is designed to help you do just that.

• Catt Small (Staff Product Designer at Dropbox)
• Mia Blume (Early design leader at Square, Pinterest + more)
• Soren Iverson (Founder of Iverson)
• Kathy Zheng (Head of Design at Optimism)

Designers have become servants of “the process” so this episode features stories of people who are breaking the mold in the way they explore and prototype ideas.

It includes insights from:

Gabe Valdivia (Fractional design leader): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/gabe-valdivia

Dennis Muller (Designer + founder of Amie):

https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/dennis-muller

Gavin Nelson (Designing Linear mobile app):

https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/gavin-nelson

Nikolas Klein (Designing Prototyping at Figma):

https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/figma-prototyping

Michael Wandelmaier (Former Head of Design at Metalab): https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/michael-wandelmaier

And lastly it features insights from Jenny Wen including her original blog post that inspired this episode (definitely bookmark this it’s awesome)👇

https://jennywen.substack.com/p/dont-trust-the-design-process

As soon as I finished our original interview, I knew I had to have Soleio on as the first repeat guest. He led early design efforts at Facebook and Dropbox. Now he invests in design-driven startups like Figma, Framer, Vercel, etc.

So this week’s episode is all about how designers and startups can succeed in a world where everything is changing. We go deep into:

• Ideal traits for a founding designer
• How startups can strategically attack incumbents
• Why the future belongs to designers who can ship
• The backstory behind Soleio’s investment in Perplexity
• A potential future where one designer can service 5+ startups
• What you can do to invest in your future founder journey today
• How Soleio approaches the design tooling space as an investor
• Why we won’t use smartphones the same way 5 years from now
• a lot more

• Soleio’s first episode
• Meng To’s video editing product (episode coming soon)
• Granola (Sam and Chris are the founders)
• Interview with Perplexity’s head of design (Henry Modisett)
• Pattern Breakers by Mike Maples, Jr

Chapters 0:00 Intro 1:32 Designers who can ship 11:18 Dealing with the velocity of tech as an investor 13:27 The importance of brand for startups 18:00 Why Soleio beleives we won't be using smartphones the same way in 5 years 34:23 Qualities that Soleio looks for in first-time founders 36:58 How to succeed as a founding designer 44:53 Founders living in the future 55:05 How to invest in your future founder journey today

This episode looks at Kevin Twohy’s 10+ year journey going from solo freelancer to independent design studio. We cover a LOT including:

- 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 💪

In this episode, Dan shares his insights on using Framer from his experience as an early adopter. He also discusses his approach to learning to code while building his own product and shares some tips for others looking to do the same. And obviously, we couldn't call it a Deep Dive without chatting a bit about the impact of AI as well as learning how Jay-Z used to influence the product roadmap at TIDAL 👀

If you're looking to level up your storytelling and make a bigger impact on product strategy, then this is the episode for you 💪 Femke shares practical insights from her time at Uber, WealthSimple, and now as a design lead at Gusto. We go deep into strategies for collaborating with PMs, handling pushback in design, and how designers can more effectively sell their ideas.

Imagine your first traditional “product design” job is designing the Snapchat messaging UX for millions of people across the globe…

Well that’s what Dan Moreno’s journey looked like as an engineer turned designer.

So this week’s episode is a deep dive into his 5+ years designing Snapchat as well as his new role at a rocket ship startup called Captions.

Some highlights:

• Dan’s formula for presenting design ideas
• How Dan grew his visual skills as an engineer
• Inside look at the AR exploration team at Snapchat
• How to get the CEO of Snap excited about your idea
• Why designing at a startup brings more responsibility
• How Dan rethought what Snapchat messaging could be
• a lot more

• Snap’s Lens Studio
• Andrew McPhee (Dan’s first manager at Snap)
• Gaurav Misra (founder of Captions)
• Pop a component plugin for Figma