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Christophe Tauziet - Plaid’s culture of craft, tips for CRIT, and lessons from early Facebook
00:55:21
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- [00:00]
Christophe
When we swipe the details like, it actually pays off. In fact, swipe the details is one of our company values.
- [00:05]
Rid
What are you doing as a design leader to instill that type of craft oriented culture at Plaid?
- [00:13]
Christophe
We've created this panel of, I think currently for ICs, like really senior ICs on the team who really understand this design system, have really good eye for the little things.
- [00:25]
Rid
As a designer who's mostly worked at startups, I would have paid for this type of service.
- [00:31]
Christophe
I've mentored a lot of design designers, whether they were on my teams directly or externally. And every time I've given that advice to someone and they've tried it, they came back to me being like, wow, I'm a different designer now.
- [00:42]
Rid
Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid and this is where designers never stop learning. This is the 100th episode of the show, so before we get into it, I want to genuinely say thank you for listening. It means so much. And I've never asked people to subscribe before, but apparently that's something that you're supposed to do as a podcaster. So if you've been listening, you enjoyed the show and you want to help it grow, definitely hit that subscribe button. Now that we have that out of the way, this week's episode is with Christophe, who's the head of design at Plaid. And we're about to go really deep into all of the things that you can do to elevate craft inside of your design Org. And one of my favorite parts of the conversation is just getting into the specifics and seeing a behind the scenes of the different team rituals that they do at Plaid and the processes that they've put in place to really nail the finer details of the product. But before we get into all of these specifics, I wanted to get a quick backstory behind their recent rebrand.
- [01:41]
Christophe
So this, this all started about a year ago. We, you know, Plaid had been on this journey for, I think over 10 years now of sort of being the innovator, like creating or facilitating innovation in the, in the fintech space. And, and we spent so much time and energy in control on products and like, really just making sure we're delivering on the best value possible for our customers, that we weren't necessarily always thinking about our brand and, like, how do we develop our look and feel of our brand beyond, you know, how it's perceived by the community today? And so we went on this journey and originally we went with an external agency. We really thought, like, hey, like, we, we Gotta trust the pros. Like, let's get an agency to help us out. And you know, we just don't have the resources. Internally we have a brand design team, but they're busy with all the campaigns we run. You know, the big developer conference we organized, so we thought, let's just go with was an agency to help us out. And then we kind of quickly realized that it is really hard for any agency to be honest, to really crack the code of a company that's already existed for 10 years. It's kind of built up its own internal culture and like how it thinks of itself and how it's perceived by the world. It has so many different audiences. Like, you know, our brand needs to speak to consumers, it needs to speak to our customers, like all the apps that use plaid, but also to banks and to regulators. And so it's a lot of complexity. And then on top of that, we are a founder led startup. And a founder led startup means the founder is still here and cares a lot about, you know, the startup is his baby. Right? And so that, that adds an extra layer of complexity for anyone who's external. And it just couldn't get anywhere. So there was a moment in, I think May or June where we almost pulled the plug. We're like, okay, this free brand is not going anywhere where it's not working. Founder is frustrated. Like, we might as well just, you know, give up. And I don't know how I really connect to like how, how we got the idea of just, hey, let's, let's give our internal team a try. Like, we might as well, like, let's pick a couple people and see, like if we give them two weeks, like, and they know everything we've tried already, they understand the company super well. They've been here, they know the culture. Like, let's see what they can come up with. And then we went on this really rapid iteration with our CEO in the room. Like every two days we're meeting with those designers, kind of checking in, giving ideas and exchanging together. And really quickly we just got it. We got something that we're excited about. We could see everyone's smile, including our founder, really energized and excited. And we just kept on going and that got the sort of juices going for our team. And then we went, you know, within six months, this entire thing got, got out the door. And so the actual, like the concrete, you know, final design that we came up with was all inspired by currency bills. And so if you think about plaid and what the role we play in finance. Like, we're trying to modernize, Help modernize finance. Right? Like, it's been this very old industry that has always been very allergic to change. And, you know, we're trying to facilitate innovation, open up the doors. Like, let's make, you know, let's make great products and help companies make great products. And the inspiration we got came from this, from currency bills. And so we started to pay really close attention to them. We collected, traveled. I'd be lucky that I got a chance to travel around the world in the past. And I've always collected those as just an easy artifact you can bring home. It doesn't take any weight in your luggage. But we started to pay really close attention to them and noticed that there's a number of those really intricate details that have been developed over the years, mostly as a way to avoid counterfeits. That was the main intention. But when you look at them, the final thing they all carry across all those countries, across the entire world, they carry those same techniques. And one important one for us was those very intricate illustrations that used to be called woodcut illustrations and then evolve into, I think it's called intaglio engraving now, the actual printing method. But it's like, really, really fine details. You really look super closely at even just a US dollar bill, and you look at Ben Franklin or George Washington, you'll see the very thin lines and dots. It's incredible. It's really beautiful. You want to blow it up on a giant billboard just to see the detail. And at first we thought, like, are we going to be able to even make those? Like, if we wanted to be inspired by those? Like, this is a lot of work to really get all those details right.
- [06:06]
Rid
It's hard to counterfeit, but also hard to replicate in figma.
- [06:09]
Christophe
That is correct. That is very correct. And we found this, like, incredible illustrator out of, I believe, Turkey who's, like, just specialized in that. And so we're like, all right, let's work. Let's see if we can make something. And she started playing with us and made a few grabs. And we landed on, you know, just. The first one we got from her was, like, this Ben Franklin. Like, you know, cool Ben Franklin wearing helipods and, you know, an iPhone and, you know, and he's doing peace sign. We're like, okay, we got it. And we know in the future we can use AI. There are multiple ways we can create Tenerife. This illustration with this level of detail. We just had to kind of crack the style and now we knew we could. So that was like, step one. And then we kept paying attention to those bills, and we noticed the second element that was really important. They call Gyoshi patterns, and they're like those beautiful, intricate lines that can connect with each other. Again, really hard to replicate. I think they got added to currency bills in the 17th century because people were starting to figure out how to make the illustrations. And so now they're like, okay, let's make something even harder, and let's make this beautiful, like, you know, lines. Same thing. Like, now with technology, like, you can generate those pretty easily. And we're like, okay, well, what if, you know, our modern version of this is we animate them, like, we let you interact with them on a website, and, like, it becomes just, like, super, super fun and intricate technique that also sort of communicates this aspect of plaid being at the center of the financial network. And, like, all those lines connecting, those dots connecting together. Like, we play a role there, and we thought it was a good metaphor for it. Um, and then the third element that, you know, came on way later in the sort of history of currency bills are these, like, holographic strips that you find sometimes on. On currencies. The US Dollar is not. Not super often, really, just the recent ones. But then you've got, like, this is from Australia. You've got. You've got some more intricate ones here, if you can see. Even have this, like, glassy effect that is really, really cool. And we're like, okay, like, this is even better. Like, this really communicates trust, safety. It's cool, it's modern. We can play with that as a design system super well. We can do a bunch of stuff with it. And so all of those elements together, like, okay, we think we got really, the key ingredients now. Let's make a good recipe, right? So that's been where the journey we've been on. It's been super fun. And I'm super, super proud of the work that team has put into this, because it went from, again, agency to a couple people kind of jamming on it, to our entire design team being on deck. Like, all right, let's go. We got it. We got three months to go and this thing, and it's been just a roller coaster of emotions, but we're super proud of the outcome.
- [08:42]
Rid
I mean, you should be proud of it. It's really cool. Like, I was excited to see it come to life, and then immediately going on the site and seeing the demo video, it just hits. And there was so many times where you know, you could have leaned all the way into the motif and it would have felt a little bit stodgy and predictable. And you had, like, this dominant green color, you know, and the ways that you've modernized it are so effective. And also even just tying it back to something else that's been talked about on this show is we had Mike and Cara from Smith and Diction on, and they talked about this idea of having moves in a brand identity that you can replicate and use to extrapolate the band. And yes, something as simple as this holographic strand, I guess that you would call it, so simple in shape, and yet, man, that's going to be recognizable. Like, it's such an easy motif to use in little creative ways. And so as a designer, I would be stoked about having this set of visuals at my disposal.
- [09:39]
Christophe
Correct. And you are not wrong. Our designers are very excited about it. And so now, even when we make swag, you know, we got to have some, you know, holographic moments. We recently did this beautiful sweatshirt for all of our employees for the launch of the brand. And it's just. Just a little plaid waffle logo, but it's reflective. It's, like, really cool. Yeah, like. Like you said, like, it's. It's a really beautiful moment. And, like, artifact, they can carry so much that can be stretched in so many ways. It's got this, like, movement. It's got the sense of transparency and reflection, and, like, there's just really strong values to it, and it's just. It's just a blast for the designers to play with. So, yeah, we really lucked out on this that we found such great and scalable systems that we can really play with for a very long time. I don't think our brand is ever going to bore our designers, which is a great place to be. I don't think they'll ever get bored because we can really play. You still have to maintain sort of consistency. You have to, like, exercise some discipline with how you use your brand. But when the building blocks are so malleable and so friendly to use, it.
- [10:42]
Rid
Can really create real quick message, and then we can jump back into it. You know what I can't stop thinking about Cursor, but for designers, and that's why I'm all in on desen. It's not another zero to one tool for prototypes or side projects. It's a visual interface that gives you access to your company's existing code base so you can make updates to things like components, typography, properties and push your designs to production without having to go through an engineer. That's what the future of product design will feel like and you can start experiencing it today. Just head to Dive Club Desen to get started. That's DS S N. Look, I don't know about you, but I've never been happy with the way that I get async feedback on my designs. Whether it's figma comments, loom videos, slack threads, it's a mess. So behind the scenes, I'm working on the product that I've always wanted to exist. It's called In Flight and I'd love to show it to you before it goes live. So head to Dive Club slash Startup to get a little sneak peek of what's coming next. Okay, now on to the episode. I want to zoom out and talk about design more broadly at Plaid. And you talk a lot about elevating craft and everything that goes into that. So maybe we could even use that as an entry point for the rest of the discussion and talk at a high level to start. Just like, what are you doing as a design leader to instill that type of craft oriented culture at Plaid?
- [12:10]
Christophe
I worked at many companies in the past. Every company is different. The culture around craft is different. I really lucked out with Plaid because our founder CEO really understands it and believes in it and that's a huge value add for me. Like I don't have to, you know, as I have at other companies. So we explain, articulate why to convince people that when we swipe the details, like, it actually pays off. In fact, sweating the details is one of our company values. So like that I cannot wish for anything better than this as a design leader. Like if the entire company is meant to really sweat the details and care about that. So really my journey has been more so introspective, like with the design team, like really trying to think about from the very beginning of a project, thinking about the problem. Like, do we really understand the problem deeply? Do we like connect with the problem? Is it the real problem that people have? Or is it something that we as a company made up, right? Like, is it a business problem for us or is it really our customers are feeling that problem and we can, and we know, we've talked to them, we felt their problem, we like saw them, like watch them in research, like use the product and be frustrated and now it's visceral. You kind of want to fix it yourself. That's step one. If you don't understand the problem deeply, you're likely not going to have the most beautiful design at the end, or, like, really one that solves the problem deeply. And then, like, there's something that I always found really important is as a designer, you rarely come up with the best solution on your first try. Like, if you think about the best metaphor I have for that is shooting darts. Like, if you were trying to, you know, I give you a target and you're trying to shoot darts, if I give you one dart, it's very unlikely you hit the center unless you're really skilled as possible, but unlikely. If I give you five darts, you might get closer to the center of the board, right? If I give you 50 darts, like now, you're probably going to get pretty close. And then, you know, second day, third day, you know, after three years, 10 years of your career shooting darts, like, yeah, you might get a little closer to the center on your first few tries. You just matured your taste, your thinking. You've got, you know, building blocks in your head that help you kind of really nail your. Your approach to designing. But really all it takes is just designing a bunch of iteration, really exploring broadly. My absolute favorite designer I worked with, one of top five is Laura Rabier. I used to sit next to her at Facebook. We were a very small design team at the time, and I was always amazed by the discipline she had when designing anything. If she was designing the first screen of a new onboarding, the onboarding of a new app, she would create 20 empty artboards in sketch at a time, and then figma and just start from scratch and make 20 different designs. So not the what I would have done at that time, which is take a design, make it duplicate, make some tweaks. Duplicate, make some tweaks. Because you're still kind of anchored in your first idea, and so you're just really getting to the local maxima pretty quickly, versus her approach, which was empty artboard. Start over, start over, start over, start over. And the results were very clear. Like, she was just making outstanding work. I remember she designed an app icon for a photos app that Facebook released, and we even printed a poster of all of her integration on the app icon because she had made, like, I don't know, a hundred different icons for, like, for this one thing. And they all look very different. That was the beauty of it. Like, they look nothing like each other because really, she had this discipline of really exploring from the, you know, very beginning. And then the, you know, third step is feedback loops. Like, I'm a huge believer that, you know, the Best designs come from design teams, not designers. And it's all about the feedback loops you create within the team. You know, obviously design crits are critical part of our, any, any good design team's process when they can, when there's a team and, and really generating as much feedback as we can internally, even outside of design, with product managers, engineers, you know, PMMs, whoever you name it, and really facilitating the conversation around the design. I always found that that really helped kind of get the solution to the best it can be. One sort of cultural thing we have at Plaid that I try to carry with me at every company is it's this metaphor that I think Brian Lovin used first, which is like keeping the garage, the garage door up, right, like just working out in the open. And so we've been using this tool which unfortunately is shutting down today, called Campsite that Brian had built that literally, today's. Literally today on the day we're recording. So very frustrated, but we're working on it. But so like that, that came from back at the early Facebook days, this internal tool called Pixel Cloud that designers were using to share their work in progress. It was a sort of internal dribble. Like you could just share a screenshot, share a little video of what you're working on and then all the designers could see it. And then eventually we opened it up to the entire company. Anyone could see what you were working on and then react to it, comment on it and really give you that sort of ongoing feedback that was so crucial. And it also was a way for design to expose the process, like how we get to the final solution. Because a lot of design teams tend to be a little mysterious about how they're approaching the work. And so it's really hard for their cross functional partners, for the PMs, the engineers, to really understand what's going on. How did they get to this? And are we really sure it is the best solution? And are we really sure we need all of those bells and whistles? It's a lot easier to have this conversation where they really understand how you got there. They see the feedback you got and they really see that this is really thoughtful. And so that's a huge part of my philosophy as a design leader is the designers need to always have again, the garage door up. Like you need to let people see what you're working on. I think a prototype is worth a thousand meetings. Like when teams are struggling with kind of really knowing what is the perfect solution to their problem. Is it going to work? Are customers going to be excited about it, using it the right way, Is it really solving their problem? There's nothing that beats the prototype. Anyone can feel it on their device, can use it, and then you can actually test it with customers. Static mockups. You're already asking people to make the connection between steps, and you're losing the opportunity to sort of all those micro interactions you can design that make something really feel special. So prototyping is just really, really key part of the process. And then pushing that all the way to qa. Like, you gotta make sure you're sweating the details with your engineers, making sure everything works. Try every different scenario possible, all the edge cases. Like, you gotta sweat the details there too, because that is the real experience people will get. And once something is live, it's in production. Likely some stuff got out that you didn't pick up, you didn't catch before it got out. You got to test your own products. You got to capture that what I call design depth. A lot of engineering teams have tagged that. We carry design that anything that's out there that's not perfect, that's on the design team to go and capture and prioritize and fix. And so that, to me, is also a key part of really elevating craft on the team. So that's their sort of how I think about the process.
- [19:25]
Rid
We'll kind of spread this out and just drill in from here, though, because there's so many things that you said that I think are interesting that I kind of want to double click on. And the first is, honestly, part of my brain is still thinking through the difference in the type of iteration when you're just making something that's a derivative of the previous version versus starting blank slate. And like, that, like, hit home for me, actually, because I was literally this morning just working through this type of, like, header project component, and I'm duplicating. I'm duplicating and I'm tweaking. And if I zoom out and look at it, I really have, like, two ideas where I only drew, like, a hard line once.
- [20:00]
Christophe
That's right.
- [20:01]
Rid
Where would my design explorations have taken me if I would have started a blank slate every single time? How often are we doing iteration theater versus truly iterating?
- [20:10]
Christophe
Yeah. And I can tell you this is not just one designer for who's just got this, like, had this discipline for herself. I've given that advice. I've mentored a lot of designers, whether. Whether they were on my teams directly or externally. And every time I've Given that advice to someone, and they've tried it, they came back to me being like, wow, I'm a different designer now. Like, I'm so proud of the work I'm coming up with. And it's really not a matter of, like, it's not a skill thing. It's just a pure process. It's forcing yourself to change a little bit your approach, and with the same skill, the same experience will come up with better solutions in the end. And there are ways you can sort of systematize that even when, you know designers are in a crunch and it's not always possible, really, it should come down to it. When you're just tweaking the same design over and over again, you apply your own bias, like the original idea that you had, and you just stay in that mental model. But when someone else comes over, another designer comes over and looks at your project from the beginning, they might question your first design entirely and take a completely different spin. And so that's also where I think that's the power of design teams. When you have multiple people looking at similar problems, you have to enable that collaboration. That's the hard part. You have to make it okay. We have a client, we do design jams. We were really great at it. So at any moment, any designer can just raise their hand like, hey, I'd love to jam on this thing. I'm feeling like I could do better. And multiple designers will come, and for an hour, two hours, five hours, it very much depends. They'll just jam with that person and really help kind of explore really broadly the spectrum of solutions. And that's a way to, like, just make sure it happens beyond the, like, duplicating artifacts, because it also creates the sort of context and knowledge sharing across the team. When you help someone else on their problem, you start thinking deeply about it. And then, you know, the next time you need to help them or give them feedback, you're a little more precise, you give them better pointers, and that often is also inspiration for your own work. The number of times I've seen a designer go to jam and help someone else and then come back to their project and be like, oh, I need to start over. Like, I need to retake this idea I just had there or someone else had and, like, I need to start over, because this is far better. That sort of fluidity on a design team is just so, so, so key.
- [22:30]
Rid
And I love giving it a name too. Like, actually, it as design jams does something to strip away the social cost of Asking for help a little bit. This is a thing that exists. I'm going to call it into existence right now, rather than having to write this message and be like, hey, I'm stuck. Would anybody like to dedicate an indeterminate amount of time to help me get unstuck? You know, it's like such a weighty ask there and correct. I really, really like jams. I'm wondering if there's anything else that you're doing, either from a coaching or process standpoint, to help designers get a little bit more comfortable working with the garage door open.
- [23:06]
Christophe
All the links are shared in public channels. You put in the work you need feedback on as you working on it on something like campsite, including your thought process. So what a lot of designers do is they'll record a video, they'll use screen, studio, loom, you name it, and they'll record a little voiceover of their design explaining what problem they're trying to solve and some of the ideas they have and why they think. This one really, like, carry some. Some. Some weight and is potentially a good one. But here are the cons, here are the challenges, and they share that with the team, the design team, to get feedback, but their PMs, their engineers, everyone gets to see just that level of thinking and the refinement and the energy they put into the work. They're able to also contribute if they see that. Hold on, like, technically, we're not going to be able to do that. Like, there's just a straight note. So, like, might as well change your direction here because I can tell you, we just don't have the data. We don't have the thing that will make this work. Okay, fantastic. Let's pivot. So, like, really opening the door, including in how things are being made, that just. It just feels easier. It feels a lot more approachable. I've rarely found an engineer, a product manager, who's followed along the process of a project from a design perspective, really got to see everything and gets to the end of it, I think. Like, yeah, my. I don't think you guys got it. Like, I think you guys are terrible. Like, I have never seen it, but it could happen. But that would be very cynical because you had, especially if you had multiple chances to contribute, add your own flavor. Comment. Like, when it's really open, it demystify everything, but it also, on the other end means, you know, it's a lot more collaborative. And then everyone really has a sense of pride. That's another element that oftentimes you. You Hear a friction between designers wanting better craft wanting to sweat the details, and engineers wanting to just ship the thing faster. Can you trim down the scope? Because, you know, we just don't have time. This is too hard. Very rarely have I seen that when these two teams work hand in hand from the beginning and they started really believing the solution they're crafting once it's time to build. I've rarely seen the engineers be like, let's just cut a lot of this flourishing. Like, I'd rather ship something I'm not proud of. I've rarely seen it. It does happen, but it's rare again, because you've been along this journey, you care more about something you've put time, energy, thought into. And so you really want to be proud of what gets out and you start spreading the details, even in the code and how you're architecting it. So that's a huge of mine that designing in a cave just never works. I mean, it may work at times, but it's just not the cultures that I found to be the most inspiring and the ones that really deliver quality consistently. To inspire, to just open up the door, demystify everything, and just bring people along for the journey.
- [25:56]
Rid
I would go so far to say as the exact same idea might get shut down in a world where the process wasn't exposed and celebrated. If you were able to see and even like, bringing up the loom videos, I think is so interesting. I love Loom. Like, I. I've kind of been the loom guy at my last few companies and yeah, I actually wasn't sure how popular it was. Sometimes you think things are really popular and you're kind of in a bubble. And I ran a poll just like last week or something like that, and it was interesting. I was like, when you are sharing your work, what are you reaching for? Like a screenshot, a figma link, a loom video. And it was over 2 to 1. Loom was the main thing that designers are reaching for. And that feels still like a really new tool, you know, but all of a sudden, a massive part of the workflow and what it means to collaborate with our.
- [26:44]
Christophe
That's right. And look, video content also has. I mean, we're. We're in a video generation now, right? Like, we're watching podcasts video. Like YouTube is like a huge thing. TikTok, you name it. Like, it's. We're consuming a lot of videos. Short format, bigger formats. If I share with you a loom video where I'm going to explain my Design for three minutes and you immediately get it. You can immediately react versus I write you a three pages doc with a few images and you have to kind of connect between the things or also a link to a Figma prototype. It's just you putting the work on me to go and consume all of your thing versus just take three minutes to record a video. Explain to me your thinking. I'll actually connect with the work better because I hear your voice. I can see that you're really caring the tone you'll use. I'll pick up how excited you are about your solution too. And then in the end, like I'll, you know, I'll just have a much easier way to consume your and give you feedback. Then again, if you give me a giant doc, but I have to spend my evening reading. And so I think video is still underused at companies. I think outside of design teams. I don't even know if I've seen loom videos coming from anyone else. So that's something that other, other disciplines need to work on. Because again, like that's why we have meetings, right? Like when, when a PM writes a long prd, quite often we end up doing a review of the PRD so that they can explain what they wrote because no one's going to have time to read every single line. So give us the summary. Right. And I think videos are like just a really powerful tool that people are still kind of getting accustomed to recording themselves. Even if it's been now, you know, many years of, you know, shooting selfie videos. But in the workplace people are still kind of warming up to it. But it's a super powerful tool and I think it's still maybe 20% tax.
- [28:30]
Rid
Can we get ultra specific on video for a second? Because I'm sure there are people listening that maybe have heard or seen people using video tools. They're not actively using it as a part of their practice and kind of on the fence a little bit. I think some best practices are obvious so I'm going to name them right away, which is like give the context for what you're working on, talk about the problem and that kind of thing. So if we just kind of put those aside, I'd like to build on top of that a little bit. And I'm wondering if you have any advice for people to make more effective videos when they're sharing with their team or maybe pitfalls to avoid or just ways that you are coaching designers at Plaid to have success with these tools.
- [29:12]
Christophe
Sure, sure. There's a few. I Mean, obviously length matters, right? Like if you share with me a 25 minute video versus a three minute video, like this is just a different mindset. Like now I have to dedicate my time to consume what you recorded. I might skip over some parts versus a three minute video. Like okay, in between meetings, let me click, let me watch this give you feedback. Fantastic. So obviously length matters, so you have to think a little bit more about what do you really need feedback on. How quickly can you send the context so that people know what kind of feedback you're looking for. And again you can jump into really showing the work. And you have to be you know, concise, snappy, like just that, that takes practice. But I've seen many designers just start with like those very long videos and then shortening, shortening, shortening over time to like now being really efficient at it. That just takes repetition and that's number one. Number two, you need to, I think it's, it's true when you present any design work, it needs to be clear what, well what, what is the, the help you need? Like what feedback are you looking for? But two, what's your own opinion? Like what do you think is the best solution and why? And what are some of the challeng still facing with it? Some of the doubts you still have so people can tell you, like, well actually I think you're overthinking this. Or no, actually I think you're right to be doubting this. Here's another path you could take. So really be being honest, being authentic. Like we always talk about, you know, the best influencers out there really feel authentic. Like they really share their own point of view of the world. Not just sort of documenting but really sharing their own perspective. And so I think it's also true when you're sharing your designs, you're trying to get help from, from others on video. Like you really have to do the authentic part needs to come out like very also concrete things like show your face like it is night and day difference. When someone sends me a lume or screen studio recording and I only see the design and I hear their voice versus like I see their face as they're using it. I don't know why, but it just feels more human. You still more connected is more engaging and as a result you know you're, you're just deliver probably better feedback. So that's another important one. Like don't be shy, like it doesn't matter if you're like, you've got the perfect lighting. It is, you know, an internal facing video. Anyway, don't be shy, show your face, show your emotions as you're sort of walking people through your work and then explain the why. I mean that's true for that's what we do in crits design Crits, right. Like when you show a design you tend to explain what's the intentionality behind it. Like why did you make it this way? Why do you think this particular solution solves this problem? In what ways? If you don't share that with cross functional partners as you share this video out, you're kind of not letting them see their peak behind the scene. As we've discussed before, what's the thought process? How did you get to this and why do you think it's the right solution? And so you're making them sort of guess and you know you can reduce that guesswork for them and that will make your video content more engaging.
- [32:12]
Rid
Let's talk about the crit piece now. What are some of the belief that you have about what makes for a great crit experience and how does that take shape at Plaid?
- [32:20]
Christophe
There's a number of elements and I. Crits are something I've iterated on a lot at every single company I've been at. I've seen very different takes on it and I think there's a number of sort of factors that will make a crit successful. The first one is the size. Like a crit with three people versus a crit with 20 people. Completely different vibes. And you don't at three people you may not always get the level of like the depth of feedback that you and the breadth of feedback that you'd get from 7, 10 people. At 20 people you will get only always the same two people sharing because everyone else is going to be overwhelmed and shy and you're also not going to get hear the feedback from everyone. So I found that the side the sort of perfect size is between 7 and 10. That tends to be the like likely better around 7 and 10. But like that's, that's a good size where you have enough voices in the room to really get to the, you know, level of detail in the feedback that you want. And, but it's also not overwhelming. I like to play with format, I like to keep it fresh. Like crits can really easily, easily become redundant if you don't play with the format. And so there's different ways you can do a crate, you can have, you know, a pretty traditional like designer explains the context of their project. Walk people over like through their solutions. And then open up for feedback. And then people chat about it, raise their hand. That's the very traditional way. You can also do a style and crate. So, you know, I'll present a context and my design for three minutes and then let's put some music on and we all have five minutes to drop comments in Figma. This way everyone gets to share their feedback. It's actually exactly where, like on the particular pixels you have, you know, feedback about. It's more inclusive, it goes faster because you don't have to wait for everyone to share their feedback before you share yours. It tends to be more exhaustive, really, in terms of the feedback. What you lose sometimes is the back and forth of the conversation. Like, so that that's an element that you lose. But the benefits are also really good. There's also a format I love to do, which is no context create. You don't get to share context.
- [34:28]
Rid
Oh, cool.
- [34:28]
Christophe
You just show the work. And that is like, if you think about it, like, if you do software design, you're not going to be over the shoulder of a user to explain to them why design is this way. You got to speak for itself. And so sometimes, like not having. Not being able to share the context, not being able to say, like, oh, I only have two weeks. And there's this technical difficulty that we have. And so these are the constraints. Like not knowing all of that sometimes can just focus people on like, okay, is this the best experience? Or not like that. That's what matters, not the excuses or the reasons why you limited. Like, let's just talk about, do you have the best design? So no context. Just show the work and we critique it. That can be really powerful. And then very important thing, making sure people share their work early. And often that's a, a problem I've seen very many, many different design teams struggle with, where designers wait a little too long before they share their work. And so one, when you're too deep into the work, you sort of have an emotional attachment to the solutions. And so the feedback you get feels like an attack on you, not on the work. And people get like, start to defend their solution or their ideas rather than listening to the feedback. And it's also often a little too late really to kind of shift. Like, you weren't. The designer is likely running out of time and so they're showing the final thing. Like, well, you know, there's only so much you're going to be able to change before you need to go and build this. And so making sure designers share Their work at the beginning of the idea, like, hey, like, here's a little concept I have. I've made a sketch on a napkin. Like, let's talk about my sketch on a napkin, right? Like all the way there. Like really all the way to, you know, the final products. I think that's, that tends to be what makes critics really successful is when people feel comfortable sharing early and often. And so sometimes it comes with like the facilitator, the manager who's in the room, like just making sure, keeping track of who's sharing, making sure they're pushing the maybe more introvert, maybe more shy designers to get out there. Just get sure to work, don't be shy. So they build a muscle and then becomes a formality.
- [36:36]
Rid
I appreciate the diversity and format for crit. Just as a way to kind of keep people on their toes a little bit. I'm curious, do you leave that format up to the designer who has that slot and they get to kind of dictate what this is going to look like? And how much of a correlation is there between format and stage of the design process?
- [36:53]
Christophe
We have actually experimented with both. Sometimes it's the facilitator which is gets to decide. We used to do that on some teams at Facebook. It's a little harsh at times to like, because you get into the feedback, you don't even know like, what format you're going to be going with and you're not easily prepared. But sometimes it's, you know, when, when it's really senior people and it's high caliber talent, like, that can work, that can be a kind of fun exercise. But I tend to like, prefer letting the designers pick, like, hey, what is the best way we can help you here?
- [37:22]
Rid
Anything you're doing to coach designers to give better feedback in those environments.
- [37:27]
Christophe
I think the best feedback is candid. The sugar coating things just doesn't get anywhere. Like starting every feedback by saying, like, oh my God, this is, this is so beautiful. But like, that, we don't need that. That, that's just not helping. That's right. It's okay. Exactly. It's okay to like give support and encouragement to someone who's like, if someone is like clearly, like stuck, like, if they look stuck, like, it's okay to just kind of fire up a little bit of energy that, hey, you're not completely stuck, like you're going to get out of this and like you already got some really good ideas, so let's just jump, like, let's just double click on them. But but in general, I prefer Candler. I think it just works better. There's also a. Sometimes some designers can be a little too candid. That can also kind of get people that can create some intense vibes. And so it needs to become acceptable, it needs to become part of the process. But it cannot be on day one, like, hot, like new designer comes in. It comes in hot with like spicy. Takes in a very candid way every time. Like, no, you got to easier way into it, build trust. But once you have that trust, like, you might as well be very candid with the feedback and say what you as a user or like, you projecting yourself as a customer, are you really feeling about what you're seeing? I still think it's less impactful to start your feedback by saying, I like this, I like that. No, we're not going to do liking game. We want to hear why do you think a particular solution solves a problem better than another? What are the limits of this one? What are the advantages of this one? Not what is your subjective take on, like, which one do you like the best? Like, everyone. Because then you get into the taste territory. There's nothing I hate more and that's still happening on my team than like, hey, can we vote on, like, what is our favorite solution? Like, no, we don't vote. Like, this is not. This is designed by committee. When you vote no, let's really debate, like, what do we think is the best solution and why? Like, what are the pros and cons? And it's really be precise. And if there are some cons that can be overcome by just iterating on the design, let's iterate. But it's not a liking game. We're not dropping likes and comments. I also think it's important to start with curiosity. So I like when people, the most senior designers will almost always start with questions rather than giving you their take. They'll start asking you because they want to understand, really, if you thought about something deeply enough so they'll ask you, hey, why is this button rounded? It could be just as simple as that. Why we never use rounded corners. And so I'm just asking why. Why are they rounded? Like, why are you trying to achieve here? The more senior designers will have a real reason why and they'll give you. They'll tell you why. The more junior designers might be like, oh, I don't know, I liked it that way. Okay, well, let's talk about why it may be successful, why it's not. And so starting with like, curiosity really asking questions. Can one help the designer on the other end who's getting that feedback kind of refine their thinking? Because in the next time they might ask themselves that question, like, why am I making it this way? Like why am I using blue here, a highlight color instead of to give like a more black or, or gray? Like what am I trying to do? Like am I, am I overdoing it? Like am I starting to put too many colors on this particular screen and it's overwhelming. Like I know someone is going to ask me that question and correct. So I might as well just put the thought into it now. So really asking questions is a really powerful way to give feedback. And so yeah, those are some of the techniques I tend to coach people on.
- [40:51]
Rid
Super practical. And I appreciate how the nature of this conversation has kind of like followed an idea through the very early stages of iteration. Now to like, okay, team members, let's present it at Crit. If we continue that trajectory a little bit as an idea, a set of designs gets closer to code, gets closer to production. Anything else that we should touch on that you're doing to create this culture of craft at Plaid? Hey, it's Rid. I'm constantly asked about my favorite product, so I want to take just one minute and give you a quick rundown of my stack. Destin is how I shift ship design changes without having to code. Framer is how I build my websites. Genway is how I do research. Jitter is how I animate my designs and Play is how I design and prototype mobile apps. Visual Electric is how I generate all of my imagery and Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now I've hand selected these companies to partner with me so that I can do these episodes full time. So, so the best way by far to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at Dive Club Partners. Okay, now on to the rest of the episode.
- [42:01]
Christophe
So two essential things that we do in particular at that sort of towards the end of a project, as you started to wrap up the design phase and you're about to start building, the first one is design reviews. Every project that we do go through design review. Sometimes it's a live meeting. So you know, I'll be in the room, some of my design leaders on the team will be in the room. Some of our cross functional partners who work directly on this project will also be in the room and the designer will share their work and capture feedback. That's a really good moment to kind of all align Everyone in the room aligns on like, hey, we think this is the right design to go and build. Fantastic. Without that checkpoint, you kind of open the door for like micro little things to go and change, like last minute, like a PM doesn't feel like this works or like you really want to get to that point where everyone's in your room. We all align on, this is the right solution. Let's go and build. So that's an important one. But sometimes we don't do it live because smaller projects may not need like 15 people on a zoom call. And so we do also asynchronously, we have a Slack channel designers, whether it's a live reading or an async review, they'll share their figma file in that channel. They have a template. It's a big jam, actually. There's a template. So it's very clear where to share the context. You know, what's the current experience, if there is one. And then what research insights do you have about the problem? And then boom, here's your prototype. So like there's a really good structure to it that makes it sort of easy and scalable. But so sometimes we do those reviews asynchronously just to save everyone's time. And then a new thing that we started about a year ago and I got a little. I don't know if many design teams do this, but I find it to be super powerful and my entire team loves it. It's something we call polish reviews. Goes back to the sweat, the details plaid principle that we have. We've created this panel of I think currently four ICs, like really senior ICs on the team who really understand this design system have really good eye for the little things. The little margins are slightly off or they're consistency with this other experience. We have a content designer who's looking at all the words like, is there a typo? Is there a word that the button that doesn't use a verb or use a noun. And we don't do that. So like really paying attention to those details. And so that panel, which is always the same, so there's a consistency. They see everything will be receiving that Figma file at the very last moment before it gets chipped up to like building. Like before the engineers start working on it or building it, they'll review it one last time. They have 24, 48 hours. I think it kind of depends on the project. And they'll just nitpick. It's like really final moment of like fixing things. But it's so valuable. Like, the first reaction we got from Cross Functional Partners was like, oh, you added two days to the design process, like you're going to slow us down. But now they realize like, one, the work is better, and two, we actually capturing a lot of the questions that would have come downstream by the engineers, like, hey, why is this font size 16 pixel, but here it's 18 and they seem to be a very similar block of text. Is there a reason instead of having to ask and do that back and forth, we capture it at the very last minute and so we avoid that sort of sometime frustration that can come from engineers and it just makes it work better. We did a little retro on it recently with the team and the panel. I asked the panel, hey, how. How is it different now than it was a year ago? When you're reviewing those designs and they're saying that, you know, they used to have 20, 30 comments on a file altogether a year ago, and now it's 5, 6, 7. And it's really just the designers have all the feedback they got now they incorporate into their work from the early stages. And so it just makes better designers as well. So it's been a super powerful tool for us.
- [45:58]
Rid
As a designer who's mostly worked at startups, I would have paid for this type of service if it was able to. Like, especially knowing all the context of the system, you know, it's not like you can hire an agency to do this, but just to have a second set of eyes and to take a fine column through my work, especially when you're, you know, you're looking at the same pixels for maybe a month, you know.
- [46:17]
Christophe
Correct.
- [46:18]
Rid
You just don't see things after a while.
- [46:20]
Christophe
Yeah. And. And you move. You move screens around in your figma. Like you duplicate something, you get feedback, you fix it, and then over time, just little things get lost and you may oversee that. This label got moved by three.
- [46:33]
Rid
I duplicated that misalignment like 20 times by now.
- [46:36]
Christophe
Correct, Correct.
- [46:37]
Rid
I kind of want to zoom out and have a little bit of a reflection question because we've covered a ton of ground in terms of how you all work, how you do feedback, the different processes and rituals. You've also kind of nodded back, especially to your time at Facebook, multiple times throughout this call. So is there anything else from your past experience? Maybe it is at Facebook. Maybe it's Uber Alto where you're like, yeah, that is something that I'm actively trying to recreate at Plaid. Or maybe the flip side of it, maybe there's something where you're actively trying to avoid, too.
- [47:10]
Christophe
One really important thing I picked up at Facebook when. In the early days when. When I was there, which was the 2012 era, 2013, there was, like, maybe 30 designers at Facebook at the time. And so we had, like, internal mobility. It wasn't even a word. Like, we were just constantly moving. Like, change was the constant. You would be working on Facebook photos one day and, you know, messenger the next day. Like, really, it was just very fast moving. We had to, because there were, you know, not enough designers for the amount of work that needed to get done. But what I found there is that as a designer, it's incredibly motivating and engaging and inspiring to work on different problems and, like, you know, staying on the same problem for five, six years. You know, you build up knowledge, of course, but you also get a little. Your curiosity sort of wear off a little bit. And so. And curiosity is the greatest source of inspiration, I think, for designers. And so internal mobility is something that I've tried to carry over to the teams I've led since. And so we move a lot. Like, we don't make people move every day. Right. We're not that crazy. But it's very typical for designers to have worked on two different teams in the same year, sometimes even three. Another one that I sort of, again, embedded in my philosophy and how I lead teams is I try to empower everyone. I don't believe that empowerment should be sort of limited to managers. And so, in fact, people report directly to me and have full transparency on everyone's performance on the team and really think deeply about how can we run this team better. I have managers and I have ICs. I have very senior ICs who just are part of this group of my staff team, and they know as much as the managers. The way to growth shouldn't be management. Right? Like, people should not be limited by, you know, the. The choice of continuing as an IC and perfecting the craft. They should never feel like, oh, if I want to continue advancing in my career, I need to move into management. Management is just a different expression of your craft, of your thinking, of your leadership, and. And you can express, you know, and have impact in very different ways as an ic. And. And so I want to exemplify that. I want to make sure that I never have a designer coming to me feeling like the only way to continue growing is to turn into a manager. That's. I've been forced into management early in my career, and I still think it was the dumbest move at that time. And so I don't want to force people into that.
- [49:44]
Rid
I want to wrap up by talking on the hiring piece just briefly, because given this culture you're trying to create, given the emphasis on craft, even given the emphasis on change as one of the core consistencies, how does that influence what you are looking for in a design candidate?
- [50:03]
Christophe
I really value curiosity and I can pick it up. I have, you know, I have ways to try to see like, are people really curious and constantly trying to grow, get better? And that, that seems to be a really, really good signal because I believe that the most curious designers will be the ones the most, were the most inspired, the ones pay attention to what's going on in the design community. What are the, the most recent tools? What are the latest designs from different other companies? Like, oh, wow, I really love how they achieve this glow effect with rye. Like, wow, that's really cool. Okay, this is something I need to consider next time, really, that inspiration and that curiosity leads to better work. It's also true not just with the community, but also really caring deeply about understanding the problem, understanding your end user, what are they really going through when they use a product? Like, how frustrated can they be about certain parts? What are they trying to achieve? If you're a risk manager at a bank trying to evaluate loans, what are your incentives? You try to probably close as many deals as possible, but also reduce risk. And so really understanding those trade offs that go through the user's head is really important when you're designing a software for them. And so curiosity is like really key to me. And I've rarely hired people that I didn't think were curious. The other element is that intention to craft. Obviously we've talked a lot about craft that has evolved. There was a time maybe in the 2015-2020 era where I valued maybe more the ability to think system level, to really understand the full ecosystem of a company and set of products, and having really rigorous product thinking and problem solving, because I thought that was the hardest part to really get right. But I've also seen over the last few years that craft, if you really want to get to the finals level, it's really hard to train and you really have to focus on that all the way at the beginning when you're hiring people. And so I really leveled up the bar, my own bar, for what I'm looking for with candidates. And I always ask the question to the team when we're debriefing a candidate before we hire Them, I always ask, is this person going to level up the bar for us? Are they better than our average work and will they help us lift it up? If not, we probably shouldn't hire this person. And then in general, I also trust the hiring manager because I'm not always the direct hiring manager. So I also always ask them, do you feel very strongly that, that if this was the only hire you get to make for the next 18 months, this is the person. Because that just shifts a little bit the perspective and they need to believe deeply that this person is going to be a game changer for their team and they would give away part of their salary almost to really make this higher. That tends to be a really good signal if they deeply believe that this is the right person.
- [52:59]
Rid
The power of a really well phrased question. Because it's easy to say, yeah, I want this person, but. But yeah, that's right. Do you want this person at the opportunity cost of every other person? A little bit.
- [53:08]
Christophe
That's right. And this is inspired from something that came out of Netflix. I've never worked there, but they shared that publicly a few years ago. They have this test they call the Keeper's test. And so they asked managers, I think regularly, I don't know if they still do it today. They used to do it. They would ask every manager for every single one of your direct reports. If this person was to tell you they're leaving tomorrow, how would you feel? Would you be upset? Like, really upset, deeply upset. You would fight to keep them, like, there's no way they can leave or I'm fully screwed. Would you be like, okay, well, it's a little bittersweet. I'm sad. They were really great, great member of the team, but also, like, I'm happy for them. They'll have, you know, they'll see better days at other places. And I know I can hire someone else who's just as good, who's on the market or third option, like, will it kind of feel like a relief? Like, do you feel like maybe this person is not at that level for what you're looking for? Like, I think they're probably not the best and you can find someone better outside on the market. And asking that question to your manager completely flips how you should think about who's a top performer on your team. That you have to really take great attention off, like making sure they're really engaged. Crushing. You're supporting them the best way versus someone maybe on the complete opposite end where, I mean, you should talk about performance with this person really because clearly you're not attached to emotionally attached to them staying it probably means there's some stuff that can be fixed or maybe it's time for them to see another place where they can be more successful. So it carries through after the hiring all the way to the sort of management of the team. It's important to ask yourself questions like that and it's all about how you frame it. What's the question you're asking?
- [54:53]
Rid
Well Christoph, this has been really, really great. I mean I've recorded a lot of these interviews. This is definitely up there in terms of juice per minute which is one of my favorite measuring sticks to use. I super appreciate you. That's a fun metric Ultra practical with us today. I mean even for myself like I just got my notes going of things that I'm going to take into my own practice so appreciate you taking the time.
- [55:15]
Christophe
Thank you. Thanks for having.