Loading summary
Transcript70 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid, and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is a special one because it's a live recording of a panel that I hosted with Maven, all about how AI is changing design workflows. We get to hear from three of my favorite guests in the entire industry. The first is Henry Modiset, who's the VP of design at Perplexity. The second is Pranathi Perry, who's leading the design of V0 at Vercel. And lastly, Nick Pattison, who's done the branding for Lovable Craft Maven in many of today's top startups. So without further ado, let's dive in. I want to start off with you, Nick. You know, the reality is, you know, I spend too much time on Twitter and many of today's top startups are turning to you for branding. So I just want to know, like, what. How the sauce is made and some of the things that you're doing behind the scenes that are allowing you to execute at this level. So I asked people to kind of prepare a little bit of screen shares just to really dive into workflows and what's happening. So I'll let you take it over and we can start there.
- [01:05]
B
So, first of all, great to be here with you all.
- [01:09]
A
So, yeah, I thought that what I.
- [01:11]
B
Would do is just do a quick walkthrough of a project that we just completed that we haven't actually released yet. We've been doing this new thing probably for the last two weeks, where when we're starting to build a graphic system, we're actually building the tools for the graphic system so that we can scale them pretty quickly. And this is one that I'm super excited about, so I thought that I.
- [01:34]
C
Could walk you through it.
- [01:35]
B
And when I say building these tools, I mean we're building them in Lovable. We're using GPT to support that, so that we're talking to Lovable in like a super clear, effective way that it can understand really well. So I thought I'd just walk you through this briefly and show you how we're applying it and also giving these tools to clients when we're done. So real Quick Flow Glad is a payments processor tool. At its base, it's very precise and modular and mathematical. The founders are of Middle Eastern descent. And so what we unearthed in our first call, probably in the first, like 20 minutes, this doesn't always happen, is that they like the idea of Islamic geometry as a possible graphic system. It's Symmetrical. It has lines that flow and expand. Like the name flow. Glad it's also could be infinite. And so there's a ton of possibilities for patterning. So we started to dig into a lot of inspiration and found these patterns early. A second thing that they liked were these subway lines as well. So we were trying to think about how to correlate both of those things together. And, you know, if we went away and had to actually draw all of this, it would take an extremely long amount of time. And that's not that we couldn't do it, but it's not super scalable. So we actually had the idea that we could build first this pattern architect tool, which I'll show you in a minute. First, based on some of that geometry, we use this core pattern here. So we built this in about an hour. And it has, like, lots of uses. You can kind of zoom in here and just use like single line patterns and adjust the radius and the star density, zoom in and out, work on spacing. But you can also change it over to where is this thing? A primary shape here. And we can work on line thickness and gaps, etc. Very, very fast way for us to work on some of this patterning. So very early on this is, you know, we do these sprints in two weeks, which is 10 days. So we have tight timelines in order to build and develop these things. So I thought I'd just show you kind of day by day. So this is the second day where we're working on some of this. We're already building some of these patterns which we're starting to like. And then we're starting to integrate some typography. Typography. And think about some of that subway path line stuff as well. And so we're able to create those patterns and integrate it really quickly. But then we also wondered if maybe we like, sort of dithered this and digitized it so we were able to build a second tool even faster. That was this halftone pattern tool, which started to create some really interesting results. And I think, like, the main thing here is also being able to just experiment and have fun and play. So we were all able to work on this. We have four people on our team and everybody's able to like, start creating these patterns. So only within day two, we're doing this. So, you know, I think. I think the cool thing is that we're showing up for our mood board presentation now. And, you know, moods for us used to be a lot of found things, but we're starting to Find that we can produce things faster than saying, hey, what if we did it like these other designers who did it? So our mood boards, I just wanted to show you looked actually quite polished. You know, we're coming in and we're starting to show them some of these patterns early for our second direction as well as our first direction. You know, we're integrating this work into those workflows and we're already starting to get the vision. So like, it becomes easier for us to believe in the vision to get them on board, especially when they've already expressed to us that this is direction they want to go. And it's just up to us to execute something impressive and interesting. So we're actually like getting pretty deep in the weeds and woods. We just start executing visuals that are integrated into web and like how these patterns can work. Um, so yeah, and I just wanted.
- [05:43]
C
To like show you, show you briefly how this all unfolded.
- [05:46]
A
Real quick message and then we can jump back into it. By now, you know that Jitter has been my go to tool for animation for years now, but they're still shipping like crazy. Just this summer they've released comments, pen tool, morphing text, gradients, Google fonts, and a bunch more. So if you haven't yet, I promise you will be shocked at just how easy it is to bring your designs to life in Jitter. So go ahead and give it a try today, just head to Dive Club Jitter. I saw a scroll stopping tweet the other day. The creators of Tailwind are working directly on paper to train the output to be perfect. They even invested in the company. So just think about the possibilities for a second. In the future you could design something in paper and then just right click and copy the perfect Tailwind as if the creators themselves wrote it by hand. Or maybe you take an existing code component and import it into paper to make edits directly on the canvas. Or I mean, this is going to totally change how we Design and deliver UIs for the web. And it's just another reason why I'm betting big on Paper as the next great design tool. You can try it out today. Just head to Dive Club Slash Paper. Okay, now on to the episode.
- [06:59]
C
They love this stuff.
- [07:00]
B
They had some feedback, but they wanted to go with the second to third option. So we've worked on some initial patterns. We started to develop vectors with the first tool that I showed you and then we started to dither them with the second tool that we showed you. So we were able to like build, build the initial versions and dither them off. But then we're starting to have, like, clear conversations with them. Like, they felt like this sort of patterning was a little bit like a Rorschach test, right? So, like, okay, the tool's giving us that. How do we pull off of that? Becomes a lot faster for us to be able to create patterns with the first tool that don't have that. So by day five, we were honing in on these patterns that felt much more clearly based on the Islamic tile. And then we're honing in on core patterning, and then that allows us to back off of a lot of the patterning and start to think about applications in a more thoughtful way. So getting into website design and app design and also integrating these subway patterns so, you know, we can start thinking through these additional layers on top of it, and then eventually get to those executions and outputs, thinking through how these things can all integrate into the website, into the app, into data, et cetera. And I think that the most exciting thing is that I just have been, you know, getting on calls with clients, and on day three, I'm like, we built a tool for you. If you like this, the tool is yours.
- [08:23]
A
So that's so cool.
- [08:25]
B
This tool is theirs now. And so I think that it's not just about how fast we work. It's also about, you know, handoff, which is tough for companies who are moving fast. We build a bridge brand in two weeks, then, you know, they have to implement it. And so I see this as a real way that we can hand this stuff off to clients and they can begin to implement and scale instantly and also play in a way that has.
- [08:47]
A
Parameters, and even just giving clients the ability to articulate what they want. You know, having gone through this process multiple times, the amount of times that I get two options, and then I'm like, I think it's somewhere in between somewhere, you know, but now I actually have a tool to dial that in and express my intent as the client. Super, super valuable. I haven't seen anything like this in the brand process before. It's really cool.
- [09:12]
B
Totally.
- [09:13]
C
Yeah.
- [09:13]
B
Big agree.
- [09:14]
A
And, like, thinking about the moves, right? Like, you know, how can I extrapolate this brand that I've now been given and having tool as a part of handoff. You said that this is, like, what, a couple weeks old? Like, is this something that you're still pretty green in? Like, how do you see this going?
- [09:30]
B
Yeah, I. And, you know, I'm not quite sure yet. This is probably the second tool we built, but We've done a couple more since then, and even some directions that clients haven't chosen. We have tools for now, so we sort of have this graveyard of tools. So we're, we're getting better at building them and expanding off of them. I mean, I think that right now some of this feels like it's in its infancy in terms of just using it for patterning. But I've started to wonder how we could expand on this. If we're doing identities that are, you know, dimensional and 3D, not just flat 2D, how can we push that and create really dynamic systems that we can pass on to clients? So I think, I think this is just the beginning for us. It feels very young in terms of what we're tinkering with and a lot.
- [10:18]
A
Of clarifying questions in the Q and A right now. This is all lovable, like what we're seeing right now. Like you've just built zero to one in these tools.
- [10:26]
B
Yes, correct.
- [10:27]
A
Well, let's just keep the pace going then. I want to use this as an opportunity to toss it to Pran, who's building one of these tools at v0. And maybe, you know, as you're kind of bringing up your own workflow stuff, let's just start like high level too. Right. So we've have the example from Nick about this idea of using these, like, custom internal tools as a part of the brand handoff process. You're obviously approaching it from many different angles, including more of like the product design angle. So when you're doing research to understand how teams are using these AI prototyping tools, what are some of the key trends or signals that you're noticing that are influencing the way that you even think about product strategy for V0?
- [11:14]
D
Yeah, I think initially the tool, I think kind of started a lot as like a designer tool where we would see a lot of people create really interesting graphics, really interesting landing pages, shaders, which I think VCR is very good at as well. But recently we've been kind of investing a lot more effort into things like integrations because a lot of people, I'd say the sales or PM archetype as well, have been actually using it to create, not personal software, but I would say personal software to help them work better in their job. So a lot of PMs will kind of create interactive mockups to help supplement their prd. And it's just kind of like the bridge tool that helps you kind of. It's not quite Figma and it's not quite dev, but it's like in between that just gives a better idea of what you actually want to build. So it's very cool to be able to hook those things up to live data. We also have really great AI integrations too. So a lot of people are doing image generation or building their own chatbots and stuff like that too. So it's I think a step above just a static prototype, if that makes sense for a lot of the builder type people.
- [12:21]
A
You said an interesting phrase which is like it's not quite figma, it's not quite dev, which I think is spot on. It's like this middle ground and I think that anytime you're dealing with that ambiguity in kind of this gray area, it's a little bit unclear for someone who maybe considers themselves a professional UX designer. When the heck do I reach for this type of tool? So you have like the double perspective of like the industry wide perspective. And also, you know, you are a designer working on one of these tools. When do you reach for V0 in your own practice? Like are there slam dunk use cases and maybe are there other times you're like, okay, you know, it's probably not the right tool for the job there.
- [12:59]
D
Yeah, I actually have a really good example.
- [13:01]
A
Just let's do it, Go ahead. Yeah, let's go ahead and screen share.
- [13:04]
D
Personally, actually recently I was kind of doing some exploration for my portfolio as every designer is doing every month. But I came up with these kind of nifty little cartridge like components that were SVGs that I created or like vectors I created in figma that I exported to SVGs and then I would generate images to like place on top of them. So I was like, it would be really cool to turn this into a tool where I can just like dynamically generate a bunch of these cartridges with like slightly different tints and stuff like that. So I actually made a tool for this and then I made it so that the text is dynamic so I can like put in red, I can change the colors, which was literally just a single prompt with V0 to be like, hey, can you tint all of the gradients in this SVG to correspond to the color that I want to create them. And even cooler was that I can made a transparent effect where there's a little CPU image behind the cartridge and then lowered the opacity of the svg. But it becomes a fun tool that you can actually just use to generate dynamic different things. And like I said, with things like integrations, I could actually right now this is just static image Upload. But I could actually do things like connect it to file and like have image generation. And all of a sudden this just becomes like an app that was something that I use for my portfolio but also becomes something like that people can play around with. Similarly, I've also been really into using creating sprites. So something I've found that obviously you're creating each of these like frames in Figma or Aesprite or whatever tool you have. But it's really fun to create these kind of like micro tools again to actually play around, see what they look like in production. And something I want to do in the future is create my own RPG game on the web. So this is something that I think works really well for that. And both of those things. I obviously started Figma and I do all of my ideation and Figma asset generation, all that stuff. And then I pulled it over to V0 to actually take it to the next level. I think one application I've been enjoying recently is I actually have been kind of every week as a means of debugging v0 as well or catching bugs, is recreating interactions that I'll see in other products just to understand how they work. So this one I created recently is like the DIA new tab prompt, new tab animation, completely made in v0 assets, Figma. But it's super fun just to analyze the motion. Now you have this asset that you can kind of learn from in the future.
- [15:21]
A
Can I pause you and get really specific for a second? Because I think people see this and they're like outbit dope. This is really, really cool. How'd you start? Did you start with this all comprehensive prompt? Did you kind of chip away at it? Do you feel comfortable scrolling up in this chat? I think that's always interesting and helps it feel a little bit more like an on ramp for people.
- [15:41]
D
I can go all the way to the first chat. Sorry, this is going to be like really embarrassing to see like me like yelling at the LLM.
- [15:49]
A
We scroll up and it says all caps.
- [15:52]
D
It's a pretty long chat but you can see things like I'm like, the borders are much better but I'm still seeing the gradient inside the input, if that makes sense. And I'll like give it screenshots of things that it's just doing incorrectly. And I actually try to test the limits of v0 so I won't edit the code at all. I'll do everything in chat just to see how close I can get to it just from spoken word. If that Makes sense. Something that I also think that obviously people are really encouraging, just completely non technical people being able to wield these tools to do whatever they want. But I actually find that understanding at least a little bit of what is going on and reviewing your own code and PRs and stuff gives you a bit more like language and propensity to guide the LLM to what it might be doing wrong. Especially when it comes to debugging. So you're not just building on a house of cards and bandage over bandage when you're debugging. You actually can give it constructive criticism. But yeah, this is like, I'm giving it like hex colors that it should change it to. Can we line up animation, timings and all of that stuff. So yeah, I get pretty detailed I would say. But it's definitely a little bit hard, I would say, to manage context. And also this all costs money. So prompt like and like tweaking your prompt to be able to get the most out of each message is something that I think people are learning too cool.
- [17:10]
A
They didn't want to interrupt you too hard. Are there other examples that you wanted to walk through?
- [17:14]
D
So the last two I kind of wanted to show are Vercel specific. So one of our brand designers at vercel, Dan, uses V0 a lot for asset generation for our conferences and things like that. And very similar to what Nicholas actually showed we just did next JS conference I think last week. And there were these assets that we would use for like ads and email headers and things like that. And it was like this dithered cube effect. And rather than creating a bunch of different iterations of this in Figma, he created a tool in V0 to like let you adjust the density of these. There's actually a design mode where you can like draw. You can actually draw these cubes on this and then you can copy it to clipboard, paste it into figma. And then we have a bunch of these different like headers that are being used for all of our conferences and stuff like that. So that's an example of again something really similar to what Nicholas does and how our brand designers use V0 just in their day to day lives. And again, another example is we have the signature big CTA that we use in a lot of our conference sites. We'll just iterate on these in V0 and hand them directly off to design engineers. Especially because our brand designers are so aware of how they want the timing and the hover effects and all of that stuff. They get it all right in B0 and then just hand it.
- [18:22]
A
I love the example because it's totally something that I would like to be able to bring to the table as a designer, but I otherwise have no business doing this. You know, like, I wouldn't make this happen in something like figma, but if all of a sudden I can use natural language and play a little bit freehand, it makes a lot of sense. So I kind of want to tap into Henry's perspective on this because I think there's a lot of talk about how AI is making us faster, but that's actually less interesting to me. Like, what I'd like to hear from you maybe, is what are the ways that AI has increased the scope of deliverables that designers are bringing to the table at Perplexity?
- [19:01]
C
Yeah. I mean, what I love about both of what you all just showed is, like, it speaks to the fact that being a designer actually means you actually have potentially a lot of different roles. Sometimes I think design is a practice of pure problem solving, and other times it's a practice of communication, of, like, vision. Sometimes it's your vision, sometimes it's pm, sometimes it's the founders, whatever. But, like, designers are, like, probably the best in an org at, like, figuring out how to, like, put it into reality and piece it together, like, in, you know, some coherency. And so sometimes you use a design tool to literally mock up what the app will be or whatever you're making. And sometimes you use it to, like, explore and communicate and tell a story and visualize, like, you know, a path. And it's not about making it perfect. It's not about thinking through every state. And I think, you know, given that, like, a lot of us are making software and it is interactive, it really helps to have to be able to have a tool that generates interactive things. But you only meant to be used as, like, a communication tool. Like, you can, you know, make something in V0 just as a way to communicate, like, something that you're thinking, or just a way to, like, roll out something you're thinking. You can do that so much faster, and it's, like, less dangerous and expensive than, like, you know, asking engineers to work on it. Right. Because a lot of times I think there's a, you know, we don't know what. We don't always know what's right. I mean, as designers, obviously, and. And we shouldn't think that we do. And so it really helps to explore. And if we can explore something interactive and cheaper and faster, that's like, so Valuable. So I think, like, the spectrum of, like, you know, every company works differently. What designers do in companies is so different all across the board. Hopefully not. Hopefully your job isn't to just make presentations of potential ideas and actually getting to solve problems too. But it's great to have, like, tools that let you kind of work in all the ways you need to.
- [21:10]
A
Speaking and working all the ways you need to. I want to kind of tap into your perspective as more of the design leader. You know, we've kind of the IC perspective here. So what are some of the workflow shifts that you've noticed at Perplexity recently?
- [21:25]
C
Yeah, I'll maybe separate brand and product. The brand design team, we have this sort of principle of. Of both velocity and volume. We want to be able to make a lot of stuff and put it everywhere it needs to be that Perplexity is a brand that is just totally ubiquitous. We're a small company. We need to be loud. And the only way to do that is to basically have tools that let us do that very fast. And so we've definitely embraced every tool, explored every combination of tools. We'll blend things together, merge things together, whether. Whether we're making something static or visual or a website. I think, like, the brand design team in particular is just, like, fearless with tools and trying things and stitching them together mostly as a way to just, like, push the boundaries of, like, how a brand might be represented and also how much you can make in a week. There's like, a freedom built into the brand values of, like, we don't really have like, a pretty, like, hard line guideline brand system that, like, you know, prevents exploration. So there's like, that side of it. On the product side, we have designers that are in our code base writing production code every day, and so they're using cursor and cloud code and whatever to accelerate a proper engineering workflow. There are designers using tools to prototype ideas or visualize them and making a little slice of something as a deliverable. Um, so, you know, a lot of our, like, crazier, like, animated stuff, sometimes it's just nice to go into a sandbox and just like, tinker with it until it feels cool. And then you use that to hand to an engineer. Sometimes designers will just build it themselves effectively using the same method. It just depends on the designer. But I think we're able to talk, we're able to do, you know, I think, like, the. The theme of all of this is not being boxed in by just a single tool that makes static Images, Right. We'll use anything that lets us communicate. Like the actual complexity of software, you know, all the states and all the animations and you know, because all this stuff at this point, like the amount of things you can render in a browser is astounding. Especially when you get into like 3js and you need to do 3d stuff. Like the only reason we're not doing it more is probably because it's like the tools don't really work that way. The rendering abilities are there. So we're trying to like, you know, remember to push the limits on that. As long as we're not making things awfully confusing.
- [24:04]
A
Hey, really quickly let me tell you about the all new Dive Talent Network. I've hand assembled over a hundred of the most talented designers and builders that I know so I can recommend them to my favorite companies. So if you're listening to this and you're open to new opportunities, the Talent Network is anonymous and super low pressure. It's just an easy way to see what's out there without having to post on social media. So if you're interested in joining or maybe you're looking for your next hire, head to Dive Club Talent. For me personally, like, you all are kind of leading the charge in terms of just inspiring me to get out of my comfort zone of existing tools that I've become so familiar with over the last 10, 15 years. And I look at people like, you know, Gunner bringing shaders to the table or Escha bringing music to the table, and all of a sudden it's clear, wow, that's part of the user experience. Like that is part of the UX that someone is touching and feeling and hearing. And it was entirely conceptualized by a designer and executed by a designer. And it has nothing to do with rectangles or even CSS like that. That's the future.
- [25:14]
C
Absolutely. Yeah. We've been, especially as we, as we've worked on games which we've, we've launched one, it built in the comment. But that's like, like I have a, there's a game designer on the team who does like the game design, you know the mechanics of the game and then all the other designers get in there and add like, you know, then when they're thinking about the UI and the, and they're generating the music and like are composing it and it. You just add like, you get like so many different brains from different worlds combined and then things start to get special.
- [25:47]
A
I want to touch on tooling for a little bit and I even like the language that you use, we talked about kind of stitching together or chaining together tools, because that's almost the new art of it is figuring out what do I reach for and how can I get things to work together. And it's a little bit like the wild, wild West. So I'm sure at least some percentage of people who have tuned in are curious what are the tools that are becoming more interesting or that you have your eye on or that people are exploring. And I'm going to open this up to everybody, Pran and Nick too, in case you have answers. But, you know, what are you seeing or tinkering with that you think is worth paying attention to as a designer? Especially when sometimes it kind of feels like we're drinking from a fire hydrant. Of new tools right now, I would.
- [26:34]
C
Say, like the most sort of fully adopted and integrated is cursor on the product design side. And some people have just a variety of setups related to that. Like, they may be using club code in cursor, whatever, but just as like a pure accelerant of exploration. Otherwise people do use v0 or lovable or just like anything that lets them kind of throw an idea together to see it. Especially if they want to see like. Especially like a very small slice, like, you know, an animation of a moment. And they don't have to worry about like the rest of the code base. It's very useful for that stuff. Otherwise on brand, I mean, I think any tool that's ever been made, they probably used it. I mean, all these things have to come together in the end in like a traditional tool. Like, even when we're making videos, like, it all ends up in like frame IO in the end. But like so many other things happened at the beginning. You know, maybe something started with Mid Journey, then it went into Kreia or went into Suno and got became animated. And then, you know, then maybe someone. Sorry, Sora and then someone used Suno to make some music. There's like everything is kind of being experimented with and then. But then it all needs to get stitched together in like a proper tool. So where it all goes is interesting because, you know, there's some, like you said, there's an art to like knowing what works well for what. And that's just like late nights and exploration. Eventually I think this stuff will get streamlined.
- [28:05]
B
I mean, I feel like we're kind of like lightweight on tools right now. I mean, we use Mid Journey. We were big visual electric users or.
- [28:14]
A
I electric Henry Stone.
- [28:17]
C
I love they're love. They're busy.
- [28:20]
B
They're busy. Yeah. But yeah, we use both of those and then a lot of lovable. I mean mainly just because we. We've been in there for a while now. I would say that that's pretty much the extent of what we're doing now though. But I'm very curious about Flora Fauna. I'm going to their event on Thursday. I think they're doing some really interesting stuff and I'd like to learn more about it. So digging into that a bit too.
- [28:45]
A
Pran, I have a question for you as kind of the representative IC product designer. Right. So how do you think about when to reach for different types of tools based off of what you're working on and where you're at in the design process? When are you in more traditional Figma land and I'm talking about like for like your professional deliverables at Vercel. When do you reach for Figma? When do you reach for V0? How often if ever do you jump into more production code based tools?
- [29:13]
D
Yeah, I think my stack, I'd say I'd like split it up into like pre during and like post development pre. I'm in v0 and figma ideating about what we even want a feature to look like between figma and V0. I like to say that we rarely, I think use Figma as a source of truth for a lot of our UI these days. We have a very basic obviously component library that we use to quickly create components and stuff like that in Figma. But for the most part code is the source of truth because everyone's kind of collaborating. I'll use figma or sorry v0 for things like billing flows and stuff that you're not doing all of the spaghetti prototyping in Sigma. It's just much easier to spoke in word be like, okay, open this modal. If you press this button and then it's very clear to an engineer they can play around, see all the edge cases and implement it themselves during. I'm a huge flawed code user. I think myself and Pablo who just joined the V0 design team, we implement most of our designs. I think I would say at this point, which is pretty awesome to be able to see it from end to end and I think to Henry's point about moving fast. I think the one thing for us that has really improved there is because implementation is now table stakes and is so fast it gives us a lot more time to think about the creative side of things. Of like okay, now that this is Implemented, what's the next step? Which would usually happen two or three weeks out of shipping a feature, but instead it's pushed up to one week because implementation is so fast. And then post, like I was saying before, is mostly like Versatile Agent, which we have, which leaves comments on PRs and gives you an idea of what you're doing correct, what you're doing wrong, and all that stuff. But all that to say, I think from a product design standpoint, I am using AI a lot throughout the ideation process. I think I tend to lean on it more once I have a better idea of what I want a feature to look like. And I'm in the edge case stage because it's just much easier, like I said, to just speak the edge cases than it is to mock each one up, especially when you already know what you want it to look like. And then it gets boring of, like, this button leads to this, this button does that, like all that stuff. So that's where it's kind of helped my life as a product designer, I would say.
- [31:23]
A
I have a very pinpointed question that I've been thinking about recently, which is, in the world of using AI prototyping tools, V0lovable, that kind of a thing, there's a very wide spectrum of the size of a prototype. You could make something that's a very pinpointed interaction. Right. It's like, I just want to make something that I'm considering part of the handoff process and it's how this thing feels and moves. And then there's like a. I'm going to make this entire flow. Right. And I think you sometimes run into issues the bigger you get. How do you think about where you want to fit into the spectrum and how far down this. You know, I'm prototyping whole flows. Do you. Do you go with these AI tools?
- [32:07]
D
Yeah, I mean, I think we're kind of, I think on our team, and I think a lot of other teams too, are past the point of like, really prototyping entire flows. It's like, once you're getting to the point where you're like building the whole product in like a prototyping tool, you might as well just implement it.
- [32:22]
A
Jump in the cloud.
- [32:23]
D
Exactly. Like halfway through. Once I, like, get a general idea, I'll usually just create a pr. But I do think we have a lot of customers and we have a lot of people that use V0 that are building like entire products, like within V0 and like huge apps, hundreds of versions, and like, that's so cool. They're saving a lot of time. Like there's a lot of like, I'd say like products that are very, very UX focused. So think like health care banks, like stuff like that. That UX is like mission critical for them. It's like so Easy to use V0 because you're like speaking the UX rather than like having to create it all by hand, if that makes sense.
- [32:59]
C
Are there teams doing that, like together like a full team only in V0?
- [33:07]
D
I think so. I think forking and remixing chats is a really big thing for users of V0 where it's like someone will create something and there's millions of different versions that people will go off and do on their own where they want to work on an isolated page of a website someone's creating or something like that. So we see people collaborate like that. But I think real time collaboration is still something that we're trying to figure out.
- [33:30]
C
Yeah, you have to reinvent version control and commenting and yeah, I'm just going.
- [33:36]
A
To underline what you said, Pran, because I think the area that people on the outside point at and say, well, AI prototyping tools are a waste of time is like they get stuck in every little piece of surface area that you have to account for and fine tune in order to make the entire flow feel real. And so I was kind of interested in your perspective almost as someone like maybe you dog food the heck out of B0 and do everything in B0. You know, I wouldn't have been surprised if that's your answer. But for you to even say, hey, this is really good at Focus prototypes, but I'm quick to jump into Claude and owning more and more of the front end I think is really noteworthy. And I remember talking to you, Henry, gosh, probably was over a year ago now, which is insane, when you were dabbling a little bit more in IC land. And now I know you refer to yourself as a professional email sender. So from your vantage point with the rest of the team, how often are designers owning the front end code and actually implementing their designs at Perplexity?
- [34:36]
C
It's totally on a spectrum. There are some designers who have like years of writing production code and they kind of view this moment as like a major accelerator, like the same way an engineer might. That was my personal experience. I was used to it and used to being like, you know, essentially like part of the engineering team and used to dealing with all the stuff that sucks about it, like dev environment and going through PRs and whatever. And all of this, like, was accelerant. There are designers that are more that have never done it before. And we just have such a culture of, like, learning and teaching and embracing new tools. And so there are designers that they're like, okay, well, can I learn. Can I learn how to write a little bit of code?
- [35:22]
B
And.
- [35:23]
C
And that's mostly coming through and fit and finish that last mile of getting the animation right or adding some extra weird, juicy detail that is like, in my experience, it's hard to. Unless you're building a full prototype of the app. It's kind of hard to even feel out some of those things unless you're doing it in code. So I think that's just added an extra level of, I would say, like, brand in the product. So designers on my team, like Gunner, have never coded before, are now, like writing Smith ui, you know, with the help of Cursor. And I think it's like, pretty cool. And then there are designers who are just using it as like a sandbox and they'll just like, you know, visualize an animation or prototype an idea. And it's very much like more of a communication tool. So we really have, like the full spectrum, but on our team, like anyone that wants to learn and is embraced, which is cool.
- [36:20]
A
I'm gonna highlight this question from Diana, and I think she hits on something that I see a lot, which is almost this pressure to use AI As a designer. Top down, the boss is like, we need to use AI. We need to use AI. And there's this built in skepticism because it's, you know, by nature, almost feels just about cost cutting and efficiency for the sake of margins. For someone in that position where they're not working for themselves like Nick, or in more innovative companies like Vercel and Perplexity. What are some practical ways that a designer can get momentum with some of these tools and just start to incorporate them into their practice when they don't have the concrete guidance of a culture that is making use of them and figuring out where the ceiling exists.
- [37:10]
C
I think my perspective is like, you know, the more you can communicate, the more empowered you are. I think, like, being relegated to making rectangles is actually like, there's not much power to that. And, you know, like, if you've got like a vision for how the product should work or how the brand could feel, being able to, like, make that, bring that to fruition with, like something very robust, like a prototype, or like, you know, being able to quickly put together, like a whole different brand direction like you're actually, whatever's in your head is more likely to then be communicated with, with these tools. And so I purely see it as that. I've always felt like the benefit of designers coding is that, like, it's kind of hard for me to explain what I think, how I think the software should work, and it's easy for me to do it myself. And I think with all these tools you're just able to make something way more, you know, have way more depth and way more interactive and, and you can do it with, you know, in a couple days. Like, I think that's, that's the reason why we y' all should do it is so that you can just like show more and show what's in your head easier.
- [38:18]
A
I think the answer is gravitating towards code. The more and more that I have these conversations. Like, the reality is AI doesn't necessarily make you faster at doing the old thing that you were doing in Figma. It opens the door to new types of deliverables and what you can bring to the table. So Pran, maybe I can double click on your experience as a way to follow up with that because, I mean, gosh, your first full time design role was what, like 2021, right? Like you, you went from there to playing at like the highest stakes table. And I know you had a little bit of like a engineering background maybe. So I want to tap into your perspective as somebody who can kind of see both sides of the table, but is still, you know, you're not like looking for your exit ramp for your career. You know, like you're thinking about where is this going to go for the next 5, 10 plus years? How do you think about where the new technical threshold is for designers to be able to make the most out of these tools, adopt these workflows and really set themselves up for success in this new era of design.
- [39:22]
D
Yeah, well, I mean, I think like 80% of design is just like having the idea and like the creativity to know what you want to make. And then the other 20% is going to be an ever changing suite of tools that everyone's using. Who knows if any of the AI tools that we're using now will even be around two or three years from now. So I think back when I was doing a lot of, I was actually just talking to someone about this the other day of coding without any sort of AI assistance feels so insane to me now, even though just two years ago we were doing that. So it's like, I think things will Just become the new norm of like now implementation is table stakes. So it gives you a lot more time to think about how it should feel, how it should look, how it integrates into your daily lifestyles, like the tools that you're building. So I think, like I said, just having the idea is the hard part. And learning the tools, I think is the easiest part. Especially when most of our interaction with AI now is just spoken word. Like if you just have a list of running ideas and you just like chat about it, that can now turn into a prototype. So, yeah, I think, like, it's much easier today to create like a prototype or create a proof of concept than it was, I think even just two or three years ago, which is. Makes me really hopeful, I think about the future of like younger designers and stuff too.
- [40:43]
A
Puts more of the emphasis on communication at that point. Yeah, I'm going to toss it to Naini, who had an interesting question here, kind of touching on the fact that this democratization of building makes it so that the lines are a little bit blurry between design and front end, but definitely design and maybe a PM when both people can spin up a prototype. How does collaboration change and what should designers be thinking about when it comes to just existing at a high level inside of an org? Maybe Henry, if you want to kick us off there.
- [41:18]
C
Yeah, it's tough. I mean, in some cases that's like a total disaster. In some cases it's amazing and you end up making better software. My perspective has always been like, it doesn't make any sense that we use a tool that makes images as a way to plan out how software should work.
- [41:37]
A
Right.
- [41:37]
C
First principles, like, when I started my career, it was like we were using HTML and just writing Dreamweaver or using Dreamweaver to write HTML. And then we all use Photoshop. And it felt crazy to me. Now we have a Figma, which is like the first tool that kind of became really popular for product design, but it never made any sense. So if you really think like, how do we make software? It does make sense that people will be building interactive prototypes as like the way to design the software. If anyone can do it, that can be great. It can be like, confusing. I think, like, it really just is going to depend on the. Org and I think like, the roles should blend more and it should become more about like, you know, a culture of being decisive and having clear ownership. That's certainly what we've, what we've had to do ultimately, like, the people who have been designers have like a very Specific skill of, like, comfort with ambiguity and being able to, like, pick a direction in a moment where there's a million choices, like the. It's easier to make stuff, so then we have to be more decisive because there's. There's more choices. So I. I kind of feel like the people who have, like, ended up being designers will probably still be designers or whatever. The, you know, like, the role of design and the type of person in there will be the same as always. It's just like the. The level of decision they're making may be a little bit different.
- [42:59]
A
I'm going to end on one last question from Marique here. And again, you know, a lot of talk about designers being in the code base, owning more and more of the implementation. And my tldr of the question is basically, how do you not mess it up? You know, like, what do you. What have you learned about getting into the code base, making changes, working with these tools that is impacting the way that you. Everything from prompt to strategize, where to insert yourself. I'm sure there's people listening who maybe even are a little bit excited about getting into the code base, but they want to make sure that that first experience is one that makes it so that their engineering counterparts want to continue to have them participating. So if you have any advice for those people who maybe will hang up here and take their first step the next day.
- [43:52]
D
I feel really lucky to work at a company that just lets me do whatever I want to the code base in the name of experimentation. So you just have to make mistakes to, I think, learn from them. And the biggest thing I've been kind of pitching recently is that vibe. Coding is awesome. And I think it's been getting a lot of people past the initial hump of learning how to make your ideas real. But I think the next level is actually what comes after it of are you learning from what the LLM is actually writing? Are you just kind of blindly shipping code? Because the more specific you are about what could be going wrong or what exactly you want to happen from a technical standpoint, the better the LLMs are. So I think it's like, right now we're at the stage where most models are interns, and you kind of have to guide them in the right direction. And the only way that you can do that is by still kind of keeping up with what actually happens technically for what you're creating. So I think there is a suite of tools that is now emerging in the review stage of PRs and stuff like that. But I think the learning aspect of all of this will never go away. It'll just be like a different type of learning. You're not learning how to write the code, you're learning what the code is doing.
- [45:03]
A
So, yeah, that's something that I've been doing even in clawed memory recently, is putting it at the top level and saying, I want to learn. I am here. Break it down for me. Don't just do the thing, but look for any opportunity to teach me what's going on. And I was recording an episode right before this and making the joke that at the same line item. Or I'm just like. Also for context, I'm a designer and my goals are two part one, to make the thing and two, to not make my engineers angry. So make my footprint as minimal as possible. And I've had a lot of success with that. As a practical tip as well, there are. We started a few minutes late, so I know we're late. Everyone is sticking around for the most part. Henry, can I ask one more question before we ride off into the sunset? And I want to tap into your perspective as someone who is hiring and thinking a lot about the evolving talent landscape and how to pair people effectively. So given, you know, I think somebody in the chat used the word uncertainty. Given the times that we're in and everything kind of being up for grabs a little bit. What are some of the main signals that you are looking for when reviewing design candidates?
- [46:10]
C
There's. There's some values I look for that are like, most of the design team has some background in either being a founding designer or like a solo freelancer. So there's like a. Someone who's kind of used to just being in a. In an environment where they have to make a lot of decisions by themselves. So there's that type of thing in terms of skills. You know, the thing that won't ever go away is product intuition. The 90% of product design work is picking the right thing to build in the first place and saying no to, like, most ideas. And it's especially true on consumer. And so we really, like. We really emphasize that it's really like product intuition. Why would someone use this? How is it going to work? What makes it intuitive? How does it fit in the market? What makes it compelling? All of these things that are really like, they're certainly not visual design, they're not interaction design. It's really just like, what is the thing? And why would someone want to put it on their home screen? That's the thing we Test for the most. The other thing that won't go away is just like the sort of basic craft of like, I mean, I would almost just call it graphic design, like color and spacing. Like we need that. We need people to know what good and bad is and what interesting is and what it means for something to have character. And that stuff that is like, that's an AI is going to give you choices and a designer needs to make a choice. And it's just sort of like, you know, there's a duality to that, like product and you know, the kind of art direction. Like someone needs to make those calls. And typically people who have chosen new designers already are pretty good at making those calls. And so I. We really look for those things. Aside from that, like someone who just wants to keep learning because the tools are changing like really quickly.
- [47:55]
A
Yeah, I think that's a perfect line to end it on. Even just reflecting on the nature of the demos that we shared. Like there's a freshness to them. Right. Like you are very clearly experimenting and tinkering and trying new things and the last thing that you can do is sit still when everything's changing so quickly. So I appreciate that and we'll kind of use that as a way to wrap up. Thank you so much everyone for joining. This has been a ton of fun. Appreciate all of the questions and getting to hang out with many hundreds of people like, this is pretty cool. So I don't take it for granted. Appreciate you all. Before I let you go, I want to take just one minute to run you through my favorite products because I'm constantly asked what's in my stack. Framer is how I build websites. Genway is how I do research. Granola is how I take notes during crit. Jitter is how I animate my designs. Lovable is how I build my ideas in code. Marvin is how I find design inspiration. Paper is how I design like a creative. And Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now I've hand selected these companies so that I can do these episodes full time. So by far the number one way to support the show is to check them out. You can find the full list at Dive Club Partners.