Transcript
Rio (0:00)
I don't want the tool to be, ah, we built like a cursor for designers. It's just Cursor. It's the same agent. Cursor might change how it feels depending on who you are.
Rid (0:11)
What types of things are you thinking about as a designer with personalization being the end goal that you're trying to cross that chasm?
Rio (0:19)
The ideal interface is different for every single person. The things we design as designers, they just kind of go up one level. Instead of you're designing exactly how this piece of UI will look, you're actually designing a container.
Rid (0:36)
Coming up with the right set of blocks for AI to wield for each user dynamically probably is more important now than at any point ever in designing digital products.
Rio (0:48)
I'm trying to poke at the boundaries of, of is this thing possible because we're building software and the code is the material. You have no limitations. You can do whatever.
Rid (1:00)
Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is with Real Lou, who you might have heard on an earlier episode back when we were talking about early Notion and systems design. But since then, Rio's joined as the head of design at Cursor, which is easily one of the most influential companies in all of tech right now. So we're going to an inside look at how design operates at Cursor and including all of Rio's crazy AI experiments. So without further ado, let's dive in.
Rio (1:34)
So Cursor people first reached out like August last year. That was before the agent existed. The Cursor product trajectory, they started with the tab. It was like auto completion for code. It's like a much better GitHub copilot. Then we did the chat like early last year. And then in the chat you can ask Cursor about the code base, questions and it'll answer, but it won't do much for you. And then in July they added the composer. So the composer is kind of like, now the chat can actually write code for you and then you can modify code. So they reached out to me back then, we talked a little bit. I thought, oh, cool. I still thought like, Cursor back then is like a tool mostly for like coders. It is still, but it has just changed so much since I thought, oh, I'm just still going to do my Notion thing because I want to make something for everyone. And then last year around November, we were doing planning at Notion, like planning this like multi year project that I was working on for a long Time. And then the plan happened to be, like, we're gonna do this, like, for second half of this year. And I was so angry because I wanted to do it, like, maybe. Since I joined Notion, I first went to V0, I made a little prototype. It's like a next JS React tailwind CSS app of the future notion. And then I played a couple rounds there, and I was stuck. I want to do more, but then I can't. So I just downloaded the app. I got cursor, open it up. I used the agent. It took a lot of time to find where the agent is. And then I was hooked. I did that for, like, three days. And I built this whole prototype of, like, the future notion, like, in my head, exactly what I want. I built, like, a menu where you can, like, turn, turn, like, every single new feature. Like, there's like a fe flag menu. Off, off, off, off. And then you can see the whole app change. It has, like, real data. It has, like, like a cool thing. It's like I built like a 3D globe view. But the idea is, like, in Notion, you know, we have, like, board table galleries, but you could have your own, like, custom views. Maybe they're written by humans. Maybe they're, you know, generated by AI. It uses the same concepts, same data model. That completely changed me. Making software before, it was, like, a really long process. You might need to kind of start, like, you know, by yourself. Maybe you can make some, like, little tools and stuff. It's fun, but in order for you to make something bigger, you need to first assemble a team. And in this team, there's, like, so many different people doing different things. You need to figure out how to, like, tie them together. You need to align people, make plans versus I have an idea. I'll draw some sketches. I'll maybe verbally describe it to the agent. Maybe I'll take a picture of, like, a napkin sketch of this, like, menu structure that I wanted. And then I'll be like, just a rectangle, box, line, line, line, divided line, line, line. And then I'll tell the agent, like, the items that I want in the menu, and then, boom, done. That's it. And then it's that. But, like, for every single little thing. And that means you can just keep going at a much faster rate to where you want your theme to be. And as you do it, you're not acting on some other artifact or representations of the software. Before people had to write docs like prd, they had to, like, make plans and, like, linear make Some tasks, they have to, like, draw some pixels and figments, try to stitch everything with, like, a process versus now. It's almost like sculpting. You get something, then you poke at it. Maybe get rid of certain parts. Maybe you re. Wrangle certain parts. Maybe you say, ah, do it again, Again and again. Do it five times. Pick the right one, it changes completely. Yeah. And then the curse of people reached.