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- [00:00]
Host
There's a parallel that I'm noticing in these interviews between what's happening today with AI and what happened way back in 2013. And to understand, let's start by taking a look at the early days of Snapchat.
- [00:13]
Jack Brody
We have to question conventions. And if you want to do things better than the way they've been done before, you have to start by doing them differently. So many of these conventions were built on conventions that came before them. And as you build conventions atop conventions atop conventions and everything else is changing around it, those can really start to get. Really depart from actually what is optimal.
- [00:33]
Host
That's Jack Brody. He was one of the earliest designers at Snapchat and went on to become the head of design and eventually the head of product. And in our interview, we talked about Snapchat's value of questioning everything. And it's that mentality that makes it possible to break free from traditional navigation patterns and create something truly novel. I mean, Snapchat's multidimensional gesture navigation was unlike anything that I had seen before. And there are clear pros and cons to that level of novelty. But regardless of how you feel about it, you have to tip your cap to those designers. Because back in 2013, the vast majority of the industry was still focusing on static mockups. But the Snapchat team created a paradigm that required deep prototyping.
- [01:19]
Jack Brody
Prototyping is optional for a lot of designers. It can be part of your work, but it's not necessarily, like, integral to 99% of product designers out there.
- [01:30]
Host
That's Jorn, the CEO of Framer, which we all know today as the popular website tool. But back then, Framer was a prototyping tool that came out of their time at Facebook right around the same time as this Snapchat story begins. And this surge of prototyping tools was something that Julius Tarn talked about in his interview.
- [01:49]
Julius Tarn
It was kind of a pain in the ass, too, like being a developer at the time at Facebook, like, it took a long time to develop stuff. It was just like a pretty big and gnarly code base. And so, like a lot of the designers, instead, they spent their time really investing into prototyping tools. And that. That. That was where Framer was born. Framer is from Facebook. Origami was technically from Apple through Mike Mattis and pushpop Press. But, you know, he brought it to Facebook and it was really developed and formed into a real tool there. So a lot of these kind of, like, tools and this kind of idea of, like, prototyping as Part of a designer's toolkit really came out of this, this environment where if we could, we would code, but we cannot practically. So we are going to make this tool that brings us as close to coding as we can.
- [02:27]
Host
Now, if you've been listening to this show for a while, then you've no doubt heard origami come up. Qu, which was one of the original ultra high fidelity prototyping tools. I mean, other than play, basically every other prototyping tool on the market today is just like an 8020 version of origami. Much simpler, much less powerful. But the complexity of origami said a lot about the type of person that would push past that learning curve and make it a part of their practice. It's no coincidence that so many of the designers on this show cite origami as a core part of their journey. So I really like when Ben south defines origami designers as people with enough agency to overcome steep learning curves. Here's Julius echoing that same sentiment.
- [03:15]
Julius Tarn
A lot of people who use origami, they get over that kind of like, learning hump of like, oh, this is such a complicated spaghetti tool. Like, the fact is you can build something really high fidelity, indistinguishable from production.
- [03:27]
Host
So what does all this have to do with AI? Well, in the same way that gestures on iOS opened an entirely new UX pathway for the designers at Snapchat who knew how to take advantage of it, learning how to work with AI as a material will be an amplifier for the designers who dive in early.
- [03:45]
Jack Brody
This does feel like it is a new material. The same way, when Touch came, people who could prototype went further. That's just a fact. Looking back, we see that doesn't mean people who didn't prototype couldn't do anything like, no, they were still valuable. It's actually still a very hard skill set to acquire. But if you could do the other stuff, it was more bad people.
- [04:04]
Host
That's Tuan Kumar, who, no coincidence, was yet another early designer at Facebook. And he sums up this idea beautifully. You don't have to experiment with AI. Nobody's telling you to. I mean, the chances are you're working on a product that still has nothing to do with AI. But there's a window open right now for designers who want to roll up their sleeves and figure out how this can be an unlock both for products, but also for your career. The difference is that the primary hurdle to overcome isn't really complex. It's ambiguity. And it reminds me of something Maheen Sahel said to me when she first joined the Meta AI team.
- [04:41]
Maheen Sahel
So as the first designer joining this team, I had to understand first and foremost, like, what is this space? And to understand what this space and to navigate that ambiguity, the sheer ambiguity of there's all these AI models out there, like, how do I even work with them, what do I even do, what do I even build? The thing that helped me the most was immersing myself deeply. So I actually just became curious about things, super curious about things, and started doing side projects outside of work.
- [05:10]
Host
Real quick message and then we can jump back into it. For a long time now, Raycast has been my portal to AI. I mean, all it takes is a quick keyboard shortcut and all of the models are instantly available at my fingertips. But the problem was you had to be on a pro account. But that ends today because they just announced that Raycast AI is available to everyone. No subscription, no account needed. You get 50 messages to try and you even get access to all of their extensions. I mean, I'll put it this way, if I'm going to get a new computer tomorrow, the very first thing that I'm going to install is Raycast. It is that good. And you can try Raycast AI for free. Today, just head to Dive Club Raycast. That's R A Y C A S T. So you know how I've been talking about how I use genway to do research with AI? Well, something surprising is happening. And just for context, I use genway in two different ways. One is contextual interviews. So I prompt the AI with what I'm hoping to learn and it has a dynamic conversation with each person. And the second is usability testing. So I upload a Figma prototype and their AI agent helps me test them with people all over the world. I mean, you should see the quality of the follow up questions. It's pretty crazy. But here's the surprising part. At the end of the interview, most people say they're more comfortable opening up to an AI agent than a real human. And it's just another reason why I'm hooked on the product. If you want to try it out, there's even a secret landing page just for Dive Club listeners, which gets you two months free and 10 credits to recruit people. Just head to Dive Club Genway. That's G E N W A Y. Okay, now onto the episode. If you want to capitalize on this window of opportunity, then I promise at least one time you're going to be feeling exactly like Mahin did in that clip where it's this feeling of, what do I even do right now? And in many ways, I'm kind of there right now. I mean, about half of my design process last week was in a system prompt in 11 labs trying to design a conversational AI flow for inflight. And, I mean, I have no idea what I'm doing. But if you care enough to bring your ideas into the world, then you won't stop until you figure out that new tool or maybe you build your first lovable prototype. This is what agency looks like. So I want to leave you with something Meng2 said to me.
- [07:35]
Meng2
Most importantly, this is the most important part. It has to shake your core to a point where you're not going to give up when you're going to get there. So, for example, you create a prototype in figma and you're going to be like, I wish to my core that I can make this form functional, and I wish I could just submit it to a real database. When you get to that phase where you have a problem in front of you that you cannot solve by something that is not code, then that's a perfect segue to learn code.
- [08:10]
Host
Now, I know that example was about code, but it's bigger than that. I mean, AI is raw power at your fingertips. All you have to do is be curious, try things, tinker with new tools. In today's world, rewards people that demonstrate agency more than ever before. And this upcoming episode is a fantastic example because we're going to hear from Kyle Turman, who was the original designer of Claude by Anthropic, so definitely don't miss that one. And I will see you on Friday.