What does the perfect e-commerce platform look like in an AI era?

That’s the question Shopify’s Chief Design Officer Carl Rivera has set out to answer so this week’s episode is all about Shopify’s big bet on design and craft as the ultimate differentiator.

We go deep into:

- What happens when AI makes everyone a 7/10 designer

- What most design teams get wrong when casting vision

- How design can lead the creation of truly native AI experiences

- Why every designer at Shopify is learning to ship to production

- Carl’s thesis for why designers are severely undervalued in the market

- Why Shopify acquired Molly Studio and what it means for how the org works

- + a lot more

https://www.molly.studio/ - design studio acquired by Shopify

Only a select few have multiple episodes on Dive Club and today Catt Small joins the ranks.

She has a gift for turning messy ideas into practical next steps so it’s no wonder her Staff Designer course is one of the top-rated on Maven.

In this episode we go deep into all of the ways you can make an impact by building influence on your team and effectively casting vision for your product.

Some highlights:

• The 2 ways to measure your influence
• Strategies for getting distribution for your ideas
• How to select the ideal format for casting a vision
• Storytelling tactics used by the best staff designers
• How to strategically invest in workplace relationships
• What Catt learned while interviewing staff designers for her new book

• ⭐ Get $100 off Catt’s course: Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor
• ⭐ Get 15% off pre-orders for her new book: The Staff Designer

What does it take to make people feel something with design...?

This week's guest is kind of an expert on the question.

Sara Vienna (https://x.com/sravienna?lang=en) , the Chief Design Officer at Metalab, talks about the responsibility that designers have to shape this AI world that we're entering without losing the heartbeat of a brand.

We don't hold back on the current state of the industry and what it feels like to be a designer today.

Some highlights:

- How to not get swept up in current design trends

- How Metalab has adopted AI workflows internally

- Strategies for leveraging AI to understand research data

- What it takes to put meaning at the heart of a brand/product

- How Metalab invests in the collective taste of the design org

- Where Sara derives signals and how she filters out the noise

- Being late on a trend is bad taste even more so than ugly design

- + a lot more

- Windsurf https://windsurf.com/) and [Suno](https://suno.com/home?wpsrc=Google%20AdWords&wpcid=22042553892&wpscid=173890219393&wpcrid=726251362516&wpkwid=kwd-2827037661&wpkwn=suno&wpkmatch=e&wpsnetn=g&gad_campaignid=22042553892&gbraid=0AAAAA9pWpduFan7icL90FczgyQploCsYi) rebrands

- Jony Ive’s Stripe Sessions talk (https://stripe.com/sessions/2025/a-conversation-with-sir-jony-ive)

- Erica Hall’s book “Just Enough Research” (https://www.mulebooks.com/just-enough-research)

- Anthropic’s Machines of Loving Grace paper (https://www.darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace)

- Blok for focus (https://blok.so/)

I think we're entering a world where the market for fractional design is about to explode…

So this week's episode is with one of my favorite people in the industry, Gabe Valdivia.

We're going to explore his independent journey → how he made the jump, how he's evolved the practice in year two, and all of the lessons he's learned along the way.

Some highlights:

• Gabe’s three-phase client model
• How to sell a client on fractional design
• Gabe’s rules of thumb for pricing himself
• How Gabe’s new apprenticeship program works
• How Gabe vibe-coded his personal Freelance OS
• How he has redefined success from year 1 to year 2
• Gabe’s journey to figure out how to position himself as an independent
• a lot more

• Charlie Sutton who he worked with on VR team at Facebook
• Team Human book by Douglas Rushkoff

Too much of designing a startup happens behind closed doors

So I want to work with the garage door open while building Inflight (https://www.inflight.co/) as much as possible.

You already saw a bunch of the nitty gritty UI details (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D39Dv9MSlhs)…

But when you’re going 0 to 1 on something, the storytelling piece is often the hardest part.

So this episode is a sneak peek of a recent presentation we gave in SF (and some behind-the-scenes commentary to go along with it).

What does it look like to advance your career in the age of AI?

That’s what this week’s episode with Dan Winer (Director of Product Design at Kit) is all about.

He shares insights from his top-rated Maven course "Strategy and Influence for Product Designers" (https://join.dive.club/dan-winer-course)

So if you want to learn how to go from pixel pusher to strategic partner then this is the episode for you 💪

Some highlights:

- Dan’s strategies for effective storytelling

- How to shine a light on the value of your work

- Tactics for building alignment across key stakeholders

- The 8 skills that Dan is evaluating in the hiring process

- Why design systems are becoming more important than ever

- Harsh truths designers don’t want to hear about their portfolio

- What to do if you don’t have data to prove the impact of your work

- + a lot more

This week's episode is with Andy Zhang who was the lead design engineer at Windsurf. So we're going to shine a light on all of the ways you can make an impact as a design engineer including:

• Owning more of the frontend polish
• Thinking through design patterns and packaging features
• Bridging the gap between technical features and intuitive UX
• Saying “no” to features to preserve the simplicity of the system

He also shares some great stories and advice including:

• What it was like working as an intern at Figma with <10 people
• How designers can start to get more comfortable with code
• How he taps into his experience as a PM at Uber while selecting the right design process
• a lot more

• Rasmus Andersson (https://x.com/rsms) - Designer/engineer at Figma, mentor to Andy
• Kevin Hou (https://x.com/kevinhou22?lang=en) - Lead product engineering at Windsurf, Andy’s basketball teammate who helped him get the job

I’d bet real money that you have been on Smashing Magazine at some point in the last 18 years…

Good news is, this week I got to interview the founder, Vitaly Friedman, who is also one of the leading thinkers in UX right now.

In this episode we go deep into how AI is changing the way we interact with digital products and how our patterns and processes are evolving as a result.

Some highlights:

• The use case for dynamic interfaces with AI
• How to design a less painful refinement journey
• The best AI design patterns to use for inspiration
• When to use quiet AI vs. visible AI in your interfaces
• Why more products should be “AI-second” not “AI-first”
• Why we need to slow users down when designing AI products
• How designers can establish trust when users interact with AI
• a lot more

• Consensus
• Elicit
• aiuxpatterns.com
• Episode with the Gamma Head of Design
• exa.ai
• Perplexity
• ChatGPT
• Gemini
• Norman Nielsen Group

If I told you someone had a background as a senior designer at companies like Uber, Dropbox, Apple, and Patreon then you'd be pretty impressed, right?

Same.

But Adam Noffsinger walked away from all of that to start Alma (which you might remember from the Smith+Diction episode).

So this episode is a deep dive into what it really looks like to go 0→1 as a design founder.

Adam even walks us through his Figma file for Alma so if you’re interesting in startups or designing something from nothing, then I think you’ll really enjoy this conversation 👇

This week’s episode is with Pietro Schirano who is the founder of the new design tool MagicPath and one of the true forward thinkers on AI. We go deep into the future of prototyping, design workflows, and what it takes to catalyze your career with AI.

Some highlights:

• How design workflows will evolve
• Using AI as a collaborator not just a tool
• How Pietro was able to build influence at Anthropic
• Why interactive prototypes are becoming table stakes
• What designers need to understand to master the models
• Why design architects will be the highest paid role in the future
• a lot more

• DesignerGPT (5 million users)
• TweakCN
• Origami (Facebook’s prototyping tool)
• Figma.ai domain purchase