How do designers from today’s top teams collaborate with engineers?

After many interviews I'm starting to notice a trend…

The highest functioning product teams throw away a lot of code and it’s a good model for what the new “handoff” process will look like. So this video highlights how it works at teams like Figma, Vercel, Perplexity, Airbnb, and more.

• Jenny Wen (OG designer of Figjam now at Anthropic)
• Teo Connor (VP of Design at Airbnb)
• John Pham (former design engineer at Vercel)
• Vincent van der Meulen (design engineer at Figma)
• Balint Orosz (cofounder of Craft Docs)
• Derek Briggs (Design + Code at Hypermode)
• Anthony Menecola (Staff designer at Shopify)
• Ammaar Reshi (Head of Design at ElevenLabs — episode coming soon)

This week's episode is with Chris Abad who has led design teams at companies like Google, Square and Dropbox so needless to say he's given a lot of design presentations over his 20+ year career.

So this conversation is a deep dive into storytelling and everything you can do as a designer to effectively share your vision and persuade stakeholders.

He shares every step of his process including a ton of practical tactics like:

• Strategies for designing a great deck
• How to set up Q&A for success with executives
• His new secret weapon software tool for storytelling
• Strategies for navigating pushback from stakeholders
• How to frame the “Peak Moment” of your presentation
• How he coaches designers to leverage storytelling in their portfolio
• a lot more

⭐ Don’t forget you can also save $100 on Chris’s Design Storytelling course using the code DIVECLUB

• Chris mentions the importance of the Story10x book
• IA Presenter is the new tool Chris uses for presentations
• Ridd uses SuperWhisper for transcriptions

Systems thinking is often mentioned as the #1 trait teams are looking for in designers.

But what does it look like to be great at it?

This episode answers that question by highlighting stories from Notion, Anthropic, and more 👇

This week's episode is with Anthony Menecola who is a longtime staff product designer at Shopify so we’re going to do a deep dive into ways you can make a bigger impact at your company as an IC.

One of the big themes of this episode is Anthony’s journey becoming more technical and contributing to the Shopify code base so if you’re interested in building your ideas I think you’ll get a lot out of this one.

We also talk about:

• The archetypes of staff designers at Shopify
• What it takes to create an impactful proposal
• Ways to build strategic relationships at Shopify
• How to strategically circulate your design ideas
• The art of sharing effective async video updates
• How Anthony identifies future-facing ideas to explore
• a lot more

• Anthony’s website and Twitter
• The Shop app

When I say high stakes design project, what comes to mind?

How about Ryan Scott redesigning the Airbnb checkout flow right before a  $3.5 billion IPO? Now THAT is a big time project…

So this episode is all about tactics you can use to make big ideas happen at your company (even as an IC).

And if you want to go even deeper you can use these links to get $100 off Ryan Scott’s top rated Maven courses 👇

1️⃣ Describing the ROI of Design (https://join.dive.club/ryan-scott-roi-course)

2️⃣ PM Masterclass for Designers (https://join.dive.club/ryan-pm-masterclass-course)

• Ryan Scott (design lead at Airbnb + DoorDash)
• Tyler Angert (1st designer at Replit and founder of Patina Systems)

What does it take to create a product worthy of winning Mac app of the year?

I interviewed the founder of Craft Docs, Balint Orosz, to find out…

So this episode is a deep dive into how they work and what it takes to achieve this level of design excellence, including:

• What Balint looks for in systems thinkers
• Craft’s plan to differentiate with personalization
• What it looks like for designers to take ownership
• How designers experiment with LLMs and shaders
• Behind-the-scenes of their viral “quick add” feature
• What makes Craft’s approach to product planning so unique
• The challenges of designing a user-generated content product
• a lot more

Introducing Craft 3

I’ve interviewed a lot of staff designers to figure out what it takes to have real influence at companies like Shopify, Github, Airbnb, etc.

One thing is clear… if you want to make strategic impact as a designer then you have to get to a place of altitude that allows you to see the bigger picture.

This episode is designed to help you do just that.

• Catt Small (Staff Product Designer at Dropbox)
• Mia Blume (Early design leader at Square, Pinterest + more)
• Soren Iverson (Founder of Iverson)
• Kathy Zheng (Head of Design at Optimism)

How do the best staff designers influence and lead as individual contributors?

I interviewed Catt Small to answer that question and it turned into one of the most practical episodes yet. She pulls from her 14+ years of experience designing products like Etsy, Asana, and Soundcloud to share techniques you can use to level up your influence and scale your impact as an IC.

Some highlights:

• Ways to get out of the execution trap
• The key to having “executive presence”
• Catt’s advice for better time management
• How designers can encourage people to think bigger
• How Catt has evolved the way she does async videos
• Understanding the different archetypes of staff designers
• Behind-the-scenes of the massive “Goals” project at Asana
• a lot more

• Check out Catt’s course Staff Designer: Influence & Lead as an Individual Contributor (Dive Club listeners get $100 off)
• Catt mentions the books Radical Candor & 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership
• Micah Bennett was the designer she learned so much from

What are the best teams looking for in design candidates?

That’s become one of my favorite questions to ask so this episode shines a light on some of those traits and what you can do to stand out.

It includes insights from:

• Diego Zaks (VP of Design at Ramp)
• Soleio (2nd designer at Facebook)
• Pranathi Peri (designing v0 at Vercel)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen AI at Meta)
• Mariana Castilho (Designer at Poolside)

This week’s episode is with Tyler Angert who was the first design hire at Replit. So we get a behind-the-scenes look at what it’s like designing for a hyper growth startup. However in early 2024, Tyler left to pursue a startup of his own, so a good chunk of this discussion focuses on his vision for Patina and the future of “spontaneous software”.

Some highlights:

• Why the camera roll is pivotal for AI
• Tyler’s advice to his 23 year old self
• Tactics for learning to code with Claude
• What it takes to design complex systems
• The skills that will be most valuable in 2025
• The biggest design challenges for AI products
• Strategies for learning more technical skillsets
• How to succeed as a young designer at a startup

• Tyler’s Freezeframe app with Jason Yuan
• Genesis physics announcement
• Granola meeting recordings
• Daylight computer