What do Raycast, Daylight, Amo, The Browser Co, and Mainframe all have in common?

They all hired Ellis Hamburger to help tell their story.

So this episode is a bit different...

We're going to get away from the pixels and go deep into how you can use language to tell a compelling story about your product.

Some highlights:

• How to tell a story that people care about
• Lessons from the Language team at Snapchat
• Breaking down specific copywriting strategies
• Questions to help you figure out your product’s story
• What we can learn from the CEOs of Snapchat vs. Browser Co.
• How to make your product onboarding unforgettable
• a lot more

• Ellis talks about the Browser Company’s “Peek” video
• Jordan Singer’s Mainframe website
• Daylight computer website
• Ellis mentions the 222 onboarding
• The Permanent website (”design is how its made”)
• Ellis quotes the Build book
• Amo’s “Where did our friends go?” manifesto
• Raycast’s “Why” page and Focus mode

AI introduces an opportunity for all kinds of novel interaction patterns.

But it creates a whole new category of design challenges too…

And this episode breaks down the biggest challenge of all.

• Colin Dunn (Founder and Designer of Visual Electric)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen-AI designer at Meta)
• Tyler Angert (Founder of Patina Systems)
• Maggie Appleton (Design engineer at Normally)
• Ammaar Reshi (Head of Design at ElevenLabs)

This week’s episode is with Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, the cofounder and Chief Design Officer at Runway—one of the leading generative AI companies in the world today.

The way they work is incredibly unique. So a big focus of this interview is digging into how AI is shifting the way products get built and what it all means for designers:

• How the lines are blurring between roles
• How AI flips the order of building new features
• What it means to “carve” AI products vs. build them
• How Alejandro believes the role of design will change
• Why the embed frontend engineers on the design team
• Where the film and video industry might be headed next
• a lot more

Most designers fall into the same trap when presenting their ideas.

So this ~5 min episode breaks down how to pitch your designs like a pro.

• Chris Abad
• Gabe Valdivia

This week’s episode is with Christophe Tauziet who is the Head of Design at Plaid—one of today’s leading fintech companies.

We go deep into the ways he’s building a culture of craft and the rituals they’ve evolved to consistently sweat the details. There are a lot of practical processes and ideas in this episode.

Some highlights:

• Keys to a great async video share out
• How to foster a winning CRIT environment
• Why Christophe implemented “polish reviews”
• Ways to foster collaboration within a design org
• Practical advice for giving better design feedback
• How Christophe changed what he looks for in design candidates
• a lot more

Brian Lovin’s article “Teams should work with the garage door up”

You can have the greatest design concepts in the world, but none of that matters if they don't make it into production.

So this episode is all about how to create an aura of inevitability around your ideas.

It features stories from early Facebook, Webflow, and Figma 👇

• Vincent van der Meulen (Design engineer at Figma)
• Soleio pt. 1 / pt. 2 (second designer at Facebook)
• Kevin Wong (Head of product at Webflow)

Palantir is one of the most powerful products in existence today.

It provides critical government and enterprise infrastructure from the factory floors to the front lines. You can literally build your own Airbnb on top of their development platform.

But with great power comes lots of complexity… So in this week’s episode, Design Lead Aashman Goghari gives us a behind-the-scenes of what it’s like designing products at Palantir.

• Becoming better at “problem decomposition”
• Two patterns for handling complex interfaces
• How to think through systems like a developer
• How data models can impact your design process
• Designing new user experiences for “Ferrari products”
• How to collaborate more effectively with backend engineers
• Finding the balance between edge cases and the golden path
• a lot more

• Aashman mentions the Concepts app for sketching on iPad
• Palantir is currently hiring designers
• You can follow Aashman on Twitter

When comes to brand design, Mike and Cara from Smith & Diction are pretty much top of the game (you might recognize them as the ones who did the brand identity for Perplexity).

During our interview, it didn't take me long to realize that these two have more hacks and mental models for creativity than just about anyone I’ve met.

So here are a few of my favorites.

Watch the full episode with Smith & Diction here: https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/smith-diction

If you asked me “who has the best taste in design right now?” one of the first people I’d mention is Thiago Costa.

His product Fey is in the S-tier of design and I’ve studied his visual techniques for many years.

Finally, after over a 12 months of pestering he agreed to share his secrets in a interview 🙌

We go deep into:

• Mastering the finer details of craft
• Putting AI at the heart of the new Fey 2.0
• Where Thiago draws inspiration outside of UI
• What it looks like to have a “heightened awareness”
• How Thiago evolved the Fey aesthetic from 1.0 to 2.0
• Specific visual techniques for making your UI more lifelike
• a lot more

• Caravaggio is the painter who Thiago calls the “master of light”
• The Local Project interior design channel on YouTube

Today we get to hear from Ammaar Reshi who is the Head of Design at ElevenLabs—the AI audio platform that has come up multiple times in past episodes.

So a big focus of this conversation is learning what it's like designing an AI-native product. We go deep into topics like:

• The backstory of Ammaar’s viral AI experiments
• Predictions for the future of voice as an interface
• What it’s like collaborating with an research team
• How he’s designing novel interaction patterns for AI
• What Ammaar looks for when hiring startup designers
• What it’s like designing at multiple hyper growth startups
• a lot more

• Thread of all Ammaar’s AI experiments (including the viral book and podcast app)
• Ammaar mentioned chatting with Nate Parrott from the Browser Company
• Ammaar mentions the Rabbit hardware product
• Ammaar mentions collaborating with his friend Pietro