There are two types of companies today:

1. Startups birthed out of AI
2. Existing companies figuring out how to adapt to AI

This week’s episode is all about #2 because we get to hear from Ioana Teleanu who was the first AI designer at Miro and is now a dedicated AI+Design consultant.

So a big theme of this conversation is how to identify the right opportunities to design AI into a product that’s already working. Ioana shares a bunch of stories and lessons learned from her time at Miro as well as a refreshing perspective on AI and design as whole that i think will resonate with a lot of you.

Some highlights:

• What to do if you’re already feeling AI fatigue
• Why invisible AI is the future of product design
• How you measure the success of integrating AI
• Examples of good and bad implementations of AI
• How the value prop of design shifts in an AI world
• Ways to invest in your product skills as a designer
• a lot more

Before Miro Ioana designed Clipboard AI which won Times Magazine best invention of 2023

This week we get to hear from Jesse Kulp who is the original designer for Google AI Studio.

He shares what it was like going 0→1 as the sole designer and his ideas for where AI design is headed next

I think we're gonna look back in a couple years, the kind of silly stuff we're doing today and say it looks like child's play… Jesse Kulp

some highlights:

• How Jesse transformed into the ultimate generalist
• What Jesse learned about managing lots of stakeholders
• Exploring different interaction modalities for AI in the future
• How to handle ambiguity while working in a new problem space
• How Jesse figured out the initial product strategy for AI Studio
• a lot more

• Google AI Studio
• Vertex AI Studio

Stephen previously co-founded Modulz which created Radix UI, now used by Vercel, Linear, and Jetsi.

Now he’s the founder of the most influential design tool on the market — Paper.

In this episode, Stephen gives us a look at how Paper is fundamentally changing the speed of traditional design flows.

Some highlights:

• How to drive alignment as a company
• How Stephen cultivates empathy in designers
• How Stephen views the traditional design role
• How Paper is paving the way for modern design tools
• How Paper is bringing creativity back to design tools through shaders
• a lot more

• David Hoang Strategy is Compressing article
• Stephen posted on DeviantArt in early days
• Created Radix UI at Modulz
• Paper’s Liquid logo release on Twitter

A year ago, it felt like AI-generated UI was about to have its moment. But now the landscape looks a LOT different than what people expected.

So this episode answers the question "what's next?"

Because there's still an untapped opportunity that I believe will become very real soon...

• Kyle Turman (Designer at Anthropic) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/kyle-turman
• Nad Chishtie (1st designer at Lovable) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/nad-chishtie
• Zach Leach (Head of Design at Gamma) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/zach-leach
• Jordan Singer (AI at Figma) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/jordan-singer
• Pranathi Peri (Product designer at Vercel) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/pranathi-peri
• Alex Schleifer (Former Chief Design Officer at Airbnb) https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/alex-schleifer

This week, Zach Leach (Head of Design at Gamma) gives a behind-the-scenes of what it’s like designing one of the hottest AI products in the world today.

He shares a ton of techniques and lessons learned from working with LLMs—including some ways to make AI fun again :) And we also learn what makes design at Gamma a bit unorthodox in all the best ways.

Some highlights:

• What makes Gamma a team of “AI Pioneers”
• How Gamma designers prototype ideas in code
• How Zach has iterated on interaction patterns for AI
• How to think about AI functionality at the system level
• How Zach imagines his design role in the coming years
• What Zach has learned about designing AI-powered flows
• a lot more **

• The core team came over together from Optimizely
• We talked about prototyping in Bolt and Lovable

The more I study today's top design teams, the more clear it’s becoming that we're entering the era of a new type of design leader— one with taste and the skills necessary to uphold craft.

So this episode studies this new archetype of leader by highlighting clips from design leaders at Airbnb, Ramp, Duolingo, and more…

• Alex Schleifer (Former Chief Design Officer at Airbnb)
• Mig Reyes (VP of Product Experience at Duolingo)
• Derek Briggs (Design + Code at Hypermode)
• Teo Connor (VP of Design at Airbnb)
• Diego Zaks (VP of Design at Ramp)

Mig Reyes is the VP of Product Experience at Duolingo (and a design director at Instagram before that).

In this episode he shared a behind-the-scenes of how design operates at Duolingo (as well as some harsh truths designers need to hear).

• Common portfolio review mistakes
• How communication skills build influence
• Mig’s strategy behind hiring junior designers
• How to succeed in executive product reviews
• Mig’s mandate to raise the design bar at Duolingo
• How Mig revamped design management at Duolingo
• Why Duolingo changed from “UX” to “Product Experience”
• a lot more

• Jacob Nielsen (commented on LinkedIn post)
• Brett Westervelt (VP of Design at Instagram)
• Ryan Sims (Chief Design Officer at Duolingo)
• Luis (CEO of Duolingo)
• Companies mentioned: Instagram, Airbnb, Coinbase, Meta, OpenAI, Figma

I talk to a lot of designers at the pinnacle of their career…

So I’m always trying to figure out how they’ve evolved the way they practice design over the years.

Once I hear the same answer from a few different people I start to pay attention 👀

So here are a few trends I’m noticing for how the best designers get alignment on their teams.

• Alex Cornell (Gen AI at Meta)
• Yuan Wang (Head of Design at Maven)
• Rich Arnold (Design Manager at Coinbase)
• Michael Wandelmaier (Principal Designer at Dropbox)
• Aashman Goghari (Design Lead at Palantir)

Anthropic has quickly become a category-defining company and in this episode Kyle Turman (their first full-time designer) shares a behind-the-scenes of what it was like designing Claude.

If you’re interested in startups, AI products, or the art of prompting then this conversation will be right up your alley.

Some highlights:

• Kyle’s story of wearing every hat for Claude
• What it’s like designing conversational UX flows
• How Kyle uses Claude in his personal design process
• Why Kyle only half-finished his Claude designs in Figma
• How Kyle thinks about designing for emotion and feeling
• How Kyle thinks about the future of design as a discipline
• Kyle’s thoughts on whether chat should the dominant pattern for AI
• a lot me

• We mentioned Tuhin Kumar’s episode (Head of Design at Luma AI)
• We mentioned Julius Tarng
• We talked about the Sesame conversational AI demo
• Machines of Loving Grace by the Anthropic CEO Dario

Recommended Episode:

George Kedenburg III (former designer lead at Humane)

There's a parallel I'm noticing between what's happening today with AI and what happened way back in 2013.

So this episode studies the early days of Snapchat, the emergence of high-fidelity prototyping tools, and answers the question “what does it look like to have agency in 2025?”

• Jack Brody (Chief Product Officer at Suno)
• Jorn van Dijk (CEO of Framer)
• Julius Tarng (Research engineer at Anthropic)
• Tuhin Kumar (Head of Design at Luma AI)
• Maheen Sohail (Gen AI at Meta)
• Meng To (Founder of Design+Code)