Dive Club 🤿

Imagine going from IC to leading the Wealthsimple design team in a few short years… That was Polly D’arcy’s ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/pollydarcy/ ) journey and today’s episode covers everything she’s learned along the way. We go deep into design leadership, craft, hiring, and a lot more. Some highlights: - Why Polly hires specialists over generalists - Tactics to nail your next portfolio prese...

Capital, early Cash App, and most recently, X, all have one designer in common — [Brandon Jacoby]( https://x.com/JacobyBrandon ). In this episode Brandon is talking about how he’s combining his years of experience designing with fresh, high-functioning teams and is now launching an all-new independent practice to help founders push past good enough. He shares some really interesting thoughts on ta...

When it comes to tools and workflows, Brian Lovin ( https://x.com/brian_lovin ) is someone I pay very close attention to. He’s actually the one who first got me hooked on Conductor ( https://www.conductor.build/ ). But times are changing (again 😅)… So today’s episode is a deep dive into his design process and all of the ways he’s iterating on his approach to both using AI tools as well as buildin...

If you're like me you gotta be curious... what's it like designing at OpenAI? So I’m excited to share today’s episode with you :) It’s a deep dive with OpenAI’s Head of Product Design, Ian Silber ( https://x.com/iansilber ). Some highlights: **** - The traits of the best systems thinkers at OpenAI - What makes the design culture at OpenAI unique - The vision for OpenAI's dynamic interface library...

Remember when the Carl Rivera ( https://www.dive.club/deep-dives/carl-rivera ) told us about his vision to create the new Shopify Product Design Studio? Well in this episode I got to sit down with Marvin Schwaibold ( https://x.com/MSchwaibold ) from Molly studio who Shopify recently acquired to bring that vision to life. We go deep into creativity, Marvin's journey with Molly, how he's building hi...

Flora Guo ( https://x.com/floguo ) has one of the more impressive career trajectories of anyone I've interviewed on this show. She's currently the founding design engineer at Paradigm. But before that Guillermo (Vercel CEO) personally DM'd her to join the Vercel team. So we're going deep into career growth, design engineering, what it's like being a founding designer at an AI-native startup. - Wha...

Today's episode is with Kris Puckett who has led design at Mercury, Dropbox, and now as a design manager at Stripe. His journey is the perfect example of what it looks like to lean into this moment in time with AI. Some highlights: - Behind the scenes of Kris’s Epilogue app - How to create custom skills with Claude Code - How to start building personal systems with AI - How Kris taught Claude to b...

What does it look like to demonstrate uncommon care in the way you design and build an interface? Josh Puckett has has spent nearly two decades designing products like Wealthfront, Dropbox and helping dozens of startups. But recently he released Interface Craft which is a library of everything he's learned about through the years about designing with “uncommon care” 👇 ⭐ Use this code for 20% off...

Today's episode is with Luis Ouriach ( https://x.com/disco_lu ) whose role as a designer advocate at Figma means he's constantly helping teams navigate this rapidly changing landscape... especially when it comes to design systems. So we're going to do a deep dive into the trends he's noticing and what it all means for designers. Some highlights: - How design systems are changing with AI - Luis’s i...

Today's episode with Cameron Worboys (Head of Product Design at Cash App) is an inside look at how an AI-native design org operates and the ways designers can thrive in this new world. We go deep into: The new archetypes of designers Cam's vision for bespoke software The #1 trait that Cam looks for in design hires How >90% of designers at Cash are shipping PRs What to do if you don't want to be...

A few weeks ago, Stripe launched their [new site ( https://stripe.com/ ) and reminded everyone who the 🐐 of web design is… So I asked their Head of Design, Katie Dill ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/katie-dill-79168b3 ) , to walk us through some of the tiny design decisions that make it so special. But we also did a deep dive into how the practice of design is evolving at Stripe and everything they...

As software becomes easier to create than ever, what does it look like to truly differentiate with design? Today's episode with Julien Martin ( https://x.com/julienmartin_?lang=en ) is an attempt to answer that question. He was the Head of Design at Zenly, Snapchat, and Amo which is some of the most uniquely impressive consumer design I've ever seen. Some highlights: - Behind the scenes of early A...

Today's episode is with Tommy Smith who recently landed a new role as a part of the Dive Talent Network. So we're doing a deep dive into what makes his portfolio so effective: Making his side project a first-class citizen Positioning himself as a new design engineer Adding personality by experimenting with Rive Highlighting what matters most in his case studies Flexing his craft muscles and nailed...

Ryan Stephen ( https://x.com/Ryan__Stephen ) is a product designer at Microsoft, but the reason I wanted to interview him is because he's the man behind some of my favorite design experiments on Twitter. So in this episode Ryan gives us a behind-the-scenes look at his creative process, the tools in his stack, and how he approaches effective storytelling in design. Some highlights: - How Ryan spark...

Today's episode is with Hannah Hearth who recently became the Head of Product Design at Vercel. We talk about all of the changes that are happening in our industry and what it all means for designers. Everything from how AI tools are changing the practice of design to how this impact the way we think about our career paths. Some highlights: Hannah’s #1 trait for great designers The most underrated...

Get 10% off Karl's Become a Design Engineer course: https://join.dive.club/karl Today’s episode is with Karl Koch ( https://x.com/_kejk?lang=en ) and it’s filled with practical tips for new design engineers looking to push past what AI gives you out of the box. We go deep into: - Adopting the design engineering mindset - What the job market looks like for design engineers - The difference between...

This episode is a deep dive into Rive —the engine powering experiences like Spotify Wrapped, next-gen car dashboards, and so much more. After hearing Luigi and Guido Rosso’s vision for the future of interactive software, I’m convinced it will be a big deal for designers 👀

One of the biggest parts of my design practice is knowing which tool to reach for when coding with AI. There are a lot of options and they’re changing every week 😅 So in this episode, I break down: 1. The mental model I use to think about different types of AI coding workflows 2. How that model guides which tools I actually reach for day to day 3. The new AI coding product I’m completely hooked o...

Sometimes you open up a website and it's so good that you're left wondering... how the heck did they pull that off? In this episode the designer of the original Amie website, Xavier Jack ( https://x.com/KMkota0 ), is going to give us a little tutorial of what it looks like to bring web experiences to life with 3D. Some highlights: - How he prototyped the viral Amie website - How he made the Amie i...

Last month the head of design at Lovable, Nad Chishtie , walked us through the portfolio of one of their recent design hires, Matt Sellers . So today's episode is a behind-the-scenes of what it actually takes to create a portfolio that gets you hired at one of today's top startups. He shares some really tactical mental models that I think everyone can benefit from. Some highlights: Why Matt remove...

There's been a heck of a debate around the future of coding and design tools lately... but what's actually happening inside of today's top teams? Where is all this headed and how does the future of our tools shape the role of a designer? Today's episode is with Stephen Haney ( https://x.com/sdothaney ) who is the founder of the new design tool Paper. And for the last few months he's studied how de...

Gab and Nim are the co-founders of a startup called Dessn which allows designers to prototype in the context of their production codebase (without any of the setup). So I asked them to hook it up to the Inflight repo and give me a little demo to see what’s possible. I’m pretty sold 👀

Someone asked me recently... if you had to join a design team, who would you want to work for? And my answer was easy... Perplexity So today's episode with Henry Modisett ( https://x.com/henrymodis ) (Perplexity's VP of Design) is a deep dive into what makes their design culture so special. Some highlights: - How to create a culture of decisiveness - What signals Henry is looking for in designers...

Kyle Zantos is leading the new UX Tools Labs where he's responsible for figuring out what matters for new design tools and workflows. As a result, he's pretty quickly become my go-to source as I transition into more of a builder with AI. So this conversation is a deep dive into very specific tactics you can use on your own design engineering journey. We'll go through recommended tools, workflows,...

We talk a lot about using AI at startups… But what are more established companies doing to scale AI prototyping? What are the best ways to use AI to prototype with your design system? That's what today's episode is all about because we're talking with Lewis Healey ( https://x.com/Lewishealey ) and Kylor Hall ( https://www.linkedin.com/in/kylorhall/ ) about how they scaled AI prototyping at Atlassi...