Dive Club 🤿

Remember how Michael Wandelmeier told us Metalab hired a storytelling coach ? Well that coach is Ian Wharton. He’s an Apple Design Award winner, CEO of Aide Health, and he teaches storytelling techniques to teams like Dyson, BBC, Huge, etc. So this episode breaks down the key storytelling concepts that he shares in his course Sell the Idea . We talk about the importance of the inciting incident, h...

~6 months ago Amy Lima was laid off and has been preparing for this episode ever since. So in this interview she gives us an inside look at her process for landing a dream role at Duolingo. If you’re looking for your next role then this conversation is quite the playbook. She has the job hunt process down to a science. Some topics covered: Avoiding burnout amidst the chaos How Amy negotiated her D...

Julius Tarng is the ultimate generalist designer. He started the design tools team at Facebook where he made a massive impact on products like Origami. He then freelanced as a design engineer for companies like Felt, Anthropic, and even prototyped some of the early AI features for the Arc browser. Now he’s in his first-ever engineering role at Linear. So this conversation is a deep dive into what...

When it comes to design founder stories, Raphael Schaad ’s is one of the best. So this episode is the first-ever telling of how Raphael designed and built Cron (which became Notion Calendar). We talk about: Sketching on paper vs. sketching in code Why shipping quality software is like camping How Raphael identified the MVP of the problem What it was like building Cron in YC during COVID Why you sh...

Alex Schleifer was the long-time Chief Design Officer at Airbnb where he grew the team from ~35 to over 600 people. So this conversation is an inside look at what makes design at Airbnb so special. We discuss: How to create a culture of decisiveness Why great design leaders are like chefs How to succeed in executive CRITs at Airbnb How designers should prepare for an AI future What it means to ope...

Noam Segal has led research at companies like Meta, Airbnb, Wealthfront, Twitter, and most recently Upwork. He also teaches the #1 user research course on Maven . So this episode is a masterclass in user research. We discuss: How to conduct better interviews The keys to an effective research plan How to become a masterful research storyteller How AI is creating a new wave of research tools When to...

Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startup for three years. So the goal of this conversation is to figure out how that period of time impacted her design practice so we can all learn how to design with a founder’s mindset. In this episode we discuss: - How Helen is approaching design leader...

Today we're talking with designer and entrepreneur, Hunter Hammonds, who has grown 5 different agencies to millions in revenue in less than a year. So in this episode we walk through the different stages of building an independent design business—starting from positioning yourself as a solopreneur all the way to scaling operations to 7 figures. We get into the weeds about: - Hunter’s framework for...

Ready for a masterclass in positioning? Nick Pattison has been working for himself for well over 10 years... but recently he's laser-focused on running 1-week brand sprints (and it's working). So this episode is a deep dive into his new freelance playbook: - The automations that allow him to focus on sales and creative direction - Lessons learned from running 25+ brand sprints at $15k each - How N...

This episode is the ultimate design founder story. Dennis shares all of the ups and downs along his journey to build Amie—a new productivity tool that captures your emails, calendar, and to-dos in a single beautiful product. Some of the highlights: - Where Dennis draws inspiration - The traits Dennis looked for in early hires - What Dennis looks for in design candidates - The backstory behind Amie...

Over the last few months, design engineering has by far been the #1 most requested topic. So I wanted to get the inside scoop from the team at Vercel to learn more. In this episode we get to hear from: 1. Glenn Hitchcock - https://twitter.com/glennui (Director of design engineering) 2. John Pham - https://twitter.com/JohnPhamous (Lead design engineer) The goal of this conversation is to help peopl...

Since the beginning of my design career, I’ve looked up to Metalab. So this interview is a special one because we get to learn from their Head of Design, Michael Wandelmeier. We go deep into how design works at Metalab and talk about specific strategies around: - Mike’s go-to storytelling tactics - The importance of opinionated design - When they ignore constraints on a project - The unique way th...

One of the tools I'm most interested in right now is Relume. 200k+ people are using it to design and build websites faster with AI. They have a massive set of Figma/Webflow components which allows them to take a unique approach that “respects the process” of web design. In this bonus episode, their co-founder Adam gives us an end-to-end demo where he sitemaps, wireframes, designs, and builds a ful...

Rich Arnold was the Head of Design at Vine, a design lead on the early Instagram Stories team, and now he works as a design manager at Coinbase. So this episode goes deep into: - How Rich grew as a storyteller at IG - Why we cant let data be the designer - The importance of “zooming out” in your work - How to grow your creative problem solving muscles - What it takes to design successful consumer...

If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems teams around the world. So in this discussion we talk about the types of challenges he faces at Big Medium and how he’s envisioning the future of design systems: Why we should build a universal design system How Brad is using AI to elevate design systems...

One of the most requested guests has been Gabe Valdivia. He was an early designer at Facebook, a designer manager at Google, and has led design for different startups over the years most recently as the head of design for Patreon. But in the last year he's made the jump to start his own practice and position himself as a fractional design partner for early stage teams. So a lot of this conversatio...

As soon as I read No More Boring Apps I was hooked. Andy Allen immediately became one of my design heroes and now I use his Not Boring apps daily. So this conversation is a behind-the-scenes of his journey, an analysis of the state of software design, and a glimpse of where we’re headed next as an industry. Some highlights: - The design tools Andy is most excited about - Andy’s advice for people w...

In this episode we get to hear from Jenny Wen who is the person who originally designed and brought Figjam to market. This conversation is full of inslights like: How Jenny attacks ambiguity early in the design process What we can learn from Figjam’s product strategy Jenny’s framework for adding delight to a product How to create visuals that stand out in a sea of confetti animations Strategies fo...

This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc. 1. A unique way to stand out as a design candidate 2. How to grow as a vision caster 3. The question every freelancer should ask clients 4. The curse of knowledge in web design 5. When systems thinking is most important 6. Strategies for Figma variables...

Soleio made a name for himself as the 2nd design hire at Facebook and eventually went on to lead design at Dropbox. Now he invests in extraordinary software startups like Figma, Framer, Vercel, Perplexity, Replit, Universe, tldraw, and dozens more worldwide. So in this discussion we go deep into: - The fascinating story behind project Motion - How Soleio’s skillset evolved during his time at Faceb...

Galileo recently broke design twitter with the launch of their new generative AI tool for builders. So in this episode we talk with their co-founder and lead designer, Helen Zhou about: - Her journey as a design founder - Why user research for AI tooling is unique - How AI will change the day-to-day role of a designer - Her response to concerns about LLMs and creativity - The potential breakthroug...

Webflow has had as big an impact on design as any company over the last decade. So this episode is an inside look at their design culture, rituals, and key insights from their Head of Design, Kevin Wong. Here’s a preview of some of the ideas we cover: - How Webflow executed a massive rebrand leading up to their conference - The different types of prototypes for driving alignment - The role of desi...

In this episode we get to hear from Ryo Lu who was one of the very first designers at Notion. This conversation is an inside look at the Notion design process, how they think about product, and a lot more: - How Notion approached the user research process for AI - Strategies for improving your systems thinking - How design at Notion sources feedback on meaty problems - How Notion thinks about thei...

In this episode we’re talking with Molly Hellmuth who is the creator of UI Prep where she has an incredible newsletter, design system, and course where she’s taught hundreds of designers all over the world. This discussion gets into the nerdier side of Figma 🤓 We talk all about: - When it does and doesn’t make sense to adopt variables - How to make sure you don’t invest in a Figma strategy that y...

There’s a new design super team emerging at Clerk and in this episode we get a behind-the-scenes from the leader, Derek Briggs. We get into the weeds about: - How Derek assembled an A-list team from scratch - Why Derek pushed for a dedicated UI engineering team - How Clerk is approaching their massive redesign - Why Derek doesn’t believe in design deadlines - The business case for prioritizing qua...