{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Mostly Working","title":"Ep #22: Sara Vienna (Metalab): The Trust Gap, Tools for Everyone, and Why Nobody Reads Case Studies","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3527,"description":"Tom and Jonny sit down with Sara Vienna, Chief Design Officer at Metalab, following her Hatch keynote on the trust gap. They dig into what designers can control in the AI race, unpack the tools Metalab's designers now build for every stage of a product, and get Sara's honest take on hiring and why nobody reads case studies.\n\nKey takeaways\n\nDesigners can fight for trust, one sprint at a time. Sara's Hatch keynote, The Trust Gap, is about finding the gumption to take that fight to the C-suite. Even when your influence moves product by product, being pointed at a good fight is what lets you sleep at night.\nDistrust of big institutions is old, and that's useful. People have doubted companies, governments and capitalism for years. Sara opened her talk with TIME's 'Trust Us' cover of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and the teaser for Nathan Fielder's Elizabeth Holmes documentary, then moved on to what designers can actually do about it.\nHistory is the best antidote to AI doom and hype. Sara looks to the Industrial Revolution, when people had to trust a metal contraption over a horse, and Henry Ford's cars came with real consequences, road deaths among them. Handmade things became more special once everything else was automated, which gives her hope for craft.\nUse AI to make it real in week one, then let people make it remarkable. What used to be a 100-page deck and too many meetings can now become a tangible prototype that doubles as the PRD. That output is remixed from what's been done before, so Metalab runs it through a quality filter and a differentiation filter until it's worth shipping.\nDesigners can now build tools for the rest of the company. Sara's team makes tools for brand, creative and design systems, with quality control at every stage gate of a product's life. Her line about designers building tools for people outside the design team has become a staple of Tom and Jonny's tool-making workshops.\nWhen anyone can make anything, a studio's value is its track...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/DQbx92WsPLEetVRjQ1jDmzGQo-63kvktRkfvWgcuqaY/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zMjhj/MzgzYThjOWNmN2Iz/NDcwZWRkMjA0ZjBh/N2E0Yy5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}