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Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
Josh Puckett Full Video Podcast.txt
English (US)
00:00:00.000 — 00:00:14.240 · Speaker 1
So if what you want to do is really, like, stand out and be able to demonstrate that you are someone that's worth hiring, right? That you have high slope and high potential and someone should invest in you, then I think you have to demonstrate either.
00:00:14.480 — 00:01:46.460 · Speaker 2
Josh Puckett has been one of the most thoughtful people in design for the better part of two decades, designing at Dropbox, building out wealth fronts, design function, mentoring, and placing more than 100 designers through upper study and investing into companies that were early stage like framer and runway through combine VC.
And earlier this year, he shipped Interface Craft, a membership community which is part curriculum and part love letter to craft. And the way he built the onboarding experience alone is one of the most intentional things I've seen on the internet in a long time. You sign up, pick a library card that speaks to you, sign your name on it, and then insert it into a web interface that unlocks everything behind it and that interaction is exactly his thesis.
In motion. We cover a lot of ground in this conversation. Why the playbook for getting your first design role has completely changed what a high slope designer actually looks like. How to practice uncommon care. Whether you're designing a tax workflow or a stripe press book cover, and whether AI native is a skill you need to chase, or just a moment where passing through Josh is someone who can close the loop on all of it.
He's investing into the tools, placing the designers who use them, and out here building his own things in an industry that is telling all of us to move faster, Josh makes a pretty compelling case for moving more intentionally. This is state of play. Let's get into it.
00:01:53.580 — 00:02:07.880 · Speaker 2
Well, let me ask you this because it was funny. I reached out to you about a month or two ago and you're like, hey, I have to get interface craft out. This is getting all my attention right now. Uh, how do you feel just coming out of, like, the launch of something you've been pouring yourself into?
00:02:07.920 — 00:04:03.830 · Speaker 1
I mean, this, for me, was just like a side project, like just nights and weekends, right? Of, like, uh, wanted to just start sharing more of of what I know and sort of a more public way. Um, got to play a lot with, you know, Claude and everything over the holidays. Had a bit more time. Like, probably a lot of us did.
And so that's where I kind of got the idea of, like, cool. Let me just send it and, like, put something up. See if anyone cares. Turns out a lot of people cared. Uh, and so then I felt a lot of pressure to like, oh, cool. I have to obviously follow through on that. So, you know, went coming goblin mode for for about four weeks.
Uh, and that's fun. It's fun to. I'm a very extreme personality. I like to go all in on things. And so it's fun to be like, cool. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I'm pausing, you know, a lot of other things in life to just, you know, focus on that on the nights and weekends. But you can only do that for so long, you know?
And definitely the older I've gotten, the more you just learn like how far you can push yourself and how much you can redline before you start to feel like, all right, I'm making just stupid decisions, right? Or making mistakes that the cortisol, you know, affects is like pretty nuts for a few weeks. And so now I'm kind of coming down off of that.
Heard from so many wonderful people all over the world. I think it's easy to forget if you work in our industry or in certain locations, the internet is like a big place. You know, I've heard it from people all over the world who, you know, signed up and are excited about what they're learning and just doing really interesting stuff.
So, yeah, folks have been generally very kind and gracious in their responses. And when you whenever you teach something or share something, everything you know, you know, you know what it is. So you kind of forget like what is not maybe common knowledge, right. Or, or everyone doesn't have the same language you do.
And so it's cool. Even some things that I didn't expect to really land or resonate. Some people are like, oh, this is you know, I never thought about it this way. And I was like, oh, that's cool that, you know, the things that I take for granted now folks get a benefit from. So, yeah. So fun. It's nice to, uh, yeah, come out of it and get back into exercise and going outside.
Things like that. But yeah, it's been great.
00:04:03.870 — 00:04:16.709 · Speaker 2
I always have such a complicated relationship with that. I pour myself into it. I've never heard somebody else refer to the the like going dark into a cave and just grinding as goblin mode, which I that's how I.
00:04:16.709 — 00:04:17.269 · Speaker 1
Refer to it.
00:04:17.269 — 00:04:45.190 · Speaker 2
I've never heard anybody else say that such things really get it. It's like you just you go deep. You pour all your energy into, like, really fine tuning this thing that you're making, and then you come out and you kind of have to go on like a little mini vacation. You talk about working at Wealthfront being one of your most, like, formidable moments of design or a chapter in your career, rather.
And that was what, 15 people in like a former dry cleaners.
00:04:45.190 — 00:05:49.330 · Speaker 1
I think we're about four people in the design team and maybe 50 ish in the company. It's very small. We all like. It was one office in downtown Palo Alto, like just a single big, great room. Basically. I had previously been a Dropbox for a number of years with solo, he's brought me into Dropbox, and so that company had grown quite a bit.
I think there were around 1500 or so when I left. The design team was probably at like 50. We did a lot of great work there. Company grew, obviously, you know, quite large and so wanted something much earlier. And yeah, Wealthfront was great. Kate brought me in basically to just level up the whole design function from like a craft perspective.
The design team was fairly junior that Kate had also just joined, as well as the VP design. And so yeah, the mandate was basically, hey, like, let's help level up all of our surface area, right? So yeah, um, came in and kind of in the first year we kind of redesigned everything. How do you just do that? How do you take a company that maybe historically hasn't had so much of a design DNA and try to empower the team that's there and also bring in different ways of doing things?
00:05:49.370 — 00:06:09.110 · Speaker 2
And so the reason I'm kind of digging back is I'm curious to hear, especially since you, you know, spent the holidays really digging into, Hey, I want to build. I want to, like, do this. How would you kind of compare how your thinking around design has changed? Or just like the act of agency and building since your time at Dropbox?
Well, front.
00:06:09.150 — 00:07:00.080 · Speaker 1
It's kind of funny in some ways. I don't really know that it has, uh, what I mean by that is I think the I think in our current moment, there are a lot of new tools that we have. Right. And I think it's easy to conflate those tools with, like the active design or like what design is, what creation is. Right. But the whole point, regardless of what tool you're making, kind of is and has always been like in our software context.
Right. Cool. We're trying to make software that people use and love, and it helps them achieve whatever their goal is as best as possible. Like that's it, period. That's the mandate. When I first got started, you know, we were building PHP apps. Uh, we were coding in Dreamweaver or like sublime, you know, text mate, like using Photoshop for graphics.
Like it was a very different world, but we just had different tools. And so I don't really see like what.
00:07:00.080 — 00:07:00.280 · Speaker 2
Has.
00:07:00.280 — 00:08:22.500 · Speaker 1
Changed is what you're able to do with the tools that we have. Right. And so in a lot of ways, I'm extremely jealous of younger folks who are just getting started in their career because, you know, when I got started 15, close to 20 years ago now, like there was there was kind of none, none of that. And it just existed in a few obscure like forums or places on the internet, or you happen to work with somebody who practiced design, like in ways that we now understand it.
But now it's like, man, if you want to learn how to like do anything, you can just ask Claude and it'll give you a custom learning platform or tutorial, right? For like, cool, here's our shaders worker, here's principles of typographic design. It's like, man, when we were getting going, like we had to like buy books, go to, you know, borders and like read the latest that magazine or whatever for the new, the latest technique.
And so yeah, I think maybe what's changed in design is how much more accessible it is to everybody who's interested in getting started and also how much more. Generally speaking. Like. Appreciated. I think it is like it's sort of taken for granted now. You must have great design. Every founder I know is trying to hire a great designer out of the gate.
Everyone knows it's going to be a differentiator. And so I think the average for software is, you know, slowly rising. The floor is kind of being brought up with a lot of these new tools. But, you know, that means their designer is cool. We need to reach higher right. And set like an even higher bar for experiences that really stand out.
00:08:22.540 — 00:09:34.600 · Speaker 2
There seems to be and I've talked about this recently and I'm still trying to articulate it. This idea of like phantom space that as we use these tools that are intelligence powered, they allow us to operate at this place that we wouldn't be able to do organically. And and so it's like it's like phantom competency.
Right. And I it's what I've, what I think I'm experiencing and I've seen with other people is that if you, you operate at that kind of fake ceiling long enough, your floor does start to rise. It's like if you just one shot a few things and you only dabble. You might not experience this, but if you really start to deeply build with something, suddenly you understand things that you didn't before and you do that long enough, and then that phantom ceiling kind of becomes your, your real flaw, uh, over time.
And it made me wonder, are we experiencing this new form of apprenticeship that no longer involves two humans, and instead it's a human and, uh, you know, AI essentially working towards the goal that makes you better. Do you? Does that resonate with you? Do you feel like there's something you'd add or challenge in that?
00:09:34.600 — 00:11:19.990 · Speaker 1
The tools we have now with Llms, they they can be like a very good tutor, right? And kind of teach you a lot of things. Or if you have the agency and interest in learning a new skill, whatever it is, they can really help you, I think. And so that's great. Like broadly, yes, I think for most people the level of access and ability to learn anything from design to math, physics, like whatever it is cooking like you, you know, it's just wild.
Like what you can do today versus, you know, you used to have to, you know, I ran a Photoshop tutorial website like 25 years ago. It's like, hey, here's how to recreate this text effect, right? Versus now it's like, cool, how do I do this? It's like, great. Here's how you get started. The nuance I would maybe add to it is Llms are basically trained.
They all have training data, right? And then they get fine tuned, but they still really struggle with like specific kind of methodologies or techniques or like the ways of writing up front end that lead to maybe like efficient and performant and maintainable, um, software like over time. And so that's like one of the kind of hidden dangers maybe is like, I think LMS trying to guide you based on your input.
So like, how good is your input in structuring your query or your suggestion. What are you getting back. So that's some kind of tension maybe of like in the old world, you had to go sit next to someone who'd been doing it for their whole life. They're a master at that. Cool. They can train you. That takes a lot.
Well, that takes time. And you have to have access to that person. Now everybody gets like someone who, you know, someone who is very smart, knows everything down in the world, but is maybe missing that kind of specificity at maybe the top end, but broadly, yeah, I think it's, you know, you can get to a pretty proficient place like much more quickly now.
00:11:20.030 — 00:11:55.490 · Speaker 2
You've helped, I think hundreds of designers at this point with upper study through placement salary. Um, you know, I think there's probably some mentorship that's occurred in that. I'm curious to hear from you. What are you telling designers who, you know, are asking you about how do I improve my career, whether it's salary, role, responsibilities, what are you seeing?
Because we're seeing a whole bunch of things from the companies we're talking to. I'm also trying to be sensitive to the idea that we talk to a very specific type of company. It's a lot of your tech darlings. There are a lot of companies that are not that. What are you seeing? And what are you telling people now?
00:11:55.530 — 00:12:32.130 · Speaker 1
On the one hand, I think there is. We are kind of seeing folks less open to hiring more junior level talent across the board design, engineering product. Right. Everybody wants, you know, cool. Somebody who knows how to do their trade. And great with AI, they can be seemingly more productive. So we're just going to focus on that even more.
That's true. Well, at the same time, like I've never probably the same for you. I've never seen demand for design like this high, like in my whole career working, you know, everywhere. And so broadly. I think it's a good it's a good thing. Right. But one framework I have that's fairly simple for folks is like, well, look, when you're just starting out.
00:12:32.290 — 00:12:32.690 · Speaker 2
Let's.
00:12:32.690 — 00:14:45.610 · Speaker 1
Assume that what you want to do is work at like a great role, right? Like you're trying to be like a really good designer. You're not just trying to be someone who shows up 9 to 5. That's it. You're fine with just like a median job, right? Like, that's that's not who is probably watching this. That's not what they're striving for.
So if what you want to do is really, like, stand out and be able to demonstrate that you are someone that's worth hiring, that you have high slope and high potential and someone should invest in you, then I think you have to demonstrate either and ideally both like uncommon effort or uncommon taste. So if you're like a new grad designer and you're you just have like an insane level of taste, you're probably going to be fine, right?
Like, you probably are already in like a really good undergrad program at some university that's a feeder school for, like, the fangs of the world, right? You're maybe not struggling too much, but those that's few and far between, right? Probably under, I don't know. I'm making this up, but it's directionally like 100 to 200 people a year, right.
Coming through that like University of Waterloo or UW in Washington, like the East Coast, right. Those schools, folks who have great taste, awesome. Or independently, you can have that too. Um, but that's like rare, I think, you know, rare for having someone who's like 22 and their taste is just, like, absurd.
Uh, they exist all the time, but that's, you know, not most people. I didn't have that. Like, I, you know, I see some, some, you know, um, I'll say kids like, lovingly, right where it's like, man, you like what you're doing at that age. Like you're going to be so much further than where I'm at, right? Or where my peers are at age adjusted.
And that's super exciting to see. But I think the easy one is uncommon effort. Right. And so anything you do that adds a human touch or that helps you stand out will elevate you in a sea of other resumes or people who are applying to jobs. Right. And then on the work side, like generally speaking, and this is oversimplifying it a lot, right?
But when you're younger, you generally have more time, less responsibility. Right. Um, you don't have the family yet. You don't have a mortgage like all these things. Right? And so, yeah, if what you want is a really great design role, you should be looking at that time as an investment in yourself and in your future, right?
To spend time making things like going really deep, right, exploring, building your skill set and
00:14:46.730 — 00:16:19.920 · Speaker 1
kind of showing that like you're someone who, like, is excited about this industry, this trade, and you're doing what you need to to get to a point where, like, you can be trusted to somewhat independently deliver value. I would love to work at Cash App or Shopify, right, or Dropbox or this company. It's like, okay, awesome.
That's great. I love that for you. So, uh, there's, you know, five of those roles available right now. What makes you like the standout person for that role? I see a lot of folks now thinking, fresh out of school, cool. I can get a job paying me, you know, 160 K at a top company. It's like, all right, maybe like you could maybe, but like, there are not many of those jobs.
Right. And to do that, you'd have to really, really, really stand out. And often I don't see that effort kind of correlating with that expectation of role. Have you built like now there's no excuse. There used to be an excuse of like, okay, you maybe don't code, that's fine. But now it's like, all right. Like, what are you making?
Show me that, you know, and, and I think a lot of folks haven't fully internalized the idea that, like, if you don't have a good answer to that, or you're not out there just already showing, like, what you're making. You're so far behind the top 10% of folks who are at your same level of experience, who are making things, who are trying to, uh, to kind of create like, just really like focus on their skills, right, to just put their reps in.
And so I think that mismatches is where a lot of the pain or kind of discomfort, you know, comes from of like thinking, oh, cool, I went to school for this. I should just be able to get a great tech job, right. It's like, well, maybe that was true at some point, but definitely it's not true now.
00:16:19.960 — 00:19:17.970 · Speaker 2
Now, I relate a lot to you. Dropped out of community college two times. I grew up in the early era of the internet. You know, I'm very, you know, I was a cowboy coder for a long time. Everything I produced was garbage. And yet we were still able to build something that was, you know, worth a damn. But I didn't like the workforce because it boxed me in so much into the production line of software.
And I just wanted to move up and down that chain. And eventually, when I could, I opted out to playing that game. Um, and it's it's hard either way. It is hard to get the job that you want. It is hard to opt out from the workforce, but I agree with what you're saying in terms of the expectations of the people that I'm hearing, they don't.
Some of the people are really anxious and bummed out that what they thought the design role was supposed to be, they were they were told it's supposed to look a certain way. Doesn't seem to be that way anymore, or it's just not that way. I had someone just show me the other day. They've had a hard time getting callbacks, and they decided instead of just like sending a resume in a cover, they went and researched the company with AI.
They looked at the competitive market. They went and built out a quick prototype. It took them like three hours, four hours on a weekend, which is something that would have taken you probably a week at minimum in the past. And now, because it's more it's more feasible for and respectful of someone's time.
They were not asked to do this. They went out on their own. So they demonstrated this agency. They demonstrated a competency with the tooling, and they gave them something interesting to look at. Within eight hours they had an email back from leadership saying, hey, this caught my attention and we've got hundreds of applicants.
That's what you're up against. And that person may not even, you know, get all the way through the line, but it got them through. I think one of the harder parts now, which is getting discovered and by the way, getting discovered today, I think looks different than getting discovered in even 5 or 10 years ago.
Social media, for all its warts, has become an incredible discovery engine. If you're sharing your work and if you're sharing work that has some movement, the game's kind of easy to play at the top funnel. If you can make something that's visually captivating and it's very easy to do today or it's easier than it was, that's a really good start.
Now this, this, this thing of AI native has kind of, uh, started to weed here about I want an AI native designer. I want somebody who has AI competencies. And I got into a debate with a friend of mine. His argument was, the more we kind of are giving this room for this anxiety and making people feel like they have to chase this thing.
And and I kind of fought back and said, you know, we can't stop the tidal wave, but we should build inroads. And I think we were both right in different things, which is, I think, the thing we're seeing in the industry right now. But I want to ask you, how do you think about this idea of AI native? Do you feel like I kind of feel like it's it's it's describes a moment now.
It's like being digital native. And I think it's useful now, but eventually I imagine the tooling just AI just becomes as ambient as Wi-Fi. And we're just designers again.
00:19:18.010 — 00:21:50.950 · Speaker 1
There was a time where a lot of designers felt like they couldn't design iPhone apps, right? Or it's like, oh, we've only been designing for like the web. We don't really know. Like the patterns are different. There's some, you know, subtleties of, uh, you know, interface controls and just the design philosophy and the platform capabilities, where for a few years you could, you know, position yourself very well as a designer if you design mobile apps because every company was, you know, cool iPhones obviously blowing up.
We all need an iPhone app, doesn't matter who we are. And so there was a time where you could somewhat specialize with the design as being like, well, no, no, I'm a mobile designer. Like I have a mobile experience. I've shipped to the App Store. I know why like 44 points is important as like a dimension, you know, I know how to put in add to X assets, whatever that is.
There was a time where that was uncommon knowledge and so therefore valued a little bit higher. And I think we're in that just same moment for design now, which is great. We just have a new tool. We have AI, it's just a new thing and therefore we talk about it differently. But now nobody's really like I can't remember the last time I've heard someone that's like, can you find me a designer who, like, does mobile design?
It's just assumed, like you can design an iPhone app, right? Or a mobile app. And so I think it's important to keep in mind that tools, again, are just like a, a means to an end, right, or a means to an outcome. And I think it's important that as an aspiring craftsperson, you realize that and what you're focused on are the things that are universal, right?
Like your frameworks or your principles, your way of working, your design practice is what's most important because the tools change, right? Like, I've used everything from Photoshop six, you know, to, you know, paint. Well, there's a new paper now, right? A new design tool, uh, and all the tools in between.
But I could also design with just my mind and, like, a piece, a literal piece of paper. Right? Like, the tools are just there to help us and aid us. They themselves are not the output, and they themselves are not the thing. That's not why we get paid. Right. And so that's another one of those misunderstandings, maybe of if you think your job is getting paid to create an interface artifact, you're going to have a very bad time because the price of creating an interface artifact is now effectively nil.
Anyone can do it. And so I think there's that's where I think there's also a bit of an identity crisis, perhaps both on engineering and on design. Where are we associating with our, you know, with what we make with the artifacts we make? Are the tools we use or are we associating with, like, what are what our job is our way of working, and the specific value that we we bring to the table and can offer.
00:21:50.990 — 00:22:06.950 · Speaker 2
You mentioned, you know, recognizing when a designer is high slope. And I really like that. We hear high agency a lot. But I really like this idea of like potential and how what are signals to you if somebody who is more junior um, looks to be high slope.
00:22:06.950 — 00:22:29.990 · Speaker 1
The first thing it would probably just be quantity of like output. Like in design it's a very silly like designers are. The basketball worlds are the worst in so many ways. Like, let's imagine that you're a chef, right? And you're like, okay, my goal is to work with Thomas Keller at a michelin star restaurant.
And I asked you, cool. Like how much, how many meals, how many dishes are you cooking every day? You know, you're 18. You're in, you know, chef school, you're at CIA or whatever. And they're like, ah.
00:22:30.030 — 00:22:31.110 · Speaker 3
You know, I mean.
00:22:31.150 — 00:22:34.590 · Speaker 1
I made one new I tried one new recipe this week. I'd be like, mm,
00:22:35.630 — 00:24:10.420 · Speaker 1
you should probably just get a different job, honestly. Right. And so for whatever reason in our industry, people don't take for granted the idea of like, well, how you build taste and how you build intuition is just being prolific and creating a lot of things, and they're all going to be bad when you're early and that's fine.
Like that's why you create, right? You have to cook a dish a hundred times to know how much heat, how much acidity you know you need in it. The same is true in interface design. And so I think the easiest way to have high slope is to just be prolific when you're young. If I look at a profile like a Twitter feed or a website of someone who is emerging the classic for many reasons, the classic portfolio is like, here are three case studies, right?
Of like different problems I'm solving. And as a higher manager, having looked at literally at this, one of my career got probably probably upwards of a 10,000 portfolios. I pattern match in one second and move on, right, versus somebody that's like, oh, cool. There's just a lot of things they're making and they're interesting and they're just trying out.
They're experimenting. What that communicates is like, oh, this is a person who's going to tinker, and this is a person who, to a large degree is taking responsibility for their own likability and education because they're just trying to make things, trying to figure out like, how can I improve this?
How can I, you know, make this experience better or solve this problem that I didn't previously know? If you're young, you know, emerging designer and all I see every day is you posting your work and your experiments and what you're trying and what you're learning and how you're writing about it. You're immediately in that bucket of like, cool, this person is probably going to be a killer.
00:24:10.420 — 00:25:47.580 · Speaker 2
And what I'm seeing is this, this playground pattern emerge more than it used to exist. We obviously kind of led with Ria Lou, who's done some really great work there. Um, I think it was Chloe Yan who had a great like these, these personal websites that have an area that just continues. They continue to evolve in little ways that are interactive or fun or visually compelling.
And when I think back to what was the version of showing your reps, uh, you know, ten years ago, well, you had a dribble, you know, you dribble all these shots and the different things and that was volume. But now these playgrounds are much more, um, kind of a cohesive idea with a lot of little things that you interact with.
And I'm seeing more and more of this style and, and I'm seeing people just share this stuff, and I hear designers tell me, well, I don't want to be a content creator, but I want to share all. And it's like, well, I think you're missing. You don't have to be a content creator. You don't have to be an influencer when you share your work.
Instead, think of it like you know you're taking advantage of the freedoms. The internet was the great equalizer. Social media got rid of so many middlemen that would block people, the individual, the small business, from being able to put their message out there. Now you can do that at essentially not the same cost it used to be.
And now you can even go further and take your idea from a fidelity to a much higher fidelity. And you can do all of this in a bedroom on a weekend. And that's the wildest type of liberty to me. So for me, it's like really trying to educate people that, hey, that's a possibility. And we're seeing more and more people do it.
Now when someone tells you they hear that and they're like, hey, that makes me really anxious. I don't know where to focus my attention. What do you say to that?
00:25:47.620 — 00:28:05.890 · Speaker 1
On the one hand, I get it. But all what I do know is if you spend time worrying about that or indulging that anxiety, that's not going to help you, right? You have a if you have a goal in life, which is you want to better yourself, your family, your career, focus on the things you can control and just start doing something right.
It's like a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. So if you're a designer who is trying to break in, right, and you haven't yet landed your first role or that role that you want, you should be thinking, I think pretty simply and strategically about that, which is like, okay, so my job right now is actually to get to this spot, right?
And so what do I let me work backwards from that. So I'm hired at this role. How did I get there. Well, probably led to me being me standing out in the crowd right of me being noticed. And so you can just engineer or design all of that. Like, I think design and engineering are largely the same thing. And I think one of the chief goals of design is to engineer desire.
Right. And so you can do that. Like we should all be doing that for the products we're creating. Why would you not do that for yourself as a designer. Right. And so the folks who I do see stand out, like you mentioned, or some other folks that come to mind, uh, Sorin, uh, do you know Sorin Blink? He is a young Ripper.
Um, he. Yeah. He's awesome. Uh, this this young, young gal. Lele. Uh, lele zang. I think she, um. I spoke with her, like, the other week, and they're both, you know, folks who are kind of early in their career, but who are just. You can you can feel the creativity, like coming out of that. Right. And you can feel their earnestness and authenticity and expressing themselves.
Both of those do have very different like personal styles of of what they're focusing on in terms of interface or design. But what jumps out is like, oh, they're excited to be making stuff, and they're clearly very interested in like trying to be great. And so you can just feel that and see that a mile away.
So Leo has this phrase, uh, I think he's the one who coined it. I've been seeing a bunch where it's like, cool. It's everything is jump. All right? Like everything is reset. Everybody now has certain abilities with LM. What are you going to do with that? Right. And so I think you can look at it maybe somewhat pessimistically.
I generally feel like that will again be somewhat self-fulfilling. Or you can look at it optimistically. It's like, cool. I'm one design, one experiment, one post away from changing my life and just, like, pursue that, right? Get after it.
00:28:05.930 — 00:29:31.430 · Speaker 2
We talked about like uncommon effort, right. And this idea of like your locus of control, what can you do? Going back to silos, wisdom talks about, you know, how do you cut like the turkey run the knife along the breastbone. You don't cut right through it. You look for the soft spots. And that's kind of what you have to do with the environment right now.
Where is the opportunity? Sure, there's a lot of hard challenges around, but where should you focus on. And I think that's that's a great takeaway. Now, one of the things that you think you should focus on is uncommon care, and that I love the language of that. But I was asking myself, what what is uncommon care?
How can you How can you quantify or how can you try and lean into uncommon care? Is it just you're just spending, you know, hundreds of hours cracking into something until you feel like in your gut it's perfect. Um, because when I go to interface craft and I sign up and I'm given this, like, canvas of picking my library card, and I pick the one that speaks to me, and then it centers itself, and I get to sign my name on it.
And then when I do that, that's my card to access interface craft. And then I get to insert it. And this is all digital, insert it into the web interface and it opens up, uh, everything behind it that immediately said, ah, I, I get this, but how can I think about Uncommon Care? And I'm sure interface craft speak specifically about this in in all of the work I do.
00:29:31.470 — 00:29:53.290 · Speaker 1
I think what makes a great designer is honestly just like giving a shit. Like that's the simplest, like way I could clip or put like, if you just do that? The job's like, half done. How do I maximize, like the impact, right? Like, what are the key moments to focus on and take all the way to 11? Right. And so I think that is just a methodology that you can do,
00:29:54.370 — 00:31:44.000 · Speaker 1
you know, at like a macro scale for a whole product or at a micro scale of like this one specific interaction or this one specific part of like my design. And I think Uncommon Care is in some ways just by default, going further than most people would. One example I use that everyone should should look up is the work that Stripe Press did on the cover for Stuart Brand's book, The maintenance or maintenance of everything, I think.
Um, the design team on that, Devin, um, and the designers that they iterated, they went so broad. Uh, and these were people who were like, world class designers, right? They're already at the peak of their their career. You would feel like great. The first design they make is going to be great, right? It's going to be going to be awesome.
Going to be world class. But the final cover I think that it's something like 60 or 70, like permutations, iterations of just that one concept to actually end up with like, cool, that's the want. And you might look at that and be like, wow, that's insane. Like unreasonable ROI. And it's like, well, is it like it didn't take as long as I think people might think it took more than a day, obviously.
But the reason, part of the reason why that resonates, a part of the reason why all the websites that Devin and Nick do together, why they resonate. Um, they just did a website for the Virgil Abloh archive, for example, is because they take the time to just go a little bit further, a little bit deeper. And so anytime like the the mental model for this is like, if I'm ever working on a thing, I'm asking, cool.
Uh, can I make this better? Like, are there obvious like, let me put on a different hat of like critique. I'm looking at this thing. How could it be better? Right. But you see that. And what jumps out is like, oh, damn. Like, they really cared about this. Like, they clearly went beyond the default whatever.
And put a little bit of, like, their humanity and their soul into what they're creating. And as you mentioned. Like that jumps out.
00:31:44.040 — 00:32:54.620 · Speaker 2
Most of the time I have worked across multiple teams. In flight with competing priorities, it's required me to make a lot of trade offs, which has been helpful, but it's also been just as stressful. It's kind of, you know, where I cut my teeth. And now today we also, you know, and so the question then was always, where should I focus on the uncommon care, where should which one of these lanes with the three five days I have gets the attention of love?
And now today, it's like I can do so much. And sometimes I might just like, do too much. And the same question exists whether whether I only have time to do one thing or I have time to do 20 things, it's like, well, even though I could do 20 things now because I can, you know, maybe move faster with AI, I still need to figure out which one of those things gets the time and attention.
And I'm curious to hear from you, like, how do you pick where to invest your time? You've got interface craft dial kit. These are like the passion projects, but then you've also got the agency iteration. You've got, um, you know, combine VC. You have all these things that you're doing with upper study. How do you find the time?
I'm being fractured everywhere. So this is actually personal advice.
00:32:54.820 — 00:35:31.570 · Speaker 1
Yeah. No, it's um, I think that's kind of the question of our time in a lot of ways is like how what becomes what does feel like it's becoming more important is like shot selection, right? Like where do you where do you invest your time and your in your cycles? The framework that I use for thinking about that is like, well, where do I find myself excited at the moment?
Right. Because I think there's another saying with like, it's hard to compete with somebody who's having fun. And so I think that's something the older I've gotten, the more I've tried to listen to that kind of intuition or being open to different kinds of opportunities that follow, like interest. Right.
Because I think and I will acknowledge, like, I think that's a bit of a luxury not everyone can, you know, wake up and just ask yourself, like, cool, what do I feel like doing today? And to be clear, there's a lot of work I do that isn't, you know, just it's not all like Donald's Happy Meals, right? It's like, yeah, you have to eat your veggies.
Most of my time is spent working really closely with, like, a select few founders on like their product and helping bring those to life. But I'm also excited about sharing in a different way to a broader audience. You know, things that I've learned, right? Which is where interface craft comes from, is sort of an experiment in like, well, you know, upper study was was an effort to apprentice in a very 1 to 1, you know, I mean, scalable in the sense of like, yes, we helped a lot of folks, but also in the grand scheme of things, not that many.
There's millions of people, you know, on the internet who are building digital products, who want to create, you know, well designed experiences. And so what I know for myself, looking back, is the things that I find personally most rewarding have been I think you alluded to this earlier, seeing what folks like, what other folks are doing.
Right. Like helping other folks and seeing where they're going into that career. It's like, oh, that designer who we apprentice is now Apple. That designer is now first designer like a formative AI company that is. Maybe that's the thing that just correlates with age broadly. You know, it used to be like, I want to make this new interface pattern that, you know, has never been made before or whatever, right?
But now I definitely think it's much more like seeing your impact at scale and sort of teaching. You know, there's like a lot of ways to skin, you know, a cat, right? And the way that I practice designers speak about design is not universal. You know, a lot of people might disagree. They might say, like, wait, design and engineering, they're the same.
I disagree with that. It's like, that's fine. There's a lot of ways to do things. But what I feel is if the way that I, you know, know or discovered has, I've also been taught by others. If more people practice that way, I think the products we use would be better. And so I want to try to see that, you know, spread more in the world.
00:35:31.610 — 00:35:56.630 · Speaker 2
I love that. And, you know, one of the things people ask me, like, who do you pay attention to, Tommy? Like who? Who do you listen to? For perspective, and for me, the criteria really falls on people who are like you, who are kind of up and down the scale of of different perspectives. My question to you is, what is that?
You're kind of able to close the loop on a lot of this because of that perspective. What do you see that people in that aren't in those positions can't see?
00:35:56.670 — 00:37:30.530 · Speaker 1
You just sort of develop a different perspective for or an appreciation, I guess, at least of like the business side of things. Right? And I think there is there's there's a big tension in design that's kind of perennial, which is that we, you know, any day we wake up and we decide, like, are we business people or are we like artists?
Right? And I think design is much closer. Design is product design as we practice. It is not art. And that's like a contentious statement. But I think the difference is what you're doing is always in service of some business problem, right? Or some business outcome that you're trying to achieve. Obviously we use creativity to do that.
We use art or artistic expression to do that, but it doesn't exist. Like, you know, you make art to exist. Like it's a reason for existing. Is itself. Right? You just want to put something out there. Whether or not somebody appreciates it, whether or not it has economic, economic success or viability. If you are creating art for yourself, first and foremost, that's not true with like product design, right?
Or particularly the careers that are like very high paying in product design. And so I think, you know, some of that kind of full perspective of like founding something, investing in something is just an appreciation and sort of building more of an intuition around just a business aspect of thing, uh, of things.
I kind of wish there existed a service that I could just bookmark things on Twitter or whatever, and to my door shows up like a printed magazine. That's just for me, right? It's like, here's my content, right? Like things I save for later. I wanted to show up in a nicely, beautifully designed, like physical copy because I don't want to read.
I already spend too much time, you know, on the computer, right, or on screens.
00:37:31.690 — 00:37:43.989 · Speaker 1
But I was like, well, it probably doesn't work as a business. And so that's like one of those like, yeah, I don't know what to do with that, but I'm thinking about the business side of like, how would you actually at scale produce like an economic economically viable
00:37:45.150 — 00:38:42.400 · Speaker 1
like business for that? It's like, I don't know, that's I would need to spend a lot of time thinking because that just feels hard. Right. And so I think he develops some intuition maybe for potential opportunities. But um, yeah, I, I'm not really sure if there's more to maybe my kind of perspective of just.
Yeah, over time or as you work in different industries or approach things from different angles, you get to see and maybe have more appreciation for, like why things are the way they are. And so I think that understanding helps, helps you ultimately be a better designer. But probably the bigger one is just a better teammate, like developing empathy for founders or for engineers, kind of seeing from their perspective what they actually have to deal with on the on the day to day.
Like that's something actually designers are experiencing. Somebody did a survey. I can't remember who it was I saw on Lenny's newsletter. The designers are like the least, you know, happy with like AI. And that's not to say they're unhappy, but as a function, they're the most feeling like burnt out or,
00:38:43.480 — 00:39:52.140 · Speaker 1
you know, not pleased. And my theory or hypothesis for why that is is because, frankly, design is or has historically been in many ways like the easiest of the EPD triangle. Right? We've had the least responsibility, actually. And now, for the first time, many designers are having to do some of the responsibility that historically product managers or engineers have done.
Right. It's one thing to have an artifact static artifact in Figma of like, here's this interface. It is an entirely different thing to build it. Consider all of the circumstances in which that will be used, the different network states, the different browsers, etc. and so if you're now starting to build things with AI as a designer, you have to experience what engineers experience is like.
Well, yeah, I should just take an hour to build this. But like, I've got to consider what happens when this happens or this happens or I resize the window. So all of that. Um, those things that designers don't have to do. I hope that it builds empathy and an appreciation for like, oh, maybe their job was actually a little bit harder than I gave them credit for, right?
Because now I have to do it and I'm seeing like, oh, it's not, you know, the grass isn't always greener.
00:39:52.180 — 00:40:33.180 · Speaker 2
That's going to do it for this one. But Josh made a point that I really loved that we are all one design, one experiment, one post away from changing our lives. And I want you to believe that that is true right now, especially right now, because I think the people who do believe that are the ones more easily making things happen for themselves and for their teams.
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There's new episodes every week. I will see you in the next one.