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Explore the evolving world of design with Cameron Craig and Keith as they tackle the challenges of complex, monolithic products and the critical role of human-centered design. Each episode dives into topics like organizational change, the future of design in tech, and the emerging influence of agents on user experience. Perfect for designers, strategists, and leaders, this podcast offers insights on adaptability, communication, and the strategic thinking needed to thrive in a rapidly changing landscape.
Cameron Craig (00:01.279)
Agatha.
Keith (00:01.816)
Cameron, what's up,
Cameron Craig (00:05.954)
Another week, my friend, another week.
Keith (00:08.584)
Yeah, never a dull moment in the monolith verse.
Cameron Craig (00:13.576)
No, no, it was interesting that, that talk, the ad for the talk that you sent over for September with the monolith.
Keith (00:23.112)
what do call it? The what the hell is that automation company called Zapier yearly conference has like an orange monolith on it. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (00:30.858)
Yeah. Yeah. The zap zap conference. Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah. It's hilarious. It's like, are we speaking to that or what are we doing?
Keith (00:35.938)
That was funny.
I think it's like everything's connected and no one is individual anymore. like I said, everything's computer, everything's monolith.
Cameron Craig (00:48.152)
We are Monolith.
Keith (00:52.174)
To hack Monolith, you must become Monolith.
Cameron Craig (00:52.555)
Well...
Cameron Craig (00:56.216)
It's true, it's true. So what are you been up to this week? Anything big in your world before we dive into tonight's rant on things?
Keith (01:07.95)
I was the usual chaos and craziness with immigration. It's with the huge monumental non-beautiful bill that got passed, whatever you want to call it. Like ICE is getting a huge, I think their budget is bigger than most militaries. like, so something's up for like the fall that's kind like, I don't know, but I have a feeling it's going to, I have a feeling that that's like the seed money for like the funny money that's going to go to like Palantir to like.
Cameron Craig (01:25.11)
Yeah.
Keith (01:37.518)
fly AWACS and crazy drone tech to just do a beta test for something we're not even thinking about yet. But I don't know, man. It's in the back of my mind, I feel like all this isn't about immigrants. It's a backdoor play to hack the Constitution for everybody else. Because it's like, you get really close to what constitutional rights and with the Bill of Rights were supposed to do. And this is a whole other large tangent. So I don't know, I think I see that and then
just trying to get the day to day done to automate as much as I can away. But you know, it's, it's good. It's hot. I got spit on by a hobo who wanted to fight a train last week. And I'm like emailing a client. I'm like, dude, it's New York. You know, so, you know, it's great. It's like, they say when you get pooped on by like a pigeon, it's supposed to be good luck. I wonder what getting like, actually, he wasn't a hobo. He was just a dude who wanted to fight. And I was just, there's a whole nother, you know, but it's like, you have to like really
Cameron Craig (02:19.005)
my god.
Cameron Craig (02:26.487)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:33.24)
Great.
Keith (02:37.066)
Not engaged, like don't No, no window holding, window folding. But how are you doing,
Cameron Craig (02:38.978)
Yeah, yeah.
Cameron Craig (02:44.288)
Well, I mean, I'm like you, I'm kind of, I'm designing my, my bug out plan. I'm, I'm automating things away and. You know, which we, we launched our product this week that automates design. yeah, it, it went really well. Like we were out, cleanly into complete public use.
Keith (03:00.238)
Nice. How did that go?
Cameron Craig (03:13.42)
You know, it's still internal. we technically consider it an open beta, but you know, it's being used at scale. very little complaints, a lot of, Hey, this is super well thought through and probably one of the most practical applications of a large language model in a business setting. you know, cause I mean, the scale of the things that we're doing is pretty massive. So if you can affect change, even if it drops timeline to market on things,
Keith (03:32.728)
cool.
Cameron Craig (03:43.522)
from weeks or days even to hours, which is essentially what we've done. Yeah, it pays off. it's getting noticed at the highest levels of both the immediate org and the bigger org. So that's cool. think, obviously, as we've been talking, what it leads to is fear and loathing, the design org.
Keith (03:49.462)
It's exponential.
Keith (04:10.254)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (04:12.534)
you know, part of it. Yeah.
Keith (04:12.814)
Can you talk about what you're doing that much? are you allowed to talk about what you guys launched at all? Or is it still you have to be black box about it?
Cameron Craig (04:23.032)
I have to be a little bit lack box about it. if it without kind of telling how it works or specifically what it does, I can give high levels. And I think that's more important than taking people through the blistering details of what it does. In a nutshell, if you look at the persona of a designer working in a complex environment with layers of
Keith (04:25.134)
Ahem.
Cameron Craig (04:48.852)
regs, if you will, right? Whether that be the design system, the interaction guidelines, APIs, complex interaction guidelines that are attached to documentation potentially, and then the underlying functionality, is, which we don't design, we build the interfaces on top of that functionality. And oftentimes that functionality is defined for specific reasons that get close to data center or silicon, depending on where, where it is.
So as a designer, imagine kind of trying to go through the onion skin of all of those layers of things that you need to understand. takes months, if not years for a designer to understand. And once a designer understands that, and then they understand the product that they're working on and where I work, there's over 200 products. trying to move designers between products is
Keith (05:31.278)
Yeah, it's a lot.
Cameron Craig (05:47.788)
darn near impossible. Just the timeline it takes to get them fluent again. then hiring, hiring people off the street to come in and, start to conceptually design products is it's expensive and hugely problematic for all those reasons. So what we've done is we've contextualized all of that and built a tool that helps designers understand.
Keith (05:53.624)
to ramp up,
Cameron Craig (06:17.172)
all of those guardrails and systems. And what we've found is that innovation, non-interface design innovation. think interaction model, feature development, feature, like taking abstracting the compute underneath it to what the product can do.
Via the interface and you can go a bunch of different directions. You could simplify the setup of that. You could simplify repeatable tasks. You could, if you are truly inventive as a designer or as a product team, come in and blend things together to make new functionality. And as soon as designers are freed from all of that mental overhead and all of that cognitive load of trying to figure out how to design within those nested systems.
Keith (07:16.45)
constraints, yeah.
Cameron Craig (07:17.92)
they all of a sudden are just like, I've got an idea, right? And that's what you want, right? It's not about eliminating designers with AI, although again, this is part of what we wanna talk about tonight is, know, that's a thing. I think every CEO, know, every financial bit of press on any of the large technology companies and unfortunately they will set
the tone for other non-technical companies, right? Like you can replace lawyers with AI, you can replace writers with AI, you can replace designers with AI. And, you know, we will go through that cycle, unfortunately. Like I think that
Keith (07:59.918)
You
Keith (08:05.838)
That's coming. It's in the news.
Cameron Craig (08:06.902)
My team's smart enough that my, team is smart enough that when it launched, was like, congratulations, dude, this is amazing. Really great work. And what's my timeline for being employed? Like literally same day I've got people saying both things.
Keith (08:24.91)
I mean, do the developers not see the equal opposite riding on the wall? Because if think about it, it's just, one of you can't, mean, everyone's thinking about this, you know? Yeah. Because.
Cameron Craig (08:30.101)
Well...
Cameron Craig (08:35.64)
They do. They do. Yeah. It's. Yeah. Again, I can't talk about the actual feature set, but I can tell you that, that when it was demoed.
Keith (08:42.158)
Inuit.
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (08:50.91)
the impact to non-design job families was also readily apparent.
Cameron Craig (09:00.374)
And again, if you're a designer, shifting away from the product and thinking more about the ecosystem, right? Which is what we've been talking about. You know, there's a few things that I think as we get into what else should design be doing system as designed is there to free up designers to do non-interface design tasks, right? Like.
Keith (09:00.822)
Everything's monolith.
Cameron Craig (09:26.732)
that freedom that they're seeing once they're freed from knowing all of those nested systems allows them to invent and innovate. And that was the purpose of what was built. But, you know, in the near term, it's gonna be, it's an efficiency play.
Keith (09:44.75)
The non interface design tasks is really hard for people to realize. I was even talking to a guy, like one of the doorman dudes at the building at work. He's this Polish dude. He gets kind of what's going on. Like we talk about like whatever he's, you know, he's a photographer and he understands. He's like, well, he kind of was like, well, everyone's going to not need a designer. I'm like, well, it's more than just like your parents using Photoshop at this point. I'm like, you have to, the skillset is going beyond.
just like look and feel and fonts and color. mean, like what you guys did is it's a reverse PRD. So instead of making the requirements for the thing, this is like, this is what the thing does. Here's your sandbox limitations that kind of like ramp you up to know what you can and can't do in a way. And it's like, if the font and look and feel only require like 10 to 15 % of your brain now, because you can just ping this crazy library that's like infinite and growing all the time and showing you what's like the latest and greatest.
It's like how you combine and put these things together in unique ways, which is like a hacking mindset and systems thinking, which it's really hard to teach that because it requires you to like, let go of all the things you held onto that either gave you like identity or stability. I don't know if most people are worried for that. And the ones that are worried for that and try and do it, you're being judged by people who aren't worried for it. So like, no, no, it's like stubborn, you know, not wanting to move.
Cameron Craig (11:10.413)
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm in a sandwich in some ways in terms of that because I think before we were at the point of starting to scale this, my boss, rightfully so, was like, what does this do to the quality of the experience? It's like, well, we've had a design system for seven or eight years.
And in some ways, this is an automation of the design system, right? Like you've now given an intelligent agent that understands the design system. And, you know, I mean,
Keith (11:47.138)
Yeah. Which you should do because so much time just maintaining the damn thing. That's like, no one really wants to do that work either. mean, you know, it's like, yeah.
Cameron Craig (11:56.948)
No, same thing with the interface. Like I don't want to review interface, net new interface designs for over 200 products. can't humanly keep up with that. And the design system was designed to like minimize that, but it hasn't. We still do over a thousand reviews a year. Like we're, we're doing design review every day of the week, six to seven hours a day.
Keith (12:07.52)
scale.
Keith (12:25.07)
Dude, God, that's tedious.
Cameron Craig (12:29.176)
It's expensive and it's, it, it's necessary because even with human systems, like forget automated systems with human systems, like a design system, you still need a human in the loop to like recognize when the pattern isn't assembled the right way. Well, now you don't because the computer won't let you, I mean, it will, you can tell it, you want to break the rules, but it flags those things and, kind of keeps an audit so that when, when you get down to the point where.
Keith (12:31.298)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (12:59.328)
You are launching, you're going to get a checklist of things to fix or agree, which is all like at the end of the day, all I care about is that some designer has signed off on the deviation. That's all I care about. Right. And this prevents a lot of the deviation, the normal human error, but when you've chosen to deviate, you kind of put your name on the line and you're like, I am deviating. Right. The system keeps track of that.
Keith (13:24.206)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, being intentional is one thing, but it's like 80-20 rule, especially if you're working at that scale or it's hundreds of products. at that point, I mean, take the classic Microsoft problem, right? We have all these different kind of like product families, but then they get so big that you can't introduce more meaningful innovation every year that necessitates a hundred dollar, you you're basically paying for maintenance at that point. You're not paying for extra new stuff.
Cameron Craig (13:25.334)
So, you know.
Keith (13:54.37)
that makes it better because you you oversold them. And this is like classic monolith post disruption, like legacy issue. But yeah, so we were talking about like, letting go.
Cameron Craig (14:03.992)
Yeah, but let's dig in. Let's dig on the point though that you made about that being a really hard thing to do because I think you're absolutely right. that mindset, I mean, again, you and I have been dealing with that for more than 10 years.
Keith (14:20.302)
Yeah, even as like a human trying to rewire my mindset about like eating patterns and like lifting and like, okay, can I do half an hour at night when I've still got like all my Claude and chat GPT, whatever credits that I can try and vibe code or whatever, because it's expensive, not expensive cost wise, but you're the tokens, you you burn them really fast. But it's, it's hard, you know, it's, it's
Cameron Craig (14:45.186)
You're like an eight year old at a Chuck E. Cheese, aren't you? Get your pocket full of tokens.
Keith (14:48.622)
Dude, I'm trying. paying for this. My dad's not paying for these things. That's paying for my tokens. I'm paying for my tokens. No, son, you can't even recorders. Yeah, exactly. We had those tickets, those like Cardi tickets. We didn't have tokens in like the early 80s. It was like post tokens, pre contactless. But they folded. I still remember those things. It was like a very specific like...
Cameron Craig (14:53.208)
Use your tokens wisely. Yeah. Use your tokens wisely, Keith. You're not coming home to the Atari 800.
Cameron Craig (15:09.525)
okay.
I know you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith (15:18.934)
almost like a firework kind of smells the same kind of paper wrapping those around it.
Cameron Craig (15:25.642)
Yeah, totally. mean, not to dig too far into my childhood or the hood that I grew up in, but the very first Chuck E. Cheese is actually a mere seven, eight minutes away from where I live.
Keith (15:41.774)
my God, it's a home of innovation in the valley.
Cameron Craig (15:43.786)
I mean, Atari, baby. It's like right here. And, know, that guy was like, Hey, how do I capitalize on all these arcade machines I've made? You know, might as well deliver them to restaurants I own.
Keith (15:57.582)
Yeah. I mean, they still have they have barcode or barcade, I think in Williamsburg. I haven't gone in there yet, but it's like a old 80s arcade you drink and hang out. don't know. know, I think anyway, while getting off it, dude, I know 8-bit is classic with the new games requires. It requires like six hours just to get started, but I just want to be like, boom, in and out for 10 minutes. I want to play like a random Mario Kart, be done, drift a little bit because I can't.
Cameron Craig (16:10.902)
I love Pixel gaming, man. I love it. so good. So good. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith (16:24.494)
drive a car here in New York, that's like a nice car, not a nice car, but you can actually drive the car. but yeah, mindset. I'm channeling you from last week, keeping us focused. It's like letting go and importance. Yeah, I think the ones who are holding on to a more rigid mindset now, ourselves not included, or present company not excluded,
Cameron Craig (16:31.5)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (16:36.352)
Yeah, good. Thanks.
Keith (16:49.806)
it's gonna make you hit the legacy wall faster because the rate of change is just increasing so much that I think an easier way to dive into that is just to say, look, everyone's in the same boat right now. No one knows what's going on. Everything's chaotic. Like all these fallacies about like government and everything's everything's coming out right now. So it's like you got to like, I don't know, I think you got to figure out what is what is resonant with you.
Cameron Craig (17:02.541)
Yeah.
Keith (17:18.766)
And if you kind of like genuinely try and like solve people's unmet needs and help people like think that that's always going to like pay for itself and dividends. And I you start there. That's that's the way to kind of like inoculate against the insanity.
Cameron Craig (17:30.956)
Yeah, I agree. mean, I think you're right mindset wise and, and this sounds like we're a self help book. but you know, having a growth mindset around what you're doing as a job is like super important because you know, automate systematize whatever all of those things end up killing tasks and
In some ways, as we've said on previous podcasts, the interface design is a task. is not, we are not inventing at this point in the realm of interface design. We stopped inventing more than 10 years ago. We are executing delivery. And if that's your thing as a designer, you know, there's probably a place for you, but how long I think remains to be seen. And, and my guess would be that's not years.
It's months and you know, that's not just where I work. think that's everywhere. Like we're seeing tooling that is commercially available. mean, even Figma is trying to do that. Right. Like all of the, the announcements at config this year, we're about exactly that, like getting closer to developers. Like, and they won't say this because you know, they're not going to burn their market.
But they're really trying to get developers onto their tooling to basically do the design task. And that's okay. Like as, as the head of design in a very development heavy culture, it's okay. Like I'm not fighting that because I think it's, it's, it's right for the business. Now, you know, they'll shoot themselves in the foot and they don't understand mental models. They don't understand how to design.
Keith (19:13.279)
I think it gets.
Keith (19:25.794)
It's almost like everyone's getting a level up and a level down, but in areas that they're not comfortable with that are going to require them to really go through the abyss of the ego to come out. Because then it gets back to what is real, true creativity and novelty.
Cameron Craig (19:30.838)
at the same time.
Cameron Craig (19:47.158)
Yeah, I mean.
Keith (19:48.142)
You know what I mean? Because one of these Vibe Code videos I was watching, this dude was like, look, just go to Dribbble, go to here, write the script on, you know, chat GPT, have it check it out. So you want this, this and it's just it's just sharpening the specificity of how you talk to the LLM. And then it just spits back something good enough that it's like, how do you move? You know, it's like, it's a lot of hacking stuff. It's like that just how you move forward faster. And yeah, dude, like
we had a bunch of people cancel consultations because they're probably shopping around and calling and whenever somebody calls and asks for a price for like, no, you got to you got to like, we're not gonna tell you much it costs to get a green card because you're just gonna they're gonna be terrible clients anyway, because they're gonna be nickel and diming and then they get the shit late, whatever. But having to like cancel it and then like manually refund and it's like it's it takes like an hour once you do a couple of them. It's like it just takes so much time.
go back and update the CMS. It's like no one wants to do that. should just be like that kind of thing should just be automated. We're like you want to get your done? Okay, boop, you cancel. No problem. Send an email. It's stuck. It explains the time, whatever. like, you know, like no one wants to do that kind of stuff. But I think there's been this like complacency. I don't know. I wonder if it got worse with COVID because everyone kind of got forced to like sit at home and think it's okay to hang out with your trauma and whatever and
Don't change, which you know, like not everyone had the luxury to like go to meditation and sit with like their fucking shadows. get it again. This is supposed to be self-help, but we're at a place now where it's like, you got to move. You got to get up. You got to try new things. And I'm saying this to myself and you and whoever else listens, because this is kind of the same boat that we're in right now, because you know, it's like the job you have now is like, like we were just talking about, like it's Amazon. It's huge. It's building what you're getting to build now.
Cameron Craig (21:20.76)
Totally. Yeah, totally.
Keith (21:43.66)
Like those opportunities don't come across all the time. have to keep pushing to do bigger things at scale or more complex things or things that get into like DoD or government or whatever that, you know, they have other kind of complex restrictions. But you know, we're still also at like an amazing time. And I think, you know, I see all this just complaining and consternation on LinkedIn. But I also see people starting to turn and realizing like, okay, no one's coming to save us. And it's like, yes, good.
Like who cares? Like talk about whatever the hell you want to get into and just like hack the system. No one likes LinkedIn anyway. Like it's terrible. It's a way for Microsoft to make money for recruiters or whatever. Like it's not TikTok.
Cameron Craig (22:19.34)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (22:24.428)
Yeah. mean, there's three, like you said three things over the course of our relationship. One of them you said 10 years ago, which, you know, again, is like, check your ego, recognize that invention is the key, recognize that innovation is the key. And as a designer, you need to rely on the fact that that
innovation and that creativity and that experimentation and that hacking is eternal, right? Like if you believe that you're going to keep coming up with innovation and ideas and hack your way to a solution, then you have nothing to fear in shedding the skills, the things of the past and learning new things or doing something different. So that was 10 years ago. I think a few weeks back you had said,
Hey, you know, one of the things that I find frustrating is that people come out of design school or, or, and again, this is not me being disingenuous or crappy about boot camps. I mean, they're there for a reason and they served a purpose, but you know, your, your other point there too, was people are coming out of these things, knowing the tools and knowing how to implement, but they don't actually understand the thinking beneath that. Right. And like,
have some foundational things we want to get through today, but I like, I'm also bookmarking, you know, both in this podcast and for us that the systems thinking is the secret sauce that designers have and that designers are trained in. And that is not only a saleable skill set. It is a unique skill set that
designers are trained to do. It's not to say that we're the only ones that know how to think in systems, but we get the benefit of going to school to actually learn how to exploit systems. And, you know, in my mind, whenever a designer is asking me, well, like, what are we doing? It's like, bro, or my lady, you need to...
Cameron Craig (24:47.134)
dive in and start thinking about the system that you're working in. you know, like, truly, like, you are no longer reacting. You are now designing like new systems, right? And so go from interface to interaction to mental model, you know, at the bottom of the iceberg diagram, right? Like if you can get to the place where you are redefining the mental model, and then rebuilding
up, right? To whatever the interaction is or whatever the interface is, or the lack of interface, the communication between the human being and the computer and back again. Like that's where your power is. And, you know, it's funny because I'm, I'm in the aftermath of launching this product. I'm giving that speech quite a bit. It's like, take a breath. Like it's going to be okay. And
recognize that you have a power in this situation that has been probably long overlooked by you and the organization that you work in. But the time is now to like bring that out and really double down on it. Like the moments right now where I'm seeing, and you know, some of my team has been very clued into this either through their own research or their own.
playing and their own discovery of like, oh geez, like this does a lot of things that we do as humans. Um, those people, as they're going back into the orgs that they work with are really in a place where they're saying, you know what we need to do? We need to start using all of these technologies and all of these tooling and all of these other interface, like paradigms that we know are coming. And we need to rethink how the product actually functions and
the business people on the other side, the product managers, and even some of the development people are like, hell yeah. And so then you're in a place where you're doing two things. You're rethinking the product, you're future-proofing the design activities, right? Because it starts down at the mental model level and it works its way back up. And no one so far outside of the designers that I've seen,
Cameron Craig (27:07.532)
Has done the dot connecting like, well, if I redefine the model and all of a sudden I'm like leaving a browser delivered interface as an example, and I'm moving to more of an agent or it's not me saying like the chat is going to be our interface. I really don't believe that it is, but you know, in this first round of playing that people are in when they're leaving a visual interface and they're going to a chat interface and they're just telling the computer to go do something. And the computer's like, it's done. And show me the work, right? Like that.
Keith (27:35.49)
Bing.
Cameron Craig (27:36.17)
that mental model shift in the HCI, like people have not connected the dots that all of that shit needs to be designed.
Keith (27:47.278)
I like how you're talking about dot connecting because when you say systems thinking, a lot of people just like, what? Yeah, exactly. And they don't understand that.
Cameron Craig (27:52.224)
What?
Keith (28:00.342)
It's hard to explain, it's like, because people don't get complex systems at all. And when you do get it, it's like, just, can't, it's almost like you can't unsee it, but think of it like, so if you're going to connect dots, think of it as when we started earlier talking about solving people's problems for them to like make things easier for anybody, regardless of who it is, coworkers, customers, clients, friends, whatever. If you, you know,
At the most base level, it's like, you know, I turn it off, I turn on and off the light switch and all of sudden the AC stops working. And it's like, that is, that shouldn't make sense unless it's like wired a certain way. And then you kind of start trying to isolate knowns and unknowns. But if you take problem areas that people have and you group them together and you try and like put a solution across all of them with like minimal effort or the minimal amount of like cost or time or, know, with the constraints, that's how you start.
maximizing all this input. you know, I think, as we get older, it's like people forgot, like, how to like play or be open or be less rigid, with kind of like their thinking like, and I see this in law, because it's like, it's so inflexible, because I get it. It's like, emails are discoverable. And it's a liability, you can lose your license and all this stuff. I'm like, I'm like, we're negotiating for fucking three hours of, you know, response to like, an RFP. It's not like, they're gonna sue us for malpractice. It's like, you know, they didn't
it took them, you know, whatever. It's like sometimes being more of a human and being like less because like lawyers want to say like less because that's how they do it. You know what mean? But sometimes it pays to be like, look, this would happen. Mistakes were made. What a big deal. But you know, we got everyone's gonna we to make this work. You know, we ship the green card, you got accepted, we're good to go. But it's gonna cost you know, and it's a money thing. So anyway, I think
Cameron Craig (29:33.901)
Yeah.
Keith (29:50.926)
The dot connecting is important and the mental models part, like the mental models, the way I think about mental models is like the way you think that something works. Like maybe that's like affordances where it's like, oh, I have a doorknob, but I don't want to get into like super jargony stuff because most people are going to be like, yawn. you know, the way that we think it works doesn't always necessarily have to be that way and changing how you perceive or how people perceive the way I think works. I think that's a great way to start.
Cameron Craig (30:05.72)
you
Keith (30:19.0)
hacking the system for lack of a better way.
Cameron Craig (30:21.388)
Yeah. So, I mean, again, maybe to take a half step back, I think one of the things that you and I had postulated in, and maybe there's a good point to switch over to is the environment that you are, are working in, right? Like understanding these core tenants, if you will, of, of the organization or the company that you work in. Right. So examples.
I work in a very engineering driven culture period. Like it's known when you step in, you. You're not fighting that you are not resistant to that. You are saying there are a bunch of things that I will do as a design leader and as a designer to enable developers, both the developers that work around me and the developers that work on the tooling and the products that we sell. you know,
Beneath that, think you have to kind of define again, you know, not, all, cultures are the same, right? Like I've been told that Apple used to think of itself as a design culture, right? Like they think through the design of things and the customer need first. you know, other cultures are much more tech specific depending on where they are in the technology stack. Some of it because.
The technology is the most important thing that is being shipped. And if it's a process that's based on that technology, everything is in service of that technology. So when you're thinking about those things and how humans are going to interact, you're almost thinking backwards, right? It's not what is the human doing? It's like the human needs to service the technology to make the output happen. So I'm thinking first about what the machine needs from the human. And then I'm designing the easiest way for the human to provide that. Right.
The other thing that you and I were talking about, and again, we can break down any of these things is then in understanding kind of the human systems that you're working in, right? Like, are you in a very hierarchical culture? Are you in a small team environment in a larger environment? If you're in a startup, you probably are like, no rules. We just need to get things out as quickly as possible. And knowing that and understanding the human beings that are sitting around you and
Cameron Craig (32:43.008)
What their intentions are and what their needs are. And in some ways, what their value systems are starts to be how you map your way through getting decisions made in those individual orgs. you know, maybe we can talk a little bit about our own experience there, because again, like you and I made a wall, like the FBI wall and we put up all the players, right? It's like,
And through our analysis of the players, the first thing that you had us do was like, Hey, and, and, and I'm using different jargon, maybe then, then you and I use when we first did this, but since doing this, I've read some books and. know, it's, it's like, who are your megaphones? Who are your gatekeepers? Who are your, like, how does the information travel through these humans? Right? Like if, if everything around a decision maker is a gatekeeper, right. And.
Keith (33:24.174)
All good.
haha
Cameron Craig (33:41.098)
Every angle that you come at it is somebody gatekeeping. Then you need to figure out what the value system is of the gatekeepers. If you need to go through a megaphone to get to a decision maker, you, you go make friends with that person and figure out like what it is that you need to drop to them that is going to make their job easier, better, or more valuable to the people around them. That's going to get them the promotion that they need. And you're seeding those things so that.
They take care of you when it's time to get the idea. And that mindset too, Keith, I think is the other thing that I'm struggling with in my current environment is I'm like, you know, back to the original premise, the innovation is the thing that I want to own. I don't actually want to own the product that I'm working on. Somebody else can own that.
Keith (34:34.456)
You want to be the guy or the team that people come back to to help solve their problems. like, okay, you want to call like the SWAT team inside Amazon. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (34:40.086)
Yeah. Yeah. The currency is innovation, right? It is not the products that I'm, I'm producing. Like I am, I'm almost like open sourcing when it gets to a certain level of, of refined or defined or delivered. I'm like, you don't need me like go crazy. And I'm off to the next thing or, know, my team, my little teams off to the next thing. And even my like closest right-hand people at this point are struggling with like.
But we just launched it. I'm like, uh-huh. And there's another one right behind it, like that we have on a whiteboard. So like what, what is our focus? it, do you want to own the innovation or do you want to own the product? If you want to own the product, speak now, go, go on the product. You're happy, happy to cut you free to go and do that. Right. I value what you bring to the innovation, but if you need to own the product, go in the product. can't do both.
Keith (35:28.365)
Yeah.
Keith (35:35.192)
That's certain death in the long run though, because it's...
Cameron Craig (35:38.454)
because the numerical superiority of the roles around you outnumbers you like a thousand to one in some instances.
Keith (35:47.382)
I think the more we talk through this, the more you're going to have to be innovative for lack of a better term, just because the AI and the rate of innovation of everything is just going to accelerate and just grind all that extra weight out because it's like, there's a bunch of things in here. So the formation conditions, the way a company starts is always, least when I started consulting, how I kind of, I'm like, why the hell people do what they're doing?
aside from we've always done it this way. I'm like, okay, great. I get you've always done it this way. But like, why are you guys this way? Why is the sky black instead of blue or midnight blue? And it doesn't make any sense to me. Like, help me understand it. Generally, I want to understand. so like Amazon, it is development driven culture. But it was also started by a guy who left like a super quant shop, D-E-Shaw or D-Shaw. That's where Google got like the 25 % or 20 % free time or whatever. Like a lot of those things with tech came from that.
Cameron Craig (36:20.384)
Yeah, I don't want to hear that.
Keith (36:47.11)
And Amazon's like a super heavy writing and data culture. correct me if I'm wrong. So if you don't have the data and you don't write it down, you don't like put it in paper, then you basically like crucified and it's like super hardcore with that. Yeah. Okay.
Cameron Craig (37:01.206)
Yeah. Any major decision that you're making, right? There's what they call one way and two way doors, one way doors are bad. Two way doors are good. If you are, if you are dealing in two way doors, you can keep your docs high level. they, they recommend certain doc links, right? One pager, two pager, right?
Keith (37:09.74)
Yep, reversible decisions.
Keith (37:22.808)
See, there's a culture around how you structure the flow of information, communication cooperation network.
Cameron Craig (37:28.184)
There, there is, and you know, it, they're like dog whistles. You can't avoid, right? Like, Hey, we're about to be in a place where, and you know, again, different parts of like the company's. Genormous. It's over 1.5 million people working and you know, like there are a hundred design orgs across the company. So
Keith (37:47.086)
crazy.
Cameron Craig (37:54.988)
How we do it is different than how somebody in the marketplace is going to do it versus somebody in devices versus somebody in prime video. but you know, in my org, when we are about to make a crucial decision that we believe may be a one way door, we do write a doc where we've tooled the, the
culture in some way is we're moving much more in a lean way, especially with innovation, right? Because I'd rather run six experiments than spend two weeks writing a doc. I'd rather have my team in putting into an experiment or a prototype than writing a doc. And
Keith (38:39.544)
That's the Facebook way. Even though it's development driven, they're more like hack a prototype and show it and then break shit and keep moving versus so they're similar foundations, but different implementations, but they're still both the tides of what, you operate in the organization.
Cameron Craig (38:50.486)
Yes, yes.
Cameron Craig (38:55.864)
So, you know, purity of model has never been my thing. I mean, you've worked with me for a really long time. You know, I'm a rule breaker. I like to hack things as well. I, you know, we came from a lean environment and I firmly believe in lean principles. I firmly believe in show, don't tell. And what I have learned as a business person, less a design person and more of a business person is
Keith (39:08.814)
100%.
Cameron Craig (39:23.232)
Like all the points that you just made can't get thrown out the window, like the quantitative analysis, as much as you can do it, or the data to drive your decision-making when it comes to what a customer needs is really important. And you can get to a certain place with models and with demos and prototypes. And then at some point when you are committing either to a development direction or a given design direction, or in this case, even like switches to the HCI model.
Like I am pretty insisted that my team write ducks because you have to justify what you've just shown. And if you can't, you can't do that intelligently and have somebody inspect it and basically say, okay, I got it. You're probably missing some part of the equation or you haven't thought through something that you need to. And you know, that's an adaptation, I think from where we were when we were at Macy's where we're just like, and you know, you and I would get totally frustrated. We were on a floor of people.
Keith (40:01.422)
Can you explain it? Yeah.
Cameron Craig (40:22.532)
I think at one time they were like, I think I had my own designers on 14 different innovation teams. And you and I would be like, I mean, you, you saw the result. You made how many camera angle video.
Keith (40:40.398)
We did four. It was POS, the people, then we had like, there was two POS's, the people, and then what do call it? Like a handheld gimbal. So it's like, I think it was four camera, four angles. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (40:52.64)
Yeah. Well, I mean, so what you did was you embarrassed basically the innovation org as well as all of the senior executives that greenlit all of that innovation because they were not innovating to solve problems. They were innovating and straight to launch. It's like, this will make money. It's like, will it?
Keith (41:09.922)
They did the Facebook. And this is the MBA take on being purely data and purely financial driven and like not human and observation and design driven. like, way I think you and I see this is very much about like red teaming and hacking, like see if it works, test it. And then it's like, okay, how do you substantiate the business claim at scale through the writing, through real proofs, through like, actual rigorous analysis, like
Cameron Craig (41:38.977)
Yeah.
Keith (41:39.382)
selling your data to hack the cash conversion cycle to leverage negative working capital. We talked about this. have your suppliers fund your growth kind of thing. was pointing out the different people. I think it helps people to see how to see. And even though multiple companies are design, development driven, there's different flavors of that. But if you understand how the company as a whole lives and breathes, you understand how to work with the tides or work against them.
or to leverage their natural inertia to make your own hacking, implementation, engineering, whatever, work for you instead of against you. It's like, you're not going to you know, complete opposite way of a riptide. You have to go like across it. Otherwise you're going to get like just tossed out to sea. You're just going to, it's going to keep the miracle superiority. It's just going to burn you out.
Cameron Craig (42:26.038)
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that again, is really hard to get your head around. Right? Like it's, it's easy to bias one direction or the other, like, Hey, we need a doc. Like when I got there, I could not get people to make prototypes. I mean, it could, I could get my own team to make prototypes, but it was like, well, what are we going to do with this? Like you're going to go and demo this for the, the development in the.
the product org that you're working with. They're like, Nope, will not happen without a doc. So I'm going to write the doc first and we'll do a demo at the backend of the doc. Like you run out of time because every single meeting we spend hours arguing about the doc and
Keith (43:10.83)
It's like wireframes and comps. It's like they get caught in the design of the comp and you're like, this is the wrong thing to be focusing on.
Cameron Craig (43:15.126)
Yep. Yep. And I mean, like my chief, like innovation designer, the guy that I go to, to say, like, I don't, I don't know what I'm, I don't, I don't know what I'm trying to solve yet, but like, just go with me on the journey. Right. Like I feel so bad for him. and he's been, he's been with me since Macy's, right? Like did Macy's did Safeway, you know, now here and he,
Keith (43:25.058)
Mr.
Keith (43:42.828)
is an OG.
Cameron Craig (43:45.292)
He's like the guy that I trained on all this stuff. like he, in some ways.
Keith (43:49.902)
It's gonna be really effective. You got it on the inside.
Cameron Craig (43:52.224)
He's pretty effective. Like he really is pretty effective. Like over the 15 years he's gotten to the point where he can illustrate things and bring them to life in ways in, in, in record time. but even today, like he's gilding that interface slowly. I'm like, dude, boxes and arrows right now, like you and I are having a conversation and you can like point at things and wave at things and like, just say, this is going to do this. And I can fully follow you.
Like every moment that you're spending actually like detailing the interface right now. Cause I guarantee you Friday, when he and I look at this again, one of us is just going to be like, nah, that doesn't work. And it's like hours lost. I'm like, keep it low fi, like keep it so low fire right now. And like verbalize everything when, you know, if you're worried about having to sit me down for an hour and walk me through it, don't worry about that. Like I'd rather have that meeting than you.
send me a polished prototype and like start here, you know, and I go away and I'm clicking through stuff. Cause I guarantee like most of it's going to get scrapped and you know, the dude that's been working with me for 15 years, I had to remind like, keep it low fi, you know?
Keith (45:00.654)
Dude, it happens. It's the environment seeps into you where it's like you stop seeing, you know, like, I was just thinking, seeing the trains pass by, there's like a little bit more graffiti on the outside of trains like every day. And like, every day gets closer to the 80s where it's those pictures of New York in the 80s. It was like, the trains are plastered. Yeah. And I'm like, Oh, dude, this is where it's heading right now. I'm like, Okay, I'm like, I'm like, don't be complacent. Don't boil. Don't boil the other frogs right now. Like, you know, it's like,
Cameron Craig (45:17.464)
This is a war zone. Yeah.
Keith (45:29.774)
this is about like if there's opportunities, you got to like seize it and go and especially like astrologically, that's what's happening. Like this is we got a couple more weeks till things start kind of like coming back. And this fall is going to be like we're looking through to the old way and you got to make a decision of like you're going to move ahead or you're going to stay in the past or stay in the past. Like it's not going to be fun. Like we got to know, we got to move ahead even if you do it partially. There still has to be some kind of intention like we're not
Real ID is not going away. LLMs aren't going away. know, the earth is changing, like everything's changing. but still there's all this powerful capability that I think the ones, the real designers are going to be the people who are actually, it's like real human centered design, not this like, you know, platitude from like just IDO and about like UX or whatever. But it's like fundamentally like, are you actually trying to help people improve their quality of life?
Cameron Craig (46:28.044)
Yeah, I mean, that's kind of where I ended last week and this week, which is saying a lot and those people that, I mean, you know me well too, but like, I'm pretty pessimistic about most things and I can be very cynical about a lot of things. And yep, that's why we're friends. You know.
Keith (46:49.517)
both of us.
But optimistic too. It's a weird paradox.
Cameron Craig (46:57.337)
Like I ended last week in such an optimistic place where I'm like, this is game changing and not not the product I'm launching, not like just. It's almost like having. You know, it's like when we were kids, like, hey, what what would happen if I had a bionic set of arms and legs? Like, just think of how fast I can run and how strong I'd be like AI for designers.
is like having an exoskeleton that allows you to run 60 miles an hour and like lift a car. Like it's gonna be so good when we get the opportunity to truly like harness its capabilities because it is a giant unlock. It's a giant unlock. Like we were always stopped from building, right? It's like design it and you know, the smart people are gonna go away and build it. And it's like, yeah, not so much anymore, right?
Keith (47:42.501)
yeah, I think it's.
Cameron Craig (47:51.122)
It is leveling the playing field is absolutely going to level the playing field.
Keith (47:56.398)
it's the challenge of getting over that like, you can't do it, you're not old enough, you're not tall enough to ride the ride, you don't know how to do developers like, but you know, it's like now it's like, no, everyone can do it. It's like, everything's computer. You just got to like, stop attaching value to putting boxes on a page that have some color on it, like in Figma. And you know, if you like doing that, that's fine. You can still do it. But it's, there's so much more
Cameron Craig (48:08.096)
Yeah. Yep.
Keith (48:26.912)
available now that things have like leveled up. And that's going to be the hardest part. But you know, again, like, back to the formation conditions and the culture and like learning how to hack things and, you know, understand how to solve people's unmet needs. think that's finding people to work with that you're actually helping, it's going to provide that like current to help carry you along and help find you people to kind of work with in a way that's not just like, okay, we have to do this out of like,
necessity because like a bridge blew up, we have to survive. It's like, no, we can actually do something cool together and actually resonate on like a common carrier wave.
Cameron Craig (49:00.076)
Yeah, yeah, and I mean, think that's that's true. It's like.
The problems that designers are going to be tasked to solve. It's a whole different mental model. It's a whole different problem space. Right. And it's, it's greenfield and it's exciting. Like, I think that's the thing that I'm coming to you as well is no one knows right now. Like nobody knows what it is that we're going to need to like make this HCI work. No one knows what those products are going to be, how they're going to work, but
The one thing that I'm seeing is the complexity that like you just said, that the designer specifically have always been sad. Like, yeah, yeah. You you know, you can maybe sit at the table, but you're getting a smaller chair because you know, the big, the important people get the big chairs, right. And, and like all of that's going away. Yeah. I mean, the sippy cups come out and you know, here's your crackers and you know, like I've cut your cheese for you.
Keith (49:54.195)
Yeah, you get the kids chair, the plastic seats, sippy cups.
Cameron Craig (50:04.86)
you know, well, meanwhile, everybody else is like, you can't really talk to the designers because they don't really understand the underworkings of this. Like they don't really understand the product, you know, like let them, let them skin it. It'll, it'll look better when they're done with it. And you know, anything that we decide is too hard to implement. Just cut it. Like that's the other thing that, you know, the designers that are working with me that are, are, you know, need even that experimentation. They're like,
Hey, how is like the best developer I've ever worked with. Cause it never says no. Like it just figures it out. It's like, takes whatever I'm designing and it just, figures it out. And you know, the code at this point may be messy, but every time they run, like every time we upgrade a model or every time we upgrade a knowledge base, the code gets cleaner. It gets faster. It gets more performant. Right. And like human developers, whether it's like a
Keith (50:40.482)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (51:04.682)
a mentality towards that they don't go back and revise their code. They're not like looking for ways unless you tell them to look at look for ways to make it you know, like the P 90 needs to drop and you're like, I mean, who like to the point you made earlier, who wants to do that work? Nobody.
Keith (51:09.646)
It's too much.
Keith (51:22.988)
it human. No, it's too, need a computer to look at the patterns to like optimize and that that level of I mean, there's like handfuls of geniuses that can do that. But if they're smart, and not like hyper autistic or something, then you know, they're, they're leveraging AI to to build their own companies, because they realize the capability, the exponential capability what, of what's available. And there's something I was gonna say on top of all this, too. Yeah, the the real
Like.
you know, the designers get a bad rap because they care about human causes, you know, whatever it's like, Gaza or Ukraine or whatever, you know what mean? Those things are going to get, they're going to get bigger. They're not going to get smaller. Like there's going to be a holy war. Every country is going to have people revolting against its own state because the restrictions are going to try and put on it. Your data is going to become even more important because the way that they support and feed you and process money is going to be tied to if you're compliant, vis-a-vis your data and your identity.
Cameron Craig (52:02.568)
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
Keith (52:24.834)
Like there are so many huge challenges coming up that people don't... We see it because we're a little cynical and because we're futuristic, kind of how we forecast. But this is the opportunity. And people are going to go into defense and make weapons through drones and through pharmaceuticals or whatever, because it's a whole crazy, brave new world. The powered exoskeletons are right around the corner. It's very close. And we need people who aren't just...
the mad scientists without limits, trying to make a bunch of money and control the world like these freaking Faustian bargain makers. Like you need people who you know, these are these are the opportunities to channel all this energy you have instead of just like, getting mad and angry about it at some like coffee house or whatever, or like getting plastered on the weekends, you're smoking weed, like that's fine if you do that. like they're in the internet, it's like collapsing everything like you can find these people.
around the world. That's the other thing that's crazy too is like, okay, after COVID, and it was remote work, all of sudden, anybody anywhere in the world, their cost basis is lower than yours to live in San Francisco or LA or Seattle that they have access to the same tools. So it's like, everything's wide open now, that, you know, it's a challenge because they're coming for your lunch, but they're also collaborators that you can like work with to address new problems at different scales with different mental models, like they grew up different ways than you did.
Cameron Craig (53:50.518)
Yeah. I mean, it's time to embrace those things again. Like I think, you know, if that's one message I could leave this, cause you know, oftentimes I think. Like I personally get frustrated in both directions. get frustrated with, our own practice area kind of being like wallowing in it, right? God. Like it's like, okay.
Keith (53:51.97)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (54:16.044)
You're, you're wallowing in some, and honestly, like what you brought up about LinkedIn is the thing that I read. I read a very creative post by somebody that, you know, he's a creative, like a true creative. I think he works somewhere in the ad, ad industry, but it was a whiny, like, you know, we're in free fall and everything is horrible. And it was just like, you know, the machines can do everything. And it's like, right.
Keith (54:22.23)
Hahaha!
Cameron Craig (54:44.514)
but that's not true. Like the machines can do a bunch of things that are actually commoditized, low value design that no designer wants to be working on anyway. And we're so like defensive about that. And that's the thing that, that, you know, again, is one of my frustrations, like stop being defensive, like admit that these tasks that you freaking hate can be eliminated by the machine and like get there.
and attack those problems and get rid of all of that undifferentiated work so that you can free yourself to go and do the things that you do. But if you can't on the other end of that, see the green field and basically go after like, like, voraciously with creativity, then then you do have a problem, right? And that is what's going to separate the next
field of senior level design talent from the people that went through a two week bootcamp and don't have another skillset other than interface design. And you know, you can play that game for a while and move down, move down the business chain, right? Like you can go to a, you can go from a technology company to a mid tier company and go from a mid tier company down to a small company.
Keith (56:01.582)
Good luck.
Cameron Craig (56:04.362)
regional company, any of those things, right? Like it's going to take years for all of these companies to catch up or all of these organizations to catch up, but it's going to happen faster than anybody thinks. And that's the piece. It's like, I wouldn't recommend anybody play that game unless you are such a fine artist in your creative skills and your visual communication skills or your artistic skills that you can do things that are hand-tuned. Like there's a market there.
Certainly. Like, but outside of that, the guy that's just slinging interfaces together, it's, it's going to be a hard road and, and it doesn't have to be, I guess that's like the positive side of it is like, it doesn't have to be.
Keith (56:49.902)
world is over. The boot camp is like enough to learn how to kind of get some basic fluency to get you like conversational with the thing or the medium. But do not rely on that for a job anymore. I mean, even in 2017, I was like, Oh my god, we're gonna be totally over served. I mean, the analog will be like, spending the same few thousand dollars to go to like, Harvard Negotiation Institute for a week to learn
to negotiate, but you're doing it with like super sharks. They're like, Columbia and Harvard law students who want to like, you so you're going to like you're learning, setting the difficulty level high and you're like getting your money's worth out of it, but you're not going to go become a lawyer after that. You're going to go apply that and fold that into your own skill set, what makes your own thing unique. like all these middle, like a lot of these companies are not going to make it. it's just the nature of work and money and culture is
like we're at an exponential like 10 to 100 X speed and amount of change relative to what the internet did. But we're going to see like 1000 years of change happen in like the next like 15 years. It's gonna be like two Protestant reformations level of change.
Cameron Craig (58:01.943)
Yeah.
Yeah, I agree. And I mean, I think what you just said, I'm seeing that being signaled in front of me, right? Like I, I think a year ago, I was a little bit like, why are all these CEOs?
Cameron Craig (58:25.238)
Telegraphing in some ways what their moves are around the people and it's what it's exactly what you said. They are in a place where they have to telegraph their moves, even if it sounds cruel in the moment, because they have to get there first because the company that doesn't get there first is now going to be dictated to as to how this model works. Right? That's why you see companies like Metta spending.
hundreds of millions of dollars to recruit a single individual over because they know if they don't, they're going to be dictated to. And, you know, it's silly.
Keith (59:00.75)
Yeah.
First rule of combat, element of surprise.
Cameron Craig (59:05.336)
Yeah, it's silly. But I think every CEO in the tech industry, at least I can't speak to other industries, because unfortunately, as this revolution is happening, I'm sitting in a tech company. But they all have to look in the mirror and recognize that when OpenAI went public beta to consumers.
It was a brilliant move and none of them saw it coming. Right. Like they were, they all had met with open AI. They all had been shown what open AI could do and what a, what a large language model at scale was capable of. And I think they all probably were like, yeah, that's interesting. And there's applications, obviously like, you know, even companies like the one I'm working in have been in AI for 20 years. but that type of AI. I think they didn't.
If you hand it to an engineer, an engineer is going to try and figure out like what it can engineer. If you hand it to a business person or a designer, they're going to be like, wow. Like I can get to fucking the HAL 9000, you know, super quick. I think there was a lot of engineering evaluations and not a lot of business evaluations. And I think open AI was brilliant. They're like, you want, you know, the biggest way to change the world, give it to consumers.
consumers will drive the uptake. And they needed to do it anyway because imagine a world where Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are all like behind the scenes doing things with AI and they're like, there's AI involved and no one on the front end of those interfaces understands AI.
like what kind of a revolt against that technology are you having if you if you're not comfortable with AI? So they're like, we'll just bring it out in plain sight and drop it on everybody and see what happens, you know, like, and of course, everybody ran to it. They're like, this is amazing. You know, like I can get this like, everything that I loved about Google, this is like 20 times better. And Google's like, Whoa, wait a minute, you know, and
Keith (01:01:04.492)
you
Keith (01:01:17.134)
Now they have to get way in and get first because people are starting to use it and use it in ways that they don't intend.
Cameron Craig (01:01:23.672)
Well, I mean, why do you think they immediately Microsoft made a deal with them? It was like, Hey, here's, here's a bunch of billions of dollars. Like we want in, you know, they'd missed that first investor tour and open AI is like, we're going to make you care. Right. Like, I mean, this is my conjecture. I wasn't sitting in a room with Sam Altman and he's like, here's my master plan. But it seemed pretty obvious that instead of going with these business apps, right. They were like,
Keith (01:01:42.732)
Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:01:50.796)
We'll build a chat bot that everybody can use and it'll be amazing. You know, it's like the quickest way of doing two things at once. I force you to interact with me now because every person on the planet is like AI. And at the same time you get mass acceptance of the technology because people are like, it's not scary. It's actually kind of cool. It does things better than Google does.
It's brilliant.
Keith (01:02:12.014)
It's interesting to hear people in passing find new uses of like unconventional uses to solve problems with AI because it helps them look up legal statutes or find a backdoor to get a refund through AMACS or whatever. It's like a Swiss Army knife that's constantly evolving.
Cameron Craig (01:02:30.485)
Whatever.
Cameron Craig (01:02:35.722)
When it breaks everything down for you too, it's like, Hey, let me not only aggregate this stuff. Let me, let me do two things. Let me follow on. Hey, if this made sense, do you want me to look at this? Right? Google doesn't do that. Google's like cam go figure it out. Here's the 20 links and you know, you can go as deep as you want and then you can come back. Like, but it's all on me and chat GPT specifically, right? Speaking of that specifically.
Keith (01:02:58.04)
Mm.
Cameron Craig (01:03:03.788)
You know, it does a really good job of summarizing and then it's like, and it's friendly and it's like, it takes in the context that you give it like, you're really stressed out about this. Like, Hey, this is important and let's talk about it. Right. It. Like they put human qualities to it that you're like, okay. You know, but it cites its sources. It, tells you where you can find more and Hey, you don't totally trust my synopsis. Like go click through these links and you'll.
Keith (01:03:25.016)
Seductive. Yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:03:33.344)
You can do what you did in Google. You can go and read the details, right?
Keith (01:03:37.76)
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing to me, the more I use it, the more I learned that your prompt quality gets you just better results in the output. just, we're trying to figure out disability pay family leave because there was like a lapse in coverage, but the state nor the insurance company we just paid to get the plan could tell us how to like turn off the fees and how to make sure we're like in compliance. Like, I don't know, call them. They're like, I don't know, call the other guy. It's like, you know, what the fuck? Like, come on, we're trying to like do this right.
Cameron Craig (01:04:03.97)
Yeah.
Keith (01:04:07.694)
And then I'm like, wait a second. And then I had the prompt down and they took me to a page or one of the sources that like, there's a business office or whatever, the business advocate of New York. like, oh, and I picked right up. And I was like, oh my God, I got a hold of somebody in like 90 seconds. It's like never happens. It's usually... I was like, done. And she's like, I just write up an email, give them this, this, this, this, and this. And you could have negotiated the settlement. And I was like, all right, well, now I know, post facto. But it's like, as long as we stop hemorrhaging, that's also a plus.
Cameron Craig (01:04:23.158)
Yeah, like brilliant, right?
Cameron Craig (01:04:36.972)
Yeah. I mean, you're absolutely right. I the prompt quality, both when you're designing something matters, but even when you're just trying to figure out something like, and, and prompt quality does not mean prompt engineering. Prompt quality means it's a little bit like having coffee with your friend and you're just like, look, you just got to go with me on this trip. It's not going to be fun, but like, I'm, I'm, I'm, you know, I'm just dumping it all out on the table and.
Keith (01:04:37.73)
So.
Keith (01:04:55.502)
thinking.
Cameron Craig (01:05:06.198)
You know, my wife was kind of doing that this weekend. It was like, we're trying to figure some things out with, I mean, not right now, but we're trying to put a plan together for like what our retirement is. We're also like multi-country multi, all these factors, right? And it's confusing and trying to process that in your head. And there's not a human being on the other side. There's, there's a, there's a very.
Keith (01:05:26.894)
variables that can change.
Probability.
Cameron Craig (01:05:32.588)
Yeah, there's a variable engine with a bunch of probabilities. And it's like, okay, let me understand everything that you're saying. And like, let me ask follow up questions so that I can understand even more. And then once I do, let me just break it all down for you in ways that you can understand it. And you know, you can keep asking me questions and I'll keep refining what it is that I'm giving you. Like. If search engine in the world can do that. So it's like you said, it's seductive, but that same interaction applied to anything.
That we're doing now is really, I think what it's going to be about. And again, it can be, it can be a tool or it can be your foe. I just, I don't see it as a foe. see it as, I mean, it's not friend either. Right. But it's a dual and you can utilize the tool to your advantage.
Keith (01:06:28.462)
That's, that's what I think it comes down to is that it's a tool. It's just learning. It's just, it's, it's a tool that's constantly changing at a rate that humans aren't used to with the evolution.
Cameron Craig (01:06:42.114)
Yup. mean, yeah, with my own tooling, you know, Claude didn't understand certain aspects of visual. It couldn't process certain visual things, right? It was very good at taking photographs and understanding what was in the photograph. Not so good at understanding a schematic as an example. And that changed in literally like three weeks.
Keith (01:07:07.489)
Mmm.
Cameron Craig (01:07:11.672)
It's like, doesn't work three weeks later. my God. Totally works. Right. I can hand it screenshots at this point of my interfaces and it will break apart the screenshot reconstitute the interface. And it's like, Hey, you want this in figma? Like, or do you want it in your own tool or like, how do you want it? And. Keith, we did, we fed it 25 different screenshots that were all related, but we did it out of order and it, it ordered them. It made the prototype like from.
Keith (01:07:17.656)
Crazy.
Keith (01:07:30.766)
That's awesome.
Keith (01:07:39.714)
Amazing.
Cameron Craig (01:07:41.878)
All the way through without us telling it like, this is wrong. Like move this. took all 25 and just was like this, then this, then this, then this, then this, then this all the way through. Created all the linkages. Yeah. And then because it understood.
Keith (01:07:52.75)
And so it's like, It's like, how fast can you react? That's what it comes down to. It's like, how fast can you get your thing explained and corrected, like refined?
Cameron Craig (01:08:03.39)
Not that fast, right? No human can do that. Like it would take a human an hour just to like understand the 25 screenshots. Like, okay, wait, what? Okay, hang on. Right? You and I, we'd print, you and I would print them out and probably get tape and we'd tape them to our FBI wall. And then we would say like, you'd be like, no, three is actually before two, you know, 60 seconds, Keith. It's like, okay, here you go. I'm like.
Keith (01:08:14.274)
Make a sitemap.
Keith (01:08:20.236)
Yep.
Keith (01:08:30.412)
That's nuts.
Cameron Craig (01:08:31.316)
You know, I'm like looking at the designer, like, okay, let's see what else happens. He's like, I think you can click through it. was like, let's try it. Sure enough. You can click through it. It's like, like crap. Three weeks.
Keith (01:08:40.248)
That's awesome.
Keith (01:08:45.23)
I mean, it totally redefines the speed and scale at which you can operate. You just gotta put the seat time in to learn how to talk to it.
Cameron Craig (01:08:53.88)
Well, I mean, like, it's almost like surfing, right? Like you don't fight the wave. You also don't, you're never going to control the wave. All you can do is ride the wave. Right. And if you like, learn how to get above it and not get crushed, it's like the time of your life. You know, it's like the best feeling ever. You're like, Oh my God, like, look at what I just did. I harnessed the power of the ocean to go like 300 yards at speed.
It's the same thing. You're never like, this point, humans cannot keep up with the amount of learning that this is doing in any given 24 hour period. Right? Like it just, you can't keep up with that. Like you gotta, you gotta act like you got to dismiss that you're not trying to keep up and you got to basically be like, what can I do with it? What do I do with it?
Keith (01:09:32.75)
That's the challenge. Yeah, that's the big trick.
Keith (01:09:47.852)
getting back to like the curious free play with it to not be so attacked again, not getting attached to the outcomes. It's like Buddhist in a way, but it's like if you, the more you can channel that the easier it gets, cause you're just like, fuck it, just see what happens and just play with it.
Cameron Craig (01:10:02.392)
Yeah. Own the innovation. Maybe this is, maybe this is a good summary. Cause I feel like in some ways we're now we're talking about ocean metaphors. Um, and, and, uh, God, yeah. Yeah. You can't let them take me away. Keith. You can't, I can't live in a box. Keith.
Keith (01:10:10.946)
Vicon Dios, Cam. On the ocean.
Only innovation.
Look, you...
Cameron Craig (01:10:31.064)
it's so good. Yeah.
Keith (01:10:31.926)
I love that movie. Red chili peppers. God. All right. Let's, let's sum this up. innovation. Don't own the product.
Cameron Craig (01:10:39.402)
Own the Innovation.
You don't want to the product. It's low value. Like innovation. one other thing about that, you know, related to that. Innovation is impossible for a machine to take away from you. Like, because no machine is going to come up with these human based systems, net new creation. Yeah, sure. It can combine things, but net new creation, the way that we design things.
Keith (01:10:56.728)
Why?
Cameron Craig (01:11:12.726)
The closer you get to pure innovation, the harder it is to be replaced by another human being or a machine. And the closer you get to interface design, again, it's a task. is not. It's not a skill. It was a skill. It is not a skill anymore. It's a, it's a commodity. The closer that you are to that, the easier that you are to like replace and information architecture and some of the things that we do.
Keith (01:11:32.782)
commodity now.
Cameron Craig (01:11:41.962)
As baseline practices or that we always used to do, which people are like, I don't need to do that. Like that's somewhere in the middle. Like we still need that thinking. We still need those systems design. We still need hierarchies of information. All of those things I think are going to still have value because a human is going to need to explain to other humans why systems do what they do. Storytelling is the other thing storytelling. did not talk about it all, but like,
Keith (01:11:55.298)
find the maps to find the territory.
Cameron Craig (01:12:10.114)
That is another hugely powerful thing that designers are uniquely qualified to do. Like, and to even your points about safety and looking out for the human beings and society and things not collapsing. Designers can tell stories in more compelling ways than most other resources in any company or any organization or any government. because we break things down into things that humans can understand.
Quickly and care about. Yeah. So, I mean, that's like another area that designers that are looking to try and move beyond the interface. Like that again, that's another thing I would absolutely recommend. so yeah, own the innovation, not the product, understand the environment that you're working in, right? Like that is how you begin the formative States of what you need to do to, to
Keith (01:12:41.198)
and care about.
Cameron Craig (01:13:09.366)
Be this was army knife that you want to be or work tactically in the environment that you're in. So, you know, understanding the macro picture of the org that you work in, then starting to assess the human beings that are around you to figure out what it is that you can, how you can use them in some ways to get further and deeper into the organization that you're trying to influence. and we maybe end where we started, which is systems thinking, I think.
Cameron Craig (01:13:41.194)
that's an area where we probably need to go deeper and we need to show some of the things that we, we analyzed as systems and then tried to modify or hack. Because I think that like, again, from a storytelling standpoint, that probably is something that we can ground other designers into. So as we typically do at the end, we make notes and that feels like, and that's probably not something that you cover in one.
one podcast that probably is going to take some time.
Keith (01:14:14.356)
No, well, there's some good books that we can come back to and refer people to if they want to like,
This has always been a challenge to figure out how you teach this and I don't know if you can Teach it or you can kind of We'll see. I don't know. I'm optimistic. I think The first step is learning how to see and how to be open like I know we talked about this before but when we go to Def Con We just bring beers and give out free beers and like we wouldn't really go to bar It was too expensive like they would rip you off. We're not getting ripped off going to fucking bars. So
This is a whole other side story. we'd hang out outside the casinos and just watch people come in and out and you're like, hooker, three person, monty, trying to rip people off, like, you know, bachelor party, what is this people watching and you kind of seeing the patterns and kind of like how they hang out and you start seeing commonalities between like, multiple bachelor bachelor parties and you talk to the the cabbie on the way from the airport and he's like, dude, what's the craziest story you ever heard? Because obviously, the cabbies and they're gonna hear crazy shit in Vegas.
one guy's like, dude, there was one guy who lost $800 in like 45 minutes at a strip club. He's like, he said he just got fleeced. No one told him how it worked, what was going on. They took out his credit card and just and you know, it's you got it. You got to know how to see and got to understand that you know, you can change the humans but you can't change human nature. And the way that I kind of always approach this is like it's like a giant intelligence operation. But
Cameron Craig (01:15:39.202)
Bye.
Keith (01:15:45.87)
you're not trying to screw people over, you're trying to make it work for everybody in the best way possible. And if you do that, it inoculates you in a way that will help carry you forward. you know, people screw you over, fine, you just you move your other way, and you find another way around it's that that's human nature, too. But fundamentally, the ones who are going to be the most effective are the ones who are going to want to change the world. And the ones are going to want to do it to actually benefit everybody not based on some crazy
ideology that you think but based on how it's everyone's own unique nature.
Cameron Craig (01:16:17.986)
Yeah. I think well said, well said. can't, I can't add anything beyond that. think you, you get the last word today. Cause that was actually.
Keith (01:16:28.302)
I reset the stage for next week. Next week's gonna be systems thinking. We'll start that. What to figure out how we're gonna attack that. So yeah.
Cameron Craig (01:16:32.834)
All right. Love it. Well, I mean, I, I'd like to use some of the visuals that you came up with originally because they're safe for one. think they worked and, I think it's good that we show something, right? Like we, we, we're going to eat our own dog food. We're going to actually show the materials that we, we worked on where, where possible. We'll have to go and do a quick scrub through things, but I think, yeah.
Keith (01:17:00.366)
Yeah, they're still effective. mean, when I go to the Chief of Staff cons, I'm like, dude, map an org chart. what? I'm like, who's going to help you? Who's going to hurt you? I'm like, plot your run. I'm like, they're like, oh, I'm like, yeah, that's it. I'm like, what are the six things everybody complains about that no one can change? Like, oh, it's like tech sucks and blah, blah, I'm like, that's it. Those are the things you have to address subtly as a whole. That's your physics package. And you drop that and then you're to make waves. And they're like, uh-huh.
Cameron Craig (01:17:02.668)
Yeah, they are.
Cameron Craig (01:17:10.572)
Yep. Yep.
Keith (01:17:30.134)
It's applicable and hopefully I want to talk about this more offline, but how we can, if we can find ways to leverage AI to make this work like at scale, like change management at scale. think there's something very compelling here for future, you know, so
Cameron Craig (01:17:45.9)
Yeah. Agreed. I'll have a think about that too. I think that's actually a really good thing. All right. As always, man. Thank you.
Keith (01:17:54.124)
Yeah, awesome. Yeah, dude. Almost midnight. But I like these late night runs, I get a second win after working out and hanging out. So this is good. As long as it's not 90 degrees in the house. But you know, it is what it is. We'll power through.
Cameron Craig (01:18:05.72)
Yeah, I'm dealing with that too, because the sun's not quite down yet.
Keith (01:18:11.476)
more. Yeah, we'll get we'll get more. We'll get some lights and get to fix that tech part too. But at least the tech worked like as soon as we turned it on tonight. So that's good.
Cameron Craig (01:18:14.978)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, it was good. It was much less, but again, you know, the human side of it, you all get stuff through the last episode where we were literally offline for like half the episode.
Keith (01:18:27.758)
In that fixing and post, we don't have that kind of budget right now.
Cameron Craig (01:18:32.042)
No way, no way, you get it raw. All right, man.
Keith (01:18:38.51)
I can't it's getting too late. We're like I'll catch you next week man. All right. All right later
Cameron Craig (01:18:39.308)
Thanks, Keith.
All right, see ya.