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Get a seat at the table and build the design career you want. This podcast is for designers looking to break in, level up, and take control of their careers—whether you're freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to get noticed. Every two weeks, we dive into career fundamentals, design best practices, and the hottest topics in the design community.
Turns out that some someone like a manager or a marketer or anyone had this idea, like, we should change this button, move it over there, change it from text link to primary button, and just examples. So I think that's in quite to be quite honest with you. Mhmm. Because and that's that's why I'm asking you to be my therapist right now. Like, is that just me being petty?
Nick:Like, I'm a designer, I should be in control? Or does it make sense?
Tyler:Yeah. I think it sounds like I mean, the person who changed it, it was a you said it was a was a developer or was it a project manager? Like
Nick:You're officially live. We're officially live. Exactly. I mean, this is just an experiment. When's the last time you've shipped something, Tyler?
Tyler:The last time I personally shipped something? It's been a while, actually. I've I've transitioned to, like, doing the only only design stuff. Though, from my side projects, I do a lot of shipping, but mostly a lot of marketing materials. So, like, email, landing pages, etcetera.
Tyler:Right. So not quite shipping. I've been doing a lot of prototyping, a lot of vibe coding, your favorite. So close to shipping, but not quite.
Nick:Right. Right. Right. The reason I'm asking is because everyone's shipping these days, and that seems to be one of the most commonly accepted views these days that everyone can ship, every everyone should ship. Yep.
Nick:You know? Speed, speed, speed. But looking at you as a experienced designer on the job every day Mhmm. It's doesn't sound like it's a standard or for for you at least, like, it's not super common.
Tyler:No. But I think we're gonna be solely trans transitioning to be close to shipping or at least getting into production code. So most recently, I I requested access to our GitHub account so I can get access Congratulations. To
Nick:Thank you.
Tyler:Just have to go through the Confluence page and fumble my way into making that install happen. I might ask GPT to be my copilot to figure that out if if I don't bother one of my engineering partners. But it's it's caught a trend. So some of my design members of my design team would like to join as well. So getting a GitHub access as well and then starting to just dive in just getting curious and diving into, like, what the code looks like.
Nick:Right. Right. So are they getting curious because because of you? Like, were you the one to introduce this, or have they caused the, you know, the LinkedIn virus?
Tyler:I don't I wouldn't say that they caught the virus. I think as a as a team, as, like, the design team, we've been very proactive in terms of, like like, surfing this AI trend. So, like, our team is creating, like, GPTs, automating bunch of different things, And this is just, like, a consequence of all this of the work we've done. So we've taken up kind of prototyping in Figu and Make or or Cloud Code. And then the natural kind of progression is to, like, well, yes, we have this thing that doesn't go anywhere.
Tyler:It's more of like a show and tell thing. Can we what's the next step? And the next step is is working with production code.
Nick:Right. And do you mean making the five code a prototype, like, good enough to be production level code, or would you then start from scratch production level code, you know, basically doing everything from the beginning again?
Tyler:Yeah. I think the the end state is gonna be the vibe coding production ready code. So I've seen I have a friend who were in, like, the similar circles in the design community, and he's a design engineer. And he's created his own, I guess, mini mini products where you're able to kind of vibe code five different variations using the code base of whatever enterprise you're in. So just the idea of, like, generally, if you're kind of working in production or on the staging environment, you're creating one thing.
Tyler:But he's he's created this tool where you can basically iterate and create five variations to kind of test in parallel, which is which is interesting. It is. Yeah. So, like, it seems like designers are, like like, that gap is is closing. I feel like in house is is catching up.
Tyler:I feel like freelance, correct me wrong, like, that is like, you're shipping. So I feel like that's more more the case.
Nick:Well, it really depends on on the company, I would say, more so than in house versus freelance. Mhmm. Because, I mean, you can you can freelance at large corporations too, like, as an interim person, you know, just to to fill a gap for a while. I just happen to freelance more for, like, startup or early stage or smaller teams. Mhmm.
Nick:Not by choice. I mean, that just happened to happen to me. And so I I think it's more about company size. Like, large usually means slower.
Tyler:Yes. Yeah. I'd say that. I think you'd have to be very proactive in that sense.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the the just as a little side note, the best example is working on a government project. It took two years to get a Figma plug in approved for allowing us to use it.
Tyler:There you go.
Nick:Where, you know, at a start up, they're like, why? Sure. You know? Yeah. Try it out.
Nick:Good good luck. We'll see. And I think that's natural progression from start up with nothing to lose to a large company slash business with something to lose. You know? We we can try this plug in, but if it breaks, if everyone ships and then that breaks, we have, you know, a thousand customers that will be angry and branding damage and all that kind of stuff.
Nick:So it does make sense that things are slower at a large company, but maybe a bit too slow. Like, it doesn't need to take two years.
Tyler:It no. That seems like a long cycle to get to the next iteration.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah.
Tyler:I'll tell you, like, we recently had a company on off-site or a year of the kickoff. And one of the projects that we worked on was design system work. So Yes. Like, the design system from the design team perspective, like, in Figma was ahead. Like, the the parity was too like, the gap was too large.
Tyler:So we took this opportunity, this three day retreat, to do some design system work. So we basically we had all our Figma files ready, and then essentially, the engineering team was vibe coding their way not vibe coding. They were Claude prompting their MCP like, leveraging Claude's MCP to, like, generate and kind of generate these components to match the design system so that they can insert into Storybook. And that only could have worked because, like, the design team did a really good job of, like, really meticulously, like, crafting the design system in a way where, like, the MCP ingests it perfectly. But that being said, that now that that's set up, so now that we have that kind of parity, this unlocks the reason, like, why myself and other designers are are are getting access to GitHub because because all those components are set in stone, to create a new prototype or or new feature might be easier.
Tyler:Like, the back end piece might be missing, but at least, like, the front end piece, that'll be easier to create because we have these Yeah. Components documented.
Nick:Yeah. I mean, you you can fake the back end stuff. You know, it uses dummy data and and animations instead of the actual thing. And then if it's validated, then you can bring it over to a back end engineer to, quote, unquote, make it real. You know?
Nick:You can say five coding when I'm in when I'm in the room, by the way.
Tyler:I feel hesitant whenever you're in the room, like, I shouldn't the word that shall not be named.
Nick:No. No. I'm I'll not get angry. I'll I'll not curse you when when you're out of the room. I mean, you can just say it.
Nick:I don't mind. You know, what I think is is very interesting that everybody ships and this belief that everyone should ship, I want to, you know, mention perhaps the opposite. Okay. Because I think it's so easy now to come up with an idea and and build this and just see what happens. That takes away a bad idea filter, I think.
Nick:Mhmm. Because, you know, just relatively short ago, like two, three years ago, if you had an idea, it was expensive to realize and and create and actually build a thing. And because of it, you really had to think it through. Like, will this work for us as a company? Will it work for our users?
Nick:Is it technically feasible? Like, should we do this? Can we do this? You know, all the and then edge cases and all the whole process, it took a it took way longer, and because of it, you really took your time to think about it. So I'm somewhat concerned perhaps that with everyone shipping and just changing things, whatever comes up in their mind, like, let's change this thing over there and this thing over there.
Nick:The quality of our work might go down if we do not have some sort of review mechanism or filtering or whatever.
Tyler:That's fair. Because that's like like, the bottleneck was, like, the it was, like, a velocity issue. Right? So, like, generally, teams, it takes a while. You're you created the idea of creating an MVP or an MLP was that, like, it would take too long to do the full fledged thing.
Tyler:But now Yeah. Like, velocity has been unlocked. So it's like, what not to shift? Have you felt, like, a velocity shift, like, in your day to day? Like like, are you kind of going from zero to one or kind of releasing things quicker now?
Nick:Well, let let me ask you to be my therapist for a moment.
Tyler:Let's do it.
Nick:I I'm having I I work on multiple projects at the same time, like, multiple, like, smaller, you know, hourly time things. So one day over here, one and a half day over there. Like, so in any given time, in any month, I might work on, like, 10 projects for 10 clients. Okay. What I'm noticing at any given time is, like, two or three of those projects.
Nick:I work on something, you know, the whole design stuff, and I'm happy and it it makes sense and and it's shipped, perhaps not by me or well, just it's shipped. It's there. Next week, I return to the project. I and then I get feedback. Like, hey, this doesn't work.
Nick:I look at the code and the product, and it's different compared to how in the way I left it.
Tyler:Oh, okay.
Nick:Turns out that some someone like a manager or a marketer or anyone had this idea, like, we should change this button, move it over there, change it from text link to primary button, you know, just examples. So I think that's an to be quite honest with you. Because and that's that's why I'm asking you to be my therapist right now. I'm like, is that just me being petty? Like, I'm a designer.
Nick:I should be in control, or does it make sense? And the reason I'm I'm asking is because I spend a lot of time, you know, thinking about the layout, visual hierarchy. Things are a text link for a reason. They should stand out, but not too much. They shouldn't conflict with different things.
Nick:Like, there's this whole idea behind the goals that we have for, you a landing page, for example. So I was quite annoyed to see that they, you know, they, quote, unquote, they they just changed it. They just shipped. What do you think?
Tyler:Yeah. I think it sounds like I mean, that person who changed it, it was a you said it was a was a developer, or was it a project manager? Or, like, how
Nick:Just just an example of, like, different roles. Like, let let's say someone who's not been involved with the the actual design process of the thing that's been changed.
Tyler:Right.
Nick:An outsider, basically. Could be could be anyone. Could be you, a marketer, a founder, a developer, anyone, basically.
Tyler:Yeah. So, like, my first instinct is, like, maybe it's an ego thing. It's like you it's like your your baby, your thing that you've worked on.
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:But, like, if I just, like, ignore that and go to the second level, it's there is there is things that you've kind of discovered along the way in kind of creating what like, you've your your fingerprints are on the product because you've done Yeah. Some testing. You've architected certain features in a certain way or certain pages in a certain way. And, like, someone making a change, they don't have the context. So, like, that might be like a documentation issue.
Tyler:Like, if you're if someone or, like, a process issue. Like, if someone's touching this page or this feature, they should not just change stuff because there was some research done in the background that that just crushes and supersedes.
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:That might be different if you're doing, like, an AB test. Like, crush it fine, but, like, there's a base level and then there's the comparison. So, like, if if whatever KPI is is lifted with that experiment, fine. But it's interesting that you say it. Like, it might just be, like, it's yes.
Tyler:It's annoying because, like, it's your work and someone's just changing it, and then you're back like, okay. Well, this is my stuff. Get move like, get away from me. But then, like, it's it goes if we circle back to your everyone ships point, that might be the new reality that we live in where, like, anyone has or moving quickly, and it's about, like, doing changes because we because we can if there's a a reason for it. Yeah.
Tyler:Then it's just about setting, like, the guardrails and the rules so that, like, if you make a change, like, here's how you would go around and do that.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's that's go back to just the start of your answer. You know? Yeah.
Nick:Perhaps there's a bit of an ego thing there. You know? I'm a designer. It's my thing. You know, for sure that's part of it.
Nick:Just being honest about it. I'm not perfect. I think, you know, which it's not a reality I think we should be in. You're saying, like, it's a reality where everyone can ship and everyone will ship because of if it's a gut feeling, like, hey. I want this thing to be more important.
Nick:Let's make it bigger. It feels like you're on a bus and all passengers have a steering wheel.
Tyler:Yeah. I think it only works
Nick:We'll get off the road that way.
Tyler:Yeah. I think it only works like, that reality like, I'm I I think in your scenario or the or the example that you've given, it's there's validation in your kind of in the feeling that you're getting. I think the scenario where everyone ships and everyone can like, there's a lot of, like, overlap in terms of people doing affecting different parts of whatever the work you're working on is that there is alignment. Like, that's, like, the first like, there should be alignment. This is how we're building our product.
Tyler:This is how we're building our thing. Yeah. And this is how we do it. And then everyone has context, whether that's documentation, like, Slack messages. Like, just you need to have the context to make a decision or else it just like, the the job that we're all doing, keeping ourselves accountable, that just kinda breaks.
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:And then by consequence, the product, like, the the brand value kinda diminishes because, like, things are being changed, but there's no consistency here.
Nick:Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it it does mean that, you know, f yes. Everyone can ship, but not everyone should ship.
Tyler:Mhmm.
Nick:Or maybe differently said, I I think I think that's also more or less what you're saying. Like, there should be some sort of a reviewing and and acceptance process in place. Like Yeah. You you can suggest something to be shipped, and then someone higher up should say yes or no or change this to it. And then you can still say if if, like, if it's all good, you say you you can say, okay.
Nick:Well, it's good. Go ship. And then you can say, well, I have shipped it. I'm not a d developer, but I did ship it. But, you know, there there should be something in between, I think.
Tyler:Yeah. I think the the context is important. Like, you are the perfect persona, like, the, like, design code product management, like, having that skill set versus like, if I were to give an example of, like, APM who doesn't who only has that responsibility versus someone like yourself as the persona who has the context from zero to one end to end, the marketing, sales, design part, and engineering, you if I were to choose which one should be doing the change, it should be you, which, like, goes, like, along with my thesis of the year where everyone can become, like, this builder person. So, like, having, like, the skill set of, like, the triad design engineering or product. Like, you would have the proper amount of context to make a decision versus someone who only has, like who's only within their vertical.
Tyler:Like, I'm the marketer. I I don't know much about, like, the code or or the product. I just know how to market the thing. Like, you should have Yeah. A bit more skin in the game versus, like, ice I would change that, but, like, it's like it's going it's going back to, like, when people say, as a user, I I wouldn't like this, when in in reality, what they're saying is, I don't like this.
Nick:Yeah. I mean, that that's the risk too for me, what I just mentioned. Like, maybe I just didn't like the button change. Maybe it's very petty on my end. But, yeah, I mean, that structure needs to be there.
Nick:If I look at the project I'm involved with with the best reviewing mechanism, they are all very happy for me as a a non developer to ship stuff. Mhmm. But when I create a PR, so, you know, the pull request to to to submit, and that's where I submit where, like, this is a change that I'd like to make. What do you think? They are reviewing it, like, with full force, like, as if I were a developer.
Nick:Like, they're not going to play nice. Like, oh, well, this he's a designer. Let's be extra friendly. He doesn't know. Now I have to like, if I want to ship, I have to ship something that follows the high level of, you know, standards that I that they have as a group of developers.
Nick:So in that case, I think it's fine. In that case, you should, you know, you should ship if you want to. If
Tyler:you Yeah. That makes sense. And that aligns with like, a couple weeks ago or maybe two weeks ago, someone had reached out to me on LinkedIn with and they were kind of give like, share me a link or, like, a Loom video on, like, the product that they're billing, which essentially allows PMs or, like, nontechnical people to ship code, but it's gated behind a PR. So it's it's it's almost like a web flow ish thing that you put on top of your your code base, but it allows you to visually edit. It only allows you to edit, like, the front end, like, no no back end edits.
Tyler:But if you wanna do a change to, like, UI shift, etcetera, the output is a pull request that the like, into your example, the engineering team can reject and go and goes to that same scrutiny that which which Yeah. That makes sense. So, like, to the accountable piece, I think if that's the way we're moving, that makes sense that there's, like, a a developer persona. Like, no. This is not this is not passing.
Tyler:Try try that again.
Nick:This yeah. This is not the this is not the way. You know? Sure. Someone should be able to say it's like it's that's that's okay.
Nick:Perhaps even needed. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's my my main concern. Like, this whole thing comes from it's all about speed. We can do more things faster.
Nick:I don't really think that's the problem. You know, it's never been the problem that we couldn't write code fast enough. You know, it's it's it's that two year process that you need to get something approved, So we should find a way to speed that up.
Tyler:Yeah. And, also, like, from from, like, the leadership point of view, like sorry. From the from the con consumer or, like, the user, like, because you can like, imagine, like, you can ship things on, like, a daily basis. Like, how overwhelming might that be for a user? Like, when they're like, the product is changing on a day to day basis and while they're just trying to get used to using the v one of the app.
Tyler:And now they're having to kind of learn on a daily basis as you're shipping new things. So, like, also, like, the cadence in which you're shipping is also affects the end consumer because they're consuming it. And then if it's often like, they can't gain a foothold or get that pattern recognition to understand the app that you're kinda serving to them.
Nick:Yeah. Do you do you ever notice that you are part of an AB test of a, you know, just a common service that many people use?
Tyler:Yeah. I think Atlassian does that a lot. And they just they can they it's annoying, but they like, who's gonna complain? Yeah. They know I think they get away with it because they know they're dealing with a more more technical user.
Tyler:Mhmm. So they run they're constantly running experiments, changing buttons, moving things around. And then it's annoying, but, like, we're not we're not gonna change. It's the it's like industry standard tool.
Nick:Of course. Yeah. Mean, but but more consumer focused to tools and services do this as well. But the reason I'm I'm asking is because that little annoyance is you're like, well, that's annoying, but it's fine too. Like, I don't care.
Nick:Yeah. But imagine that happening daily just to your point of of being able to ship something daily. You know? It's I think it's it's important to know what you want to change. So for example, you know, I'm shipping a frequently asked questions component.
Nick:Yes. It's nice connected to a CMS. That's something that I feel comfortable with to ship because it's so standard. You know, like, we all know what an FAQ is. You know, it it has a title, and it has a list of questions.
Nick:And when you click one of the blocks, it opens and you see the whole question. The plus changes into a to a minus or a cross or you know, it's so basic, so common and best practice. Like, I can vibe code it together. Mhmm. Anyway
Tyler:You said it.
Nick:I said it. Yeah. But, you know, so we all know what we want. We all know it's it's like, I'm 99% sure that it's going to be beneficial. You know?
Nick:It takes away uncertainty for potential users who aren't sure yet that we're answering their questions. But then I'm also working on something else, and then we have the discussion, like, should it be this thing? Should it have collapsibles? Yes or no? And then if so, should we use screenshots or pack all those screenshots into an animated GIF?
Nick:You know, I mean and then all those questions on top of we don't even know if this thing we're trying out is going to work. Yes or no. Like, there's so much uncertainty there. Like, that shouldn't be just shit. You know, it might do more damage than good.
Nick:So that requires, you know, people to sit down, think about it, perhaps go into Figma, draw it out, have a few, you know, prototypes. You know, like, you always sell, like like, this is how you can do that. Like, here are five examples and pick two and present, like, all the stuff you've you've talked about before. You know, that that requires a lot of thinking and slowing down before shipping. So there's a big difference.
Nick:I know what to do. I don't know what to do.
Tyler:Yeah. That's true. Like, you said something there that kind of triggered, like, a thought. Like, I'm curious your take. Because we can like, the risk is that we're shipping too fast, does that potentially unlock more AB testing across the board?
Tyler:Because you can create so many things so quickly. Does that give us more opportunity to, like, come up with, like, maybe two or three different variations and then ship them in parallel so that you can nail so you can figure out which which one of the which is the best kinda thing versus Yeah. Shipping one thing and hoping and, like, looking at the analytics, see if it kind of does what we think it does. But, like, instead, because we can ship so quickly, just create three versions and then AB test or ABC test.
Nick:Do do you do you think if you have enough users on a monthly basis that you can run multiple AB tests in, you know, at, you know, at the same time, but that that you have enough users that you can divide them into five buckets.
Tyler:Yeah. It really yeah. I think it really depends on, like, the volume of users you have per month. Like, if you have, like, a thousand users, you're not gonna get the volume that you need. But, like, if you because generally, like, rule of thumb, at least for me, me if I'm wrong, like, you generally wanna test.
Tyler:If you're AB testing, you're doing it with, like, a subset of your users. So you're doing it with, like, maybe 20%. Yeah. And then you're running the experiment for, like, two weeks or a month. And then you then you have the the volume of data or or data points to make a decision.
Tyler:Yeah. So may this may be more relevant for, like, larger enterprise who have, like, large user bases where you can. It's so quick to ship something that you have the opportunity to to AB test because you have that volume. Yeah.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. That I mean, that's true. So so, yeah, I I think if you look at anything you're trying, if it's, you know, it's a presentation or a prototype on AB test, it has, I think, three phases. You have the the the prepare phase.
Nick:You know? Mhmm. Build the actual AB test. Build your presentation. Write your interview scripts, whatever.
Nick:Then phase two is doing the thing or letting the AB test run. And then phase three is analyzing the outcome. You know, thinking about next steps and what to do. The first and the final step is something that can be done way quicker now that everyone can ship. You know, you can use AI to analyze outcomes.
Nick:You can use AI to prototype multiple, like you just mentioned, like, b, c variations. So there's there's time to be gained there for sure. Yep. But then that middle part, if you want to run an AB test for fourteen days or twenty eight days, it just has to be there. You know, you just have to wait on it on it to finish.
Nick:Yeah. So this yeah. So I I I think it would help in that that regard, you know, shipping something, you know, in phase one, phase three.
Tyler:This kinda slows you down a bit. Like, you can ship, like, the the the probably industry standard for people who are not kind of at the mature stage is, like, ship and then on to the next thing. But, like, if it's if you can quickly do
Nick:a bunch of things,
Tyler:just Yeah. I mean, that's a lot of, like in reality, that's, like, a lot of spinning place. Like, if you're constantly shipping and spare renting, it's like Yeah. It can be overwhelming. But
Nick:That yeah. You know, that that that that response that wolf response on my end was more like a a trauma moment from my past where I worked on my you know, again, in a in a large company where they abused MVP. Well, this is just an MVP just to cut corners. Yeah. You know?
Nick:I I'm very sure that it's it's something you recognize, and it's fairly fairly standard, I would say, that they just make version one really quickly, really cheap. You know? It's an MVP, and then it's shelved, and we do not touch it again. Like, that will will test and improve later. It's just a way to to, you know, keep people in their seats.
Nick:Let me say one closing thing here Yep. As an experiment. I will get back to it later in a couple of episodes. I am building a feature for one of my projects in code, AI assisted, and there's no Figma. I am too stubborn to admit it.
Nick:I'm not going to admit it. But no. So no Figma involved. Just code me looking at the screen and improving it as as we go. I used Claude Codes plan mode, you know, to really do research, really figure things out, share context like you suggested last week or the week before.
Nick:And it's currently and it is was a big moment for me because up until now, I was much more in control of the code because of the coding background. But this was out of my league, but it's coded based on documentation and planning mode. So it's really detailed. Yep. I do not have the skill to review it myself.
Nick:Like, I don't it does make sense to me looking at it at the code. Mhmm. It works in a browser, but if you know, maybe I've created a large security risk. I don't know. So that's currently in review in the PR, and there's a bit of feedback already more UI wise, like, should we do this?
Nick:How about a screenshot? Like, that kind of stuff. But I will keep you posted on how it goes because I am shipping the whole thing.
Tyler:Oh.
Nick:So that's very exciting, and that's new territory for me to be response responsible and in control and, you know, the the the main guy for a whole feature in code, production code even.
Tyler:Yeah. What what I'd say is probably, like, what you're feeling is it's new, but after a couple goes at it, it'll feel more comfortable. It's just that, like, impostor syndrome thing, which is basically just your experience is something new until you have that pattern recognition, then it feels
Nick:Yeah.
Tyler:After you'll feel like a seasoned engineer or, like, you're not afraid of that PR to come back.
Nick:No. Of course. Yeah. So I will keep you posted on on on that. It's it's very exciting.
Nick:So I am shipping it, like I said, but there are now lots of review processes and and guardrails in place. So it feels to me like that's the way it should go, and I'll report back when I have more. It will be a either a good feature or a good story.
Tyler:I wanna hear all the stats.
Nick:Nice. Alright. Well and and, you know, for anyone who's listening, you have to come back and listen to the episode where we will reveal all of that. I do not know when that is. So, yeah, come back and
Tyler:Love the teaser.
Nick:Alright.
Tyler:That was a great episode. So if you like this content and wanna hear more, please like and subscribe.
Nick:Yeah. And if you want to see more, please go to designtablepodcast.com, Spotify, Apple Music, all the big players, and more.