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Conversations with designers, founders, and builders behind some of the best work
00:00:20:03 - 00:00:26:07
Unknown
UN did not come up through design school. She came up through product management at Canva before she realized
00:00:26:07 - 00:00:44:00
Unknown
she'd rather be the one kind of shaping the product. Now she's head of design at superpower. One of the most interesting health startups that I've been watching. They're building an AI layer on top of your bloodwork, your genomics, your labs, giving you insight into your own body without waiting weeks for an appointment.
00:00:44:01 - 00:01:08:13
Unknown
She owns both product design and brand at a company where the stakes of getting that wrong aren't just a bad landing page, it's a customer misunderstanding their health data. We talked about how her team adopted cloud code in January. What happened when output velocity outpaced taste, and how she thinks the most underrated quality in a designer right now is just giving a shit.
00:01:08:15 - 00:01:18:13
Unknown
This is state of play. Let's get into it.
00:01:18:15 - 00:01:42:21
Unknown
I'm a customer of super power. I really like using AI to help me understand my labs. It's one of my favorite ways to manage my health. And we have, you know, with our family, we have people in our family who are really benefiting from that too. One of the big things that I've got to ask you is, how has your perception on your work with regards to trust of, of the user?
00:01:42:23 - 00:02:01:09
Unknown
How has that changed at all coming to this industry from Canva? If you're working in health or at any, company or industry that affects the lives of people so intimately. Like trust is kind of at the core. That's like from the perspective of, like the product experience and the brand experience. And so, we we take that really seriously.
00:02:01:11 - 00:02:21:14
Unknown
And it goes from like, everything from all the checks and balances, like any product virtually is being, like clinically compliant as well as like the the trust and the layer of like copywriting, like, how does this, information get conveyed and perceived by someone because if someone gets a bad result in their health was also and that's like it's natural to happen just like the world is like, quite unhealthy as it is.
00:02:21:14 - 00:02:41:03
Unknown
It's, it's it's very hard to, to live a healthy lifestyle in today's society. People are naturally going to see results they don't like to see. The way that we communicate that is so imperative. As opposed to like many of your traditional SAS companies where it's like the, the risk consequence of it is, is quite low. If you think of the ill communicated or like, not as perceived as well.
00:02:41:03 - 00:03:06:12
Unknown
So yeah, we take that super seriously. That's not the only thing that's kind of changed for you though, right? I mean, in fact, I don't think I know a lot of people who went into the design function from product management the way you did. I mean, now that we see like engineering, design and product all starting to kind of come together when did you make that decision and what kind of informed that that was where you wanted to go?
00:03:06:12 - 00:03:21:01
Unknown
I think what I was like, sort of contemplating what I wanted to like, do with my career, just like more broadly, I think what, naturally, this comes to me and like, where I feel like I'm in my zone is like, do I feel like what I'm doing is impactful to people? And do I feel like I'm in a constant state of play?
00:03:21:02 - 00:03:37:11
Unknown
I never went to school. I didn't go to college. I found in sport strange working, in product management and Canva, was a fantastic opportunity to sort of like dive into that. I'd always like, sort of entertained design like, I loved design when I was like in high school, I would like learn Photoshop. I was kind of like an internet to that sort of thing.
00:03:37:11 - 00:03:54:03
Unknown
But, you know, it didn't feel like a serious career path. Okay. Just like East Asian. I like that sort of thing. Right. But I think what was interesting is when I was working in product management is I learned so much about like, okay, I'm thinking about, the user experience, the business use case, like, how do you map that with engineering?
00:03:54:04 - 00:04:11:06
Unknown
So I think I cut my teeth a lot in terms of like how a great product is built out. Canva. But I wouldn't lie. I would get pretty bored, like with a day in, day out sort of thing. I'm like, you know, writing theory dogs like analyzing data, like being able to like, decide what we would do and like working with designers.
00:04:11:06 - 00:04:30:11
Unknown
It was fun. You know, we were creating things, but I kind of wanted to steer the ship more in terms of like, what that look like. And so, yeah, that's why I decided to to actually consider design, because I loved just making things. So yeah, I think it's fair to say, you know, especially like in design, there's a lot of crossover.
00:04:30:11 - 00:05:03:08
Unknown
Even before all this I got involved in was flattening the stack that design and product management were kind of overlapping. Got to understand needs business needs, user needs. Is there are there any activities specifically that you brought over from that, that product background that you you find yourself leaning on a lot today? I do think that as you work as a product manager or more in like the business function or anything like that, and you're like way more cross-functional, like I do really think you just think more practically about how things are built, not necessarily processes.
00:05:03:09 - 00:05:29:00
Unknown
I don't think processes are necessary by any means required development. But I think more in the sense of you just like know how to make tradeoffs and you just realize, like, I think a lot of design, particularly if you go on design, Twitter or anything like that, like people are obsessed with, you know, esthetics. So like, oh, this is like a really neat sort of, interaction and like, I think when you like go into those like minute detail so much, you kind of like lose the forest for the trees.
00:05:29:00 - 00:05:57:20
Unknown
And I think that, you know, working as a PM, it's kind of like that's what you have to care about. You have to care about, like, how is this actually all functioning like, from, from ideation to, is this the right thing to work on to actually shipping it? So I definitely learned a lot of that. And, you know, those other like, Canva specific norms that I also picked up, what's really fascinating, and it could be totally different now, given like, you know, how AI is used in the design process, but like, if you wanted to ship any product, you kind of needed a high fidelity mockup, like you needed like it
00:05:57:20 - 00:06:19:00
Unknown
to be animated. You'd be able to click into everything. And then that needed to be reviewed by Melanie. Otherwise, like your product was not going to get any buy in. So like you needed some like designer to to vouch for you and you needed to be very thoughtful. So I always found that really interesting. I haven't necessarily brought in like the extent of I could can was a mature company by that time.
00:06:19:00 - 00:06:41:20
Unknown
And like they had the resources to obviously like prototype everything. But I think that level of intentionality, and being able to visualize what it is that you're doing is like so important. And, and I bring that to it as well. So explain to me at superpower, the, the, the current shape of the design team. And how do you currently run that organization, what's working for you guys right now?
00:06:41:21 - 00:07:14:21
Unknown
So I think the design team right now is actually quite, distributed. I actually want to like, make some changes and like kind of reconfigure things because I'm still learning, like, what is what is the best way of working with people and all that sort of stuff. But I think what sort of works for us is there's a lot of autonomy, just like across the board with like, if you're a designer, if you're in, like, everyone sort of like, has, like their own ability to, to drive things forward and, like, we really encourage that, we have this cultural value.
00:07:14:23 - 00:07:30:16
Unknown
I think it's like, maybe taken from GitLab or personal or something where it's like we have short stories and ideas or you can't really get up on anyone's toes because they're so short. It's like you see a problem, like, go fix it. And I kind of love that because it's like very meritocratic in a way. And when you have like design ability, you can sort of craft how things look.
00:07:30:18 - 00:07:47:23
Unknown
And that's like something you can exercise, which I love. So like sometimes designers will just like present like, this is how I like concept and something and like the power of that is like, you get buy in from that, which is really cool. I think some other ways that I like to run the design team is like back to that sort of like level of autonomy.
00:07:48:01 - 00:08:06:17
Unknown
At least at the brand level. It's like I really see, like brand guidelines are like, the floor, not the ceiling. It's like everywhere. A designer can kind of bring their own unique flair to to what supercar like looks and feels like as a product. Which I really love. And yeah, I'm just like, I think it's so important to, like, cultivate, like, creative energy.
00:08:06:21 - 00:08:28:20
Unknown
People feeling like they can do explorations, that sort of thing. And I want to, like, build more of that into the design team. I feel like by no means it's perfect right now, but like, that's kind of like where I feel like designers feel like they're in the zone of genius when I can just like, if I danaraj and, have a lot of interesting ideas, I'm like, like, come back and, like, that is so, so important to, like, energized by what you're doing.
00:08:28:20 - 00:08:51:07
Unknown
So. Yeah. Now, the thing about distributed teams and I've been in these situations as well, you know, it's easy for a lot of the shared language that's getting established on the brand level or in the product level and, and decisions that get made on the distributed team. You know, you've got to kind of come back to the hub and kind of re reshare what, what new evolutions have occurred.
00:08:51:09 - 00:09:09:15
Unknown
And I've got to imagine that that's even more so because you lead both product design and the marketing design side of this. How does that messaging distribute through those distributed teams what their activities or check ins that happen to keep everybody on the same page? So, I'm quite fortunate the design team is like not so large right now.
00:09:09:15 - 00:09:32:10
Unknown
It's about five people. We are hiring. I'm like wanting to hire like another four people. So basically double the design team in the next like, 1 to 3 months. Which will be crazy. But, yeah, I, I think it is a challenge for sure. We do sort of like regular brand check ins, because I think that's like where the sort of divergence can get, like the more like messy us in a way.
00:09:32:11 - 00:09:51:16
Unknown
So like, yeah, we we have this lots of, like, design jams, crits like twice a week where people come in, they post on what they've been working on. We sort of like realign on just like the brand standards, that sort of thing. I think if you hire really well, like you have, a whole like a hold, a really high talent bar, like those gaps kind of get filled in itself.
00:09:51:16 - 00:10:14:21
Unknown
Like I think that like, talented people can, can make really great, exceptional things if you let them. And like, to be honest, it's like you kind of need to roll things back when, like you're working with more, junior talent or talent that's like it's like some of the work is not necessarily another genius. So it's like always finding like whereas someone said of genius and how do you like plug that into to those things as well on the side of like product design, it hasn't been as much of an issue for us.
00:10:14:21 - 00:10:34:12
Unknown
We kind of have one product designer who's like an absolute beast who kind of like leads the charge on a lot of things. And I'm like, I trust you. Like you've been incredible to work with, over the past, like year. So, we haven't crossed that problem yet. We've been trying to, scout design talent for a handful of teams.
00:10:34:12 - 00:10:58:20
Unknown
And, you know, there's a lot that goes into that. And hiring is always a contentious thing. How to go about it, which ways are ethical? How do you how can you? You know, I've been in this situation. You're probably in where we get hundreds of candidates that we have to sift through and find out who you know, what, what is the bare amount of information I, as somebody who's looking at a portfolio, can say, okay, yes, let's move this to the next stage.
00:10:58:22 - 00:11:01:19
Unknown
How or how are you looking at that right now? And is it
00:11:02:00 - 00:11:07:06
Unknown
is there a shape of designer you're looking for? Are you are you subscribed to the AI native type of thing,
00:11:07:06 - 00:11:10:21
Unknown
or are you more traditionally, you know, how do you think about it?
00:11:11:01 - 00:11:17:10
Unknown
I think when I think about hiring designers like I think about the qualities I want an individual designer, but then I also think about like team composition, right?
00:11:17:10 - 00:11:27:11
Unknown
Like it all sort of. We can't get the same designer. Others are going to get the same output across the board. So I think what matters at the end of the day is like, does this not my team configuration?
00:11:27:16 - 00:11:30:03
Unknown
And I think right now it's like
00:11:30:05 - 00:11:35:02
Unknown
we have some designers that I native in that, you know, they can go to Figma plug in if I wanted to.
00:11:35:03 - 00:11:54:14
Unknown
For example, one of our designers and design engineers, they sort of like built this internal tooling where you can annotate, different blocks, divs, pieces of code like copy, all that sort of stuff, directly. Annotating the product experience, you can write a comment in terms of like, I want this change, I want to change. Just copy and then you like submit it.
00:11:54:16 - 00:12:09:07
Unknown
You see the change in real time, and then you can also submit up your request, based on that change. It's like those two people, like, they've always wanted to build this design tool and, like, because they were uniquely good at that, they could do that. And that is something that could be disseminated, across the org.
00:12:09:10 - 00:12:11:08
Unknown
But I don't expect all my designers to be like that.
00:12:11:12 - 00:12:20:20
Unknown
I think for us, it's like we want a really seamless product experience. We want to move quickly. That's like super important to us. But at the same time, it's like there are this,
00:12:20:22 - 00:12:28:05
Unknown
there's this whole other world of, like, designers where it's like we really care about, like the feeling of the design, the content design, the, the brand.
00:12:28:05 - 00:12:41:22
Unknown
How does the imagery and art direction look? And it's like, you can't really expect a designer, necessarily to be an expert in all these things. Like, it's such a wide discipline, but I really think about how to, get people in those like, who are like the best of the best in those like, different areas
00:12:42:03 - 00:12:45:04
Unknown
and plug them into, you know, like the brand design, that we're doing.
00:12:45:04 - 00:13:02:08
Unknown
It's empowering product design, that sort of thing. If I was to think about it and like more of individual level, I do think like some like AI literacy and like being able to move quickly is super important. As well as just like, I think someone who is just like working on things because I love the craft of design.
00:13:02:10 - 00:13:06:01
Unknown
I really appreciate that you're highlighting composition because
00:13:06:01 - 00:13:19:15
Unknown
I think some people don't realize, like, hey, you might be a really incredible designer, but you know, the thing that you're really T-shaped on, we kind of have two of those folks already, and we might need someone who's a little bit stronger over here. And sometimes there's nothing to do with you.
00:13:19:15 - 00:13:22:09
Unknown
Just happened to be, you know, the numbers game that came up.
00:13:22:11 - 00:13:35:18
Unknown
But the thing I also like is, is like the love of the game. And I've tried to explain the people that we're seeing a lot of that there are different ways to signal that you have a love for the game, and it doesn't mean that you're working all weekend necessarily.
00:13:35:18 - 00:13:55:11
Unknown
But but there's a probably a body of work that indicate that or ways you talk on social media. There's there's not a lot of ways for people to skim that off the surface. How are you recognizing, at least on on a surface scan, if somebody kind of has that, AI literacy or that love of the game? Honestly, they're probably two separate things.
00:13:55:11 - 00:14:14:21
Unknown
I think baseline I care more about love of the game. I think, and literacy typically follows suit. If you love the game, you want to be on top of things. You want to be like up to date. You want to be following design. That is, you want to be like, trying, you want to be, like, basically obsessed with this world of making things and figure out the best way to do those things.
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:37:21
Unknown
So I think that takes precedence. You sort of just see that in like, you know, how much should I uphold, like basic design principles, like, is that portfolio a portfolio that looks what would have been great and up to scratch, at least in the brand world, right. Ten years ago or like today. Yeah. And there's kind of like you can kind of see how brand and design has evolved, over the past decade.
00:14:38:03 - 00:14:54:16
Unknown
And, I think once you have that, you meant to like, you know, stylistically, what makes sense, what feels right, what is like at the edge of what you can make? Because I, I tend to think that, like, we're, we're more impressed today by, like, what appears more difficult to create rather than what is, like, generic.
00:14:54:16 - 00:15:16:02
Unknown
And, you see that from like, the days of when stock images, was coming out. People love like really great photography. And then Unsplash came out and then like the quality of like everyone was using stock images and then people cared about illustration. Because that was the hard thing to make. And then people started making illustration stock and like, like, we tend to have an AI today about like what is more difficult to create.
00:15:16:06 - 00:15:31:06
Unknown
And I think that if you sort of see that quality in people's portfolio, that's, like a good signal. What is the current common stack shared amongst the designers on your team right now in terms of tooling? People? See, you figure, I'm not like a person. Well, yeah, I know people are like, oh, we have paper, all these sorts of things.
00:15:31:06 - 00:15:50:08
Unknown
If you want to do that, we can do that. Like there is a little bit of a not cost of, the fact that all of our assets right now in Figma, I am open to, to using my brand. I'm like, been playing around with, creating some plugins with paper, with Coco, all the designers just everyone in the team uses code.
00:15:50:10 - 00:16:20:12
Unknown
And I think that's just like at the level of, like, all the designers are also expected to to know how to write good copy. And like, we have skills in, in, Claude for, for copywriting. We have skills, and code for reviewing a design to to making sure that, like, does this follow, like, is this up to scratch with basic like, product psychology where we often get that, to review designs or like a sort of first check as well, which I think is like, a bit more interesting or like, you know, wasn't the typical model before.
00:16:20:14 - 00:16:46:08
Unknown
Everyone is also accustomed with using like, Midjourney. Also Rev I love the red team. So shout out that's, that's well that's fantastic to hear. I'm curious, how long has Claude Code been? A staple on the design team. And were you like, what was the process to getting that integrated? Was everybody already somewhat technically technically forward, or was that it was there like a integration period.
00:16:46:10 - 00:17:19:14
Unknown
Yeah. So there was an integration period that sort of power. So basically we have like an agency lead, in the company, this, this whole transition happened in around January, where we were just noticing this like interesting, skew in the level of like not necessarily output, but the rate of, like, you know, we had an agent saying he could automate tasks that he was like, being briefed at, but to be honest, the best person to automate a task or workflow in any function is the person that's like the domain expert in the thing, right?
00:17:19:16 - 00:17:43:12
Unknown
Our agent slate, he's like, 21 year old, he sort of dropped out of college. He's been like automating, like, tools and businesses. Since he was like 18, basically, like, made his first money on the internet, automating, creating Shopify stores, and, like, stock shipping products. Super cool. And, you know, you would just tell him, hey, can I, like, make this dashboard or what?
00:17:43:12 - 00:18:00:08
Unknown
I think he's like, yeah, that's like a couple of problems, right? And it's like, how do you bring that knowledge to to the rest of the team? And so we had that exercise, and like January as a team, like we need to get everyone, onto cloud code and be able to like very dashboards, automate things like just make processes way, way better.
00:18:00:10 - 00:18:20:09
Unknown
And I was just sort of like a all hands on deck. Like everyone was like, okay, everyone's installing cool code. Everyone's getting into the GitHub repo, everyone is, and it was like messy to start, to be honest, because it's like it is like lots of room to create slop. But, I think in that it's like made everyone just think about, okay, how can we automate this?
00:18:20:09 - 00:18:38:23
Unknown
Yeah. Every designer has been like onboard with that since we started. And like I think from like January, it's been a process of like building skills for like, you know, for example, content marketing or like create their own content skills that we're fine with the designers, I'll tell them, like, so the house will usually have like a folder which just has a lot of agents.
00:18:39:01 - 00:18:55:23
Unknown
This is particularly true on the the growth team. So take me to the January integration period. I'm hearing from a lot of teams who are like, you know, we're trying to figure out how to make room and nobody has a lot of people are kind of nervous to share it because they're like, I don't know if this was a good idea because it was kind of messy and it looks like this.
00:18:55:23 - 00:19:18:18
Unknown
But it got us to, you know, the step two, step three was there was it like a luncheon learn was it a workshop period during a week? How did you guys start to introduce it? We sort of just rewarded like, what are the automations that we're creating? Like, like I think just showing people what you're capable of doing as someone with zero expertise or domain knowledge.
00:19:18:18 - 00:19:34:03
Unknown
And this is so powerful. It's like it's like literally case studies. Right. And so we just had those internal case studies like for example, and like this was what I wasn't like. I was like kind of, I don't know, I could just do the tasks myself instead of, again, like spending the time automating. I don't know if it's like, is this gonna work?
00:19:34:03 - 00:19:54:00
Unknown
Right? So then I had one of the, team members I hired who, leads, video production as a rapper. He was like, yeah, I just, I was here on, like, Friday. I like, didn't have any code experience. I've never cried before in my life. I just downloaded, I just, like, set up a GitHub repo.
00:19:54:00 - 00:20:10:14
Unknown
I just try these cloud code and then look at this like, Premiere Pro plugin that I made. Or I have a allow media access that I can deploy to all our video editors. So everyone has a shared asset library because it's so like Disney include like dragging and dropping and like download from Google Drive and all that sort of stuff and like, look at it.
00:20:10:14 - 00:20:30:12
Unknown
I made it in the style of Spotify as well, and I was like, I was looking at it, I was playing, and then I was like, oh, is this like the who's really impressive and who's never, touch code before and is like, and like, you know, that was one of the first case studies where it's just like, we just, like, vocalize that to the team like this, like one of our video leads, like, no coding experience whatsoever.
00:20:30:12 - 00:20:46:11
Unknown
I was able to build this. Right. And so it's like, not really, a matter of like not knowing or skill. It's just like, how much time you willing to invest into it, right. Because you can literally ask for any questions about, like, I'm stock, can you please help me? And it's like there will be a solution.
00:20:46:11 - 00:21:12:05
Unknown
That story of creating this essentially an interface so that other people on the team could access knowledge that was kind of harder to get to inside of a certain department or team. I we're experiencing that on our team right now. We're only five people, but I do a majority of the research and I've got a big repository, and I'm building an interface so that our editors who don't typically do research can easily find the vetted, correct assets for things.
00:21:12:05 - 00:21:22:09
Unknown
When we do some of our videos, one of the other things that I'm hearing is something teams are trying to solve for is now that so many people are able to produce prototypes and very, you know,
00:21:22:11 - 00:21:25:03
Unknown
AI's great at solving the blank canvas problem.
00:21:25:05 - 00:21:30:16
Unknown
And then sometimes some of those ideas carry enough weight to continue through the conversation.
00:21:30:16 - 00:21:45:02
Unknown
And others are just kind of throwaway work that got us somewhere. Are you experiencing any of this where there's a lot of artifacts that are kind of floating in the abyss somewhere, and are you thinking about capturing those better? How are you doing that right now?
00:21:45:05 - 00:21:47:14
Unknown
Yeah, it's actually hilarious. Because
00:21:47:15 - 00:21:52:01
Unknown
the past couple weeks, it's like we've gone to this, like, mega acceleration with our put.
00:21:52:04 - 00:21:56:07
Unknown
It is so easy to make a straw man for landing pages, that sort of thing.
00:21:56:09 - 00:21:59:03
Unknown
And I think it's awesome. Like,
00:21:59:05 - 00:22:06:08
Unknown
there's no reason why we can't have, like, ideas like, ASAP. But I don't think that necessarily means we had output is out. Right.
00:22:06:10 - 00:22:07:04
Unknown
And it's like
00:22:07:09 - 00:22:13:20
Unknown
then this interesting process of the past, like couple of weeks where I've actually had to then like, hey, like, what's really it in a moment?
00:22:13:21 - 00:22:30:10
Unknown
We can't be shipping everything that been AI generated. Like, if we, have the time that we like would have typically taken to, like, build the thing. Why do we spend, like, the rest of that time that would have spent previously, like polishing it and making sure it's super high quality.
00:22:30:12 - 00:22:32:21
Unknown
And so we actually it's it's it's kind of ironic.
00:22:32:21 - 00:22:50:19
Unknown
Stay where it's like now we have like some more views than we had before. Because people have that agency, they can just generate any idea, I think that it is important that you like, I'm making sure that, if not like you're raising the bar of the standards of the team, which, like, we should obviously do as well.
00:22:50:21 - 00:23:10:19
Unknown
That you are just sending and shipping slop out in the world. Because I do think that's a real risk. I do also think that designers, what can be a real superpower? They can be more attuned to to what is slop and what isn't slop. Or at least people, in those, like, sort of like making functions.
00:23:10:19 - 00:23:25:00
Unknown
And in the same way that like an engineer would like be able to tell what is like code slop and not code slop. I think it's like pretty underrated. In terms of, like how designers can, like the sun, like, you know, how does this, like, marketing landing page look and feel?
00:23:25:00 - 00:23:31:00
Unknown
It's really exciting, empowering and anxiety inducing.
00:23:31:00 - 00:23:39:23
Unknown
How quickly I can go from idea to deploying a real initiative inside of my business. And I've heard this from other teams too.
00:23:40:01 - 00:23:57:07
Unknown
Where exactly that? I mean, since January, we started, launched and killed two massive initiatives that were in resource that would have continued to be resource intensive had we decided to support them. And my realization was, we can, but should we?
00:23:57:07 - 00:24:18:23
Unknown
And where I essentially landed was, well, you know what? Before all this AI hubbub, we were doing something really well. Why don't we instead take our ability with that velocity and attach it to the thing we were already doing really well, and do it even better? I think anybody who claims to like, we've got it figured out, it's like we are still in the installation process here.
00:24:18:23 - 00:24:40:22
Unknown
Like, I don't think anybody has this figured out. We don't even know really where to look for the answers, you know. And so that that leads me to my next question, which is when you're when you're hiring someone on the team for a product like super power that is that both have that build trust in the lane of of, you know, taking ownership of your health and build trust in the lane of, of this product that is AI powered.
00:24:41:00 - 00:25:19:00
Unknown
How important is it? Can you grade yet? Somebody's proficiency creating these UI patterns or these design patterns specific to AI and specific to like health? How much do you consider that? Is that something that can be learned relatively easy? Is it too early to judge for something like that? Yeah. So I think my, my stance on like during chores and all that sort of stuff, it's tricky at the level of like product flows, like, like I think what matters increasingly now because we have like, I we've like sort of compress our ability, like the speed to take site and sort of do these flows and also that sort of thing.
00:25:19:05 - 00:25:53:00
Unknown
Like I think when I look for designers is just like how much more they care about, like the actual like 1% and like, the feeling that they can evoke, like, I think AI is really great at creating average UX for is average, design average, copywriting. And like I think that's fine. But I think when you're trying to build trust, like a lot of trust is like, how much care, am I into really understanding this company has or what they're building and, like, how much rigor that they have at the level of, like, providing the evidence and clinical data and like, the science and educating me about that.
00:25:53:05 - 00:26:18:15
Unknown
And then also, just like the small little towels, it's just like, and you see that in like, very high growth, like design companies. It's like the small little tiles and tiny details and like an interaction, that sort of thing. It's like show are like in isolation, you know, a designer maybe spent an hour tweaking this, but it, like, kind of shows an output, like the amount of care, that the company has or, like, providing the best experience for the customer.
00:26:18:17 - 00:26:45:11
Unknown
And I think that that is what I'm looking for in designers more so these days. It's like, I don't really care about, like, how fast that you're able to do something like in this good at the end, like, does this, like make me emotionally I have buy in in time the like these are flow and like do I like trust that like you're providing a recommendation to me and like I think that just comes with the level of like, can like, communication, like making something like so good, but you don't want to skim it, like making it feel like a great, like, solid experience.
00:26:45:12 - 00:27:04:01
Unknown
The level of, the Kauffman chef of the art direction and the brand, the feeling, that sort of thing. And I think that's very hard to do, like today, you know, with a lot of AI powered tools. Well, you know, and I'm very passionate about this category of health and, and being able to have more control over it.
00:27:04:01 - 00:27:30:17
Unknown
I mean, even the act of having labs that I can order myself and then having an AI partner that can help me make sense of the results that came back like that seems to be a growing table stakes. But that was never that was always gate kept behind, a doctor appointment in order to understand that. And now just being able to ask questions on my time, and have those have those labs on my time is really helpful.
00:27:30:20 - 00:27:49:21
Unknown
But, the other side of it, you know, some people are like, hey, you know, there's a lot of things that are kind of forgoing the process in place. The peptide, rush and all the things that are happening around this. What can I do? What should I be able to do in this space? And what do you think should be somewhat protected as you're building out the product of super power?
00:27:49:21 - 00:28:14:00
Unknown
I do think that there's a lot of thinking that I can perform better than humans today, and it's quite underrated. Like, for example, can I prescribe interval medicine? Probably not. There there is just like a level of like risk. Who is accountable? We don't have a sort of sense of like, you know, underwriting like like the risk of, like if you inaccurately provide a prescription to a medication, something goes wrong.
00:28:14:05 - 00:28:36:15
Unknown
I don't think I can do that. And facilitate that, for sure, but I think, can I, aggregate and understand all of your data points in your health from, like, your medical records to, your, genomic data to your blood data and then be able to provide very precise, rigorous, connections across this data.
00:28:36:15 - 00:29:04:04
Unknown
Like I would say, I would contend that I can do that better than most doctors. And so I think that what we can do with AI, at Super Power is like just sort of enhance, like the level of insight, recommendations. I think, AI is very good at performing, those sorts of tasks. I think at the level of like building a relationship with, people, I don't think AI is, is as good at that or trustworthy in that.
00:29:04:06 - 00:29:22:05
Unknown
I think that we will get there at some point in like a maybe five, ten year horizon. Like I am pretty confident, like, like people are already building relationships with AI. It's just like kind of taboo and it's like more in the social scene. So, so I think that's how I think about, like, what I can or can't do in particular in the context of right now is and why I think it's excellent.
00:29:22:07 - 00:29:39:15
Unknown
It's sort of aggregate insights, when it's given the framework, for medicine, as it has with somehow I think it's like makes excellent recommendations. It can pick out analyzes that many doctors, haven't been able to find with a lot of the blood testing data that we have with our members. So, yeah, I, I think that that's sort of where our utilizing it today.
00:29:39:17 - 00:30:05:05
Unknown
Now, when you think about the trust around this and, you know, suggestions are being given an app and I've got a blood order out and it is currently pending, I love the there's kind of the anatomy of the human 3D figure. And I imagine once the work comes in, it'll probably show me areas worth looking at. What sort of what sort of interface patterns do you wish more AI powered products would adopt in the name of trust building with the user?
00:30:05:06 - 00:30:25:20
Unknown
Is there anything that comes to mind around that? The way of building trust for a designer? I don't know if it's necessarily like there are like these patterns or flows or anything. It is very like, circumstantial to, to whatever the company is. But it's like, does it solve my problem? Is this like, you know, do I, do I see an outcome from doing this?
00:30:25:20 - 00:30:42:02
Unknown
And I think for us, it's like with the blood test, it's like, yeah, you do see an outcome. You see, like the insights that you're getting, the grading and coding different health categories. I think that's very clear. When we try to make like the analysis quite clear, I think that, House, we could go across as, like, if we were to do, prescriptions are actually the medications.
00:30:42:02 - 00:30:56:14
Unknown
It's like if I take this and it's in the case of humans, it's like, oh, I take this and I see an outcome. That's how I build trust. And I think the third thing and like, that's more of like a product strategic sort of conversation. And then I think the third thing, like how we build trust, I think it's actually less so in the product.
00:30:56:14 - 00:31:13:06
Unknown
I think it's more like the brand and what it represents and the media and the content that is creating. Ryan Johnson has been able to build a huge amount of trust. I think his product experience isn't anything like. No. I think his UX was kind of sad, but he has a lot of trust and that's because of the content it's been able to build.
00:31:13:06 - 00:31:30:22
Unknown
It's like there is suddenly a level of rigor into like his enervon analysis of his body, as well as like wanting to make sure people are getting the best products and like doing third party testing, that sort of thing. And I think for us, like how we think about trust is actually so directly in the product. Like if you saw the outcome, I think then you build trust.
00:31:31:03 - 00:31:51:09
Unknown
But I think the next part then is, is what this brand and company espousing building trust. And how much do those two worlds kind of is there tension in owning both of those at the same time, or do you find that it's pretty harmonious? I think there's tension, in my mind and and my time and sanity.
00:31:51:11 - 00:32:08:23
Unknown
But I think it's been quite, harmonious. Right now, I will also say that I probably spend more time right now on the brand than on product, and I think there's a lot more work that could be done on the brand. But, the upside for it is huge. And it's so important to get right.
00:32:08:23 - 00:32:29:20
Unknown
But I think it is quite harmonious and that I can sort of like, steer and see, you know, how we shift brand perception affects product decisions and how, product also affects brand. Like I think it's sort of underrated, like how companies like think about how to and to tie together like they really do. So yeah, I, I do enjoy that.
00:32:29:20 - 00:33:04:02
Unknown
I kind of like get to get to be across that. But yeah, getting to have that kind of full picture view at all times. I could see that being very helpful. You know, the, the thing I hear a lot from people right now and that we're seeing in a lot of data that's starting to surface, is that, senior designers, designers who know how to do things that you and your team know how to do to navigate these kind of uncertain times, are more in the demand of really people who've kind of been, in the traditional way of work are really sought after right now to continue and move this forward, whereas
00:33:04:04 - 00:33:23:02
Unknown
junior designers, that ladder is starting to kind of get a little bit thinner. It's harder for some of those people. Like the new judgment being formed right now doesn't necessarily have a clear path. What do you think needs to happen for the junior designer path to become more, obvious to people this next generation? Yeah, I think it's interesting.
00:33:23:02 - 00:33:47:08
Unknown
I, I think this is, we're seeing this collapse across, every function today. It's like, why hire, ten people when you can hire one, make, high taste like you can manage ten agents? Like, I see that, like, evolving, with, with just, like, how people are doing hiring strategies. I, I do have a real concern.
00:33:47:08 - 00:34:06:12
Unknown
Just like what the future work looks like in the future. I think that you do have all the tools available to you today, that were like quarter to access, like 5 or 10 years ago. So I would just see how you can exercise, some showcase of being a senior designer rather than assuming I am a junior designer.
00:34:06:12 - 00:34:28:11
Unknown
I need to apprentice with a senior designer. I need to like, go through these internships and then, like, those are really fantastic accelerants to to learning and and being better at your craft. I think one of the biggest limiting, factors or things for many people is like, and just like a sense of self-belief, sense of agency that they can just do things, and, yeah.
00:34:28:11 - 00:34:46:05
Unknown
And like the exposure to, to as many problems, and things possible that makes them better at what they can do. I really I love that you say that. I hear that a lot from a lot of teams and people. And I really want to emphasize that for anyone listening that it does feel like the traditional way that and I'm not I'm a non trad person.
00:34:46:05 - 00:35:05:05
Unknown
I never came up through a traditional path, but what seemed traditional for a long time does seem to be disappearing. And when I think about when I was a hiring manager, how did I identify potential in a junior candidate? Right. Because the junior candidates don't always. They typically don't have the reps to show the kind of quality or judgment that they'll eventually grow into.
00:35:05:05 - 00:35:25:19
Unknown
So how do you tell when someone's worth taking the bet on? And I think the two things you just name there, and I'm curious to hear if you would add anything to this, which is, just giving a shit like this person clearly gives a shit. They have a love for the game, right? They're they're spending their early years, their younger years, really investing time into this, early years of their career.
00:35:25:23 - 00:35:44:11
Unknown
And then the other side being, that they, they, they I think that's probably the main number, one that at least allowed me to, to see if somebody else was really a good fit for it. And I would place bets on that. Would you add anything to how you evaluate a junior candidate's potential? What's so interesting is because I'm like going through so many hiring processes today.
00:35:44:11 - 00:36:11:23
Unknown
It's like I see junior talent with the level of like 20 year olds, with the level of quality, precision, understanding of core design fundamentals as well as a spike. You're like, oh, like, you know, I can do design engineering as well. Like, I see a lot of portfolios like that. Better if not. Like. Yeah, comparable is not better to, to people who are like in their 30s and like the sort of like slope or speed of growth is like a lot slower.
00:36:11:23 - 00:36:31:15
Unknown
Right? So I, I do think it's just like, how much you're willing to just like, do more and willing to like build fail, do it again. Etc.. How are you and your team finding ways to decompress from just the new cognitive load that you might be experiencing? Yeah, I think this is a huge problem for me.
00:36:31:16 - 00:36:52:14
Unknown
A couple weeks ago, like, honestly, I was getting so much like feeling so existential about everything and say, oh, we're moving so quickly. We're building agents for everything. I, I do think that there is still like, there's still, like, much room to be desired with a lot that's coming up. And the level of quality and like, actually getting something from like, you know, getting a production quality level.
00:36:52:16 - 00:37:22:22
Unknown
So I think and maybe that, like, gap is going to collapse in like the next 1 or 2 years. Like, I'm not not sure. I, I think one what matters though is like, despite, these tools getting better and better, right now, they're not a replacement. I don't think you should dress in your lower than expect that to be the case all the time, but it's like, I think as long as you're constantly identifying constraints in the business, identifying how things can be better, like I saw, needs an architect for what it's creating.
00:37:22:22 - 00:37:45:02
Unknown
Like, sure, we can like, generate really high quality images, but it sort of like, needs to, like, ladder up to, like, what does this actually mean? And like, a human has to be in that loop deciphering and leading that. Right now. I think it's like more and more important that you're a not just like a cog that is just like hitting commands into like your cursor or your like, claw to generate, like based on what was that?
00:37:45:04 - 00:38:05:21
Unknown
Like the end file sort of like prompting system, but it's just like actually stepping back. Me like as well worshiping like it is valuable. Like, is this actually good? Like and that's like the thing that anyone can do. But I think that like increasingly I just see like, complacency on that, which is like so ironic, to to having these like tools for improvement automation in the first place.
00:38:06:02 - 00:38:24:14
Unknown
I think storytelling so important. And I think, like, those are the things that I'm naturally like right now, I was curious about, like, sure, I could spend time pixel pushing and like making these things, but actually what I care about right now, particularly the brown side, is just like, okay, how we, constantly showing up in the cultural zeitgeist, like, what can we do that's different?
00:38:24:14 - 00:38:35:12
Unknown
And it's like, AI is great, accelerating the amount of idea generation for that as well. But it's like, what's the next, fun hurdle is like picking and like, being that sort of archetype for, like, what exactly we do.
00:38:35:12 - 00:38:59:03
Unknown
How does not I but she is the one holding the line on quality and that sort of tension between what you can ship and what you should ship is where a lot of design leadership is living right now. As she talked about her hiring challenges, seeing juniors showing up with portfolios comparable to the veterans, the slope and the tools are different now, but the thing that separates people is still the same.
00:38:59:03 - 00:39:02:20
Unknown
Do you care enough to do the extra 1% that makes someone trust you?
00:39:02:22 - 00:39:04:22
Unknown
That's the episode. I'll see you next time.