Ian Silber - What it's like designing at OpenAI

I think some people might assume we're like 2 years ahead thinking like that, but we're running very closely [music] with where all of these advancements are going. And so that's just like a very

going. And so that's just like a very different way of working. Things are

changing underneath your your feet all day long. And it's very exciting. It's

day long. And it's very exciting. It's

really fun to be like, I don't know, we're we're going to figure this out as we go. We're going to like we're going

we go. We're going to like we're going to try it. We're going to turn the crank. We're going to keep iterating.

crank. We're going to keep iterating.

We're going to keep going. Welcome to

Dive Club. My name is Reid, and this is where designers never stop learning.

Today's episode is with OpenAI's head of product design, Ian Silver. [music] So,

we're going to go deep into all of the ways that they work, what it's like designing with AI as a material, Ian's thoughts on how the role of designer is

evolving, and a lot more. But before we get into all of that, I had to know how the heck does somebody become the head of product design at OpenAI? I had been at Instagram for like 8 years. [music]

It was amazing. I mean, most everything that the big stuff that we'd worked on, I was able to be involved in in some way. Kevin and Mikey were starting a new

way. Kevin and Mikey were starting a new company. I went and joined them.

company. I went and joined them.

[music] It was Artifact. It was like this sort of news kind of AI thing. Ton of fun, great team, but I had some really good friends that had also left Instagram that were like, "Hey, we're starting

this thing. We're kind of building a

this thing. We're kind of building a game. We don't totally know what we're

game. We don't totally know what we're doing, but we'd love for you to come work with us on it, too." I don't know.

I was at the point in my career where I was like, I should just try it. Some

crazy stuff. I'm not even like a hardcore gamer or I have zero background in gaming. In that way, I was kind of

in gaming. In that way, I was kind of unqualified, but I mean, the team was like that they were assembling was both really close friends, which is always like fortunate if you ever get that opportunity. But also some of the most

opportunity. But also some of the most talented people that I've had a chance to work with in my career. Both from

design, but also like really great engineers. I think we took a lot of

engineers. I think we took a lot of lessons from Instagram, which is like a little bit of a has some game type mechanics or behavior. So, we leaned a lot into like the social side and and that sort of thing. And it was a game,

but it was it was a little bit of everything. The TLDR of what we built

everything. The TLDR of what we built was Minecraft in the browser, essentially. But we were kind of trying

essentially. But we were kind of trying to combine Minecraft meets Roblox, where Roblox is like anybody can create these games, and there's this like full marketplace. People are constantly

marketplace. People are constantly creating games, and then you know, you can come [clears throat] and play them, and and people can actually like make money off making these games, and it's this whole sort of industry. But when

you really go to make the games, it's like pretty comp like it's not the most approachable experience. But we loved

approachable experience. But we loved how approachable Minecraft was, where you're just like one-to-one building things. And so, we wanted to kind of

things. And so, we wanted to kind of combine that together and say, "What if you could let anybody come into this world and build, but also let other people participate in that?" And we

built a lot of different mechanics into the game, but one of the things that I really liked was the idea that anybody could kind of create their own sort of version of it, and and then let other people play that. It was ton of fun.

Working on a game is very different. One

thing that was interesting is like it's kind of hard to know like everything's a good idea in some ways. You feel like, "Oh, that that would probably be fun."

And so, like the amount of scope you can easily get into is quite wide.

Yeah. And we realized why like a these AAA studios take 8 years to to to release a game. Unless you're making, you know, a small mobile game. Like it's

easy to it's easy to kind of see how sprawling it can really be. So then,

what's the story? Like how did you get to OpenAI? So, first of all, this was

to OpenAI? So, first of all, this was when ChatGPT or GPT-4, I think it kind of come out when we're like a year into the the startup. Our

founder went away and came back, and he's like, "Guys, this is this is changing everything. We need to like

changing everything. We need to like think about what this means for everything." It wasn't any specific

everything." It wasn't any specific direction, but he was just like, "This is like the real deal." He studied AI in in college and has a background in all that stuff, and he was like, "Yeah, this

is like a true kind of different point in time now." We were using it to make the game. And this was like so funny,

the game. And this was like so funny, but way back in the day, this was like I guess we had GitHub Copilot, so you could kind of do some auto-complete stuff. And a lot of copying and pasting between ChatGPT and

and and back into VS Code or whatever. I

was doing a lot of front end at the time. It was incredible, but it's funny

time. It was incredible, but it's funny to think how far the work has come since then.

like stone age, and it was only 2 years ago. Stone age. Like I was basically

ago. Stone age. Like I was basically writing all this front end, you know, by hand. And basically what happened was I

hand. And basically what happened was I mean, the true story is that me and the designer were both sort of had been reached out to by the head of product at OpenAI at the time, who we had both

worked with in the past. He had recently joined OpenAI. He was leading ChatGPT,

joined OpenAI. He was leading ChatGPT, and he was like, "Look, this thing's going great. We have a great team, but we need to grow it really fast, and we need people that can help us figure out how to like get to this next scale." He didn't actually

realize that we were working together when he was kind of trying to sort of hire both of us. And so, we talked, and he also found out about the engineering team that we had, and one thing led to another, we all ended up joining as a

team. There were eight of us. It was a

team. There were eight of us. It was a pretty funny like time where we went from like talking about some random specific game mechanic on like a Friday, and then like that next Monday, you know, we're we're like deep in the

OpenAI trenches trying to figure out what we're launching next and and how this whole place works. So.

[music] Real quick message, and then we can jump back into it. If you're like me, then you're prototyping a lot in code lately.

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That's [music] d e s s n. Never in a million years did I think my design workflow would change so drastically in the last few months. And a big part of it is Paper's new [music] snapshot tool.

It's a Chrome extension that lets you copy any component or element from your live website, and then paste it directly into Paper as editable layers. So, all

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That workflow feels a lot like the future of design to me, and you can start doing this today. [music] Just

head to dive.club/paper

to try it out.

Now on to the episode. Before we get all into the present day stuff, I want to talk a little bit about some of those first few months even as you're assimilating. Like what were some of the

assimilating. Like what were some of the defining characteristics that made the OpenAI trenches unique compared to past experience? From day one, it was just so

experience? From day one, it was just so such a different place. I remember

very distinctly my first all-hands. You

know, they they have these all-hands, and they kind of show you, "Here's where we're at we're at today, and here's what we're seeing is possible with, you know, the future. Like where

where where these models are going." And

it really just like sinks in like the the rate of progress and what is coming from that. Moment I was like, "Wow, this

from that. Moment I was like, "Wow, this place is different." I think the biggest difference is working in a research-led environment. OpenAI started as a

environment. OpenAI started as a research lab, and that DNA is very much there. It's very different than

there. It's very different than something like, you know, Instagram, which I was very familiar with, or maybe a more kind of like company that started as a consumer product. You know, OpenAI started as a research lab, and like just

trying to figure out what they're going to build. And in ChatGPT launched as

to build. And in ChatGPT launched as like a low-key research preview. And

when you think about it through that lens, it's just like a lot of different there's just a a different way that the the entire company approaches it. You

know, the company's super mission-driven and really thinking about how we develop really far forward into the future. Can

we go a little deeper into what it looks like to thrive as a designer when you're working closely with a research lab?

Like how does that shift the practice of design on a daily weekly basis? So much

of our work is figuring out what the models are good at, and then trying to wrap that in a product that people can understand and can use. We like our designers to be really close to the

model side, and really thinking deeply about and playing with and and trying to and seeing where it breaks, seeing where it falls down, understanding the kind of

mechanics we can use to tweak the behavior. But a lot of it is really just

behavior. But a lot of it is really just having a ton of curiosity, I think, is what what it really comes down to. Is

you don't have to be like technical to work here, but I think you have to be really curious and really interested to see like how might somebody actually use this? A lot of times you basically just

this? A lot of times you basically just get kind of handed this new thing, and we have to figure out how we can productize that, how we can like get that into a thing that people can now go to their computer or their phone and be like,

"Wow, look at this thing it can do."

Yeah, it's really just a lot of thinking about the model as the product. I think

one thing we we try to spend more time on is honestly like a lot of times it's like, "What can we do this without pixels? Can we do this with tokens? Can

pixels? Can we do this with tokens? Can

we do this with the model itself?" And

always trying to push to to do more of that. What can happen directly in the

that. What can happen directly in the conversation and and in the flow of of how you're using the experience versus trying to think about what new kind of bespoke UI to do we need for this?

There's obviously a balance, and I think there's, you know, sometimes where you really want that, and sometimes where you don't. It's just a new tool or new

you don't. It's just a new tool or new kind of material that I think you have to think about working with. I think for most people listening, they probably don't have as much of a grid for what it looks

like to design outside of the pixels.

So, like how deep can we go on to that?

Like maybe is there an example of some of the design decisions or explorations that you all are doing internally that are happening more at the model level?

I'll give you one one example that we're thinking about right now which we're still just honestly experimenting with. If you think about how you

with. If you think about how you introduce chat GPT to a new user, there's like this very traditional onboarding flow that lots of products do. There's kind of this tour and

do. There's kind of this tour and account creation and maybe trying to ask you some questions to learn about you.

That's been effective and people are used to that but you know, you could think about that totally different, right? You could say, well actually we

right? You could say, well actually we have this like super intelligent model that could probably do a much better job trying to understand what this person's goals are, what they're trying to learn or what you know, what questions they

may have, what functionality we might want to tell them about that will help them with whatever task they're trying to carry out. We're really like stripping

carry out. We're really like stripping back a lot of maybe kind of what you might traditionally do and trying to say, well actually what let's think about like how we should give this context to the model that this person is

brand new and they might need some hand-holding or they might need to learn about a specific feature or or honestly understand what this thing even is because it's so different than what

maybe you've traditionally used before to you know, get information or to learn or whatever. And so how can we let the

or whatever. And so how can we let the model do the work versus trying to kind of write a bunch of static kind of explanation of what this thing is. And

so there you start to get into thinking about you know, the system prompt and you know, the model behavior and and that sort of thing which is just like a totally fun new way of working and with that you can quickly prototype like

here's what it would typically output if we did nothing. Well, what if we you know, gave it a different context or what if we tried telling it this or that or whatever and how does that actually change behavior? Does that make it more

change behavior? Does that make it more friendly or easier to use or make help people understand better what you can do with this thing. And so I think that's like a one example where designers

working on this are hopefully spending a lot less time in Figma or whatever like tool you use to draw pixels and more time really thinking about how you interact with this thing and the fact that the model

really is like the core product. Is

there like a set of guiding principles that help you think about when to reach for interface level solutions and when to outsource it to the model because I would imagine there's probably

a lot of potential for all kinds of different bespoke interfaces. I know you did the learning experiences now like how do you maintain like the simplicity

of chat as an interaction paradigm while also you know, reaching for the full potential of what this experience can be? That's a really good question. We

be? That's a really good question. We

don't have principles. We probably

should. I think it's more I guess at this point a little bit intuition.

You're totally right that just text is definitely not the end-all and we're seeing that, right? So we have all sorts of things that you can do with chat now, right? You can you ask it for something

right? You can you ask it for something and it and if you're asking to write something instead of it just yeah, sure and then it gives you a bunch of text, you know, do you want me to change anything and you ask and you get a new

turn. What we did there was we looked at

turn. What we did there was we looked at that and we just thought critically. We

saw that like one of our number one use cases for chat GPT and this was like a a fun really fun design led exercise. It's

fun fun one to talk about. We looked at the data of how people use chat GPT. A

huge percentage of people use chat GPT to write to help them write. And then

within that there's like lots of different use cases for how you do that.

There's a bunch of things that are just kind of funky with it. So for example, I mean there's the classic like you know, you see somebody copy the entire thing and they they paste that

and it's like an email to somebody and at the bottom there's like let me know if you want this shorter or something, you know. [laughter] That's one thing

you know. [laughter] That's one thing but but also just the interaction loop like right? If you want to just like

like right? If you want to just like change one word, it was kind of tedious because you would then have to okay, change the second paragraph to say this or that or whatever. And so we wanted to

kind of lean into more direct manipulation and so with that now when you ask it to write and we're still rolling this out so for some writing cases you'll see it others you won't but we want to get this out to all writing

use cases but now you get this like container where it puts what you were writing into the container and you can still use chat to just say, oh actually make this longer, make it shorter and and it'll that'll work kind of the the

traditional way but you can now like select a certain part of text. You can

delete it. You can ask for a specific change and it's just targeting that one thing. And so it's just a way more

thing. And so it's just a way more ergonomic way of working. And so that's an example of where it's a mix of model behavior and working with the model to say when should it show this, when should it not and then how do you

manipulate stuff directly in this in this writing block? And and then the next thing we think about too is like how do we make sure we're building a system so that anytime we add one of these kind of things that feels a little

bit different than like the pure text, how can we make that a system so that we're kind of building these different building blocks so that eventually the model I think will be able to compose and kind of pull these together in in

different like bespoke ways specific for what that user's task is at hand. What

do you think are some of the traits of the best systems thinkers at OpenAI?

It's easy to kind of think about the one use case that you're working on right now. If you think about how people use

now. If you think about how people use chat GPT, it's very fluid, right? You

might be like working on one thing and then flowing into something else or one moment you're asking a question about like what to pack for a trip coming up and then next you're helping it write an

email to your boss and then you know, next thing you know, you're doing some research. And so people move between

research. And so people move between these contexts in very different ways.

And so I think the the best systems thinkers are thinking not just about their feature but how does this feature like extend the system? One thing we're we're really trying to think a lot about

is kind of what are the underlying sort of primitives that these products need in order to serve the the user's needs and so that if you build this once, it's going to make every other thing that

we're trying to do better. I think you can see some of these examples that are starting to crystallize around for example like skills is like this new primitive that I think these products are starting to embrace. And the more we

can kind of like find these the sort of deepest abstraction that that kind of encapsulates what it is you're trying to do so then we can use that for for other features or other tasks that the model might want to do. And eventually we want

to like have a system that not only human can understand but a model can reason about and know when and how to use this. I kind of want to talk about

use this. I kind of want to talk about what gets shipped and how because you're in many ways sitting on top of this like cauldron of research led innovation and

all these new capabilities are popping up. It's a very generalizable product

up. It's a very generalizable product that is being used by literally everyone in the world.

And so you can go in almost any direction and so you have all of this experimentation that's happening. Talk

to me a little bit about what it looks like to effectively steward an idea as a designer at OpenAI. How do you go from raw experiment to actually getting something like that direct manipulation

or maybe the new learning experiences out the door?

So much of it starts with a prototype or design. It's not just a designer of

design. It's not just a designer of course like anybody has these great ideas, an engineer, a designer, a PM, a researcher. But from a designer's

researcher. But from a designer's perspective as everybody knows like it's become much easier to kind of build a working version of something. The best

versions of these are like a designer will have this idea and now with Codex or whatever tool you want to use, you can build real versions of this that aren't just clickable prototypes but are

actually like live model responses and and are working with the model. You

know, so I think that opens the door and so for example like these math ones, that was a designer who was just thinking about like you know, if you ask for something and it gives you back like this LaTeX like the math you know,

expressions and all that, it seems pretty archaic. Like that is not the way

pretty archaic. Like that is not the way that you should be able to learn. You

should be able to interact with these things. And so that was a designer just

things. And so that was a designer just like kind of observed that, put together a version but then actually just like tried it with a bunch of things where they said, hey, you know, you get the model and you tell the model if [clears throat] you would typically

respond with this, try respond with this now. I think it was just so clearly valuable when we shared that around that you know, the team rallied around it and eventually like

helped harden it, helped expand the use cases and and and ship it. So I think there's a lot of pockets like that.

There's a lot of bottoms up just in general. That that's another thing

general. That that's another thing that's like I think different at OpenAI is just tons of bottoms up stuff. And I

think this is probably maybe the way some of the industry is going because anybody can build an idea now. You can

of course just like fire up Codex or or whatever tool and ship it basically.

That's something that we think a lot about is like we want to empower everybody to kind of have these ideas and then it becomes like how do you edit and make sure that it all fits together as a system and we're shipping the right

things. Looking at when you joined, you

things. Looking at when you joined, you mentioned like you were copying and pasting from chat GPT and now everything just feels like shooting lightning bolts out of your fingertips in many ways. How

has that changed the way that teams collaborate, the way that ideas get presented? How have you seen the

presented? How have you seen the practice of design shift as a result of this new technology? So when I joined, I mean two and a half years ago, some designers were using Origami. Some

designers were I think very technical and were like really working with the with the API. For example, they'd be like in in the playground trying different stuff. I think it wasn't as

different stuff. I think it wasn't as accessible to designers that were more familiar with like traditional design tools. And then you fast forward today,

tools. And then you fast forward today, obviously you now have and this really happened in the last like few months which is crazy to think. First you had like cursor and I think that was cool

but I think even that was like a little bit inaccessible to to some some parts of the team. And now with Codex and just the I think the future where these products are going, you have these tools that can

really go and do real work for you and it's more about getting your idea out and into it and expressing it properly.

There's a whole kind of effort going around to figure out what tooling do we need to make this like super effective.

So for example, how How hook it up to a design system so that it's not just like spitting out random UI but something that feels like it would fit within our system. And so, you know, how do you

system. And so, you know, how do you like make the connection between prototyping, production work, and Figma and and all of this. But I think we're seeing more and more of our designers embracing this. It's been really cool to

embracing this. It's been really cool to see like all of a sudden instead of a Figma prototype or static thing or even like a recording of a video, it's like very interactive. I

can go and and just tap around and I can play with it. And And actually in many cases I can start asking questions or I can like see what the the actual like model behavior would be. And it's also not just about design, which I think is

one one thing that's kind of cool is like for example, we have an internal agent that we use which is like a data scientist. Any designer working on

scientist. Any designer working on something can ask questions. Well, how

do people actually use this? Give me the data on how this is used, how this is used, what are the use cases, whatever your question might be. Now you can be way more informed with a kind of what decisions you're you're you're making.

And when you're working at scale, that's like really valuable. I love that because it's it speaks to this lightening of reliance that we have on a bunch of other people to be able to like explore and and put something out into

the world. Like everything you're

the world. Like everything you're describing is like, man, the amount of times I've been stuck in like, I don't know, Metalab or something trying to remember how to do a SQL query. It's

like I just want this answer, you know?

I mean, it's going to be wild to think once these things continue to develop and everybody has these. Like I think you just everyone will be will be able to do so much more. And And the other thing like that is interesting to think about is just understanding when to turn

to what toolkit. I think we're still kind of evolving as an industry, right?

In some cases you should definitely be coding a live prototype or using a tool to code a to build a live prototype. I think in

other cases a paper sketch is also valuable and right part of the process.

And I I think that the discourse has been interesting. I

think it's easy to swing one way or the other, but I think like sometimes you want a whiteboard, sometimes you want a a paper sketch, sometimes you want a wireframe, sometimes you want Figma, and sometimes you want these live

prototypes. And I think that the best

prototypes. And I think that the best designers I think will understand and intuit when to go to to which one.

Because sometimes you want to go super wide, you want to try a thousand ideas or a hundred ideas. And I don't think we we have great tools yet to that help us do that part, the the kind of wide exploration. I think that's one area I'm

exploration. I think that's one area I'm interested in seeing I think we'll we'll probably evolve quite a bit. Cuz you don't want to like just take one prototype. And you can it's pretty easy to kind of like get obsessed with that and just be like, how

do we like, okay, I want to refine this.

And your idea might be way off. I think

there's like this depth and breadth thing that we need to figure out and and not swing too far one way and just be I think as a designer you just need to be really flexible understanding when to go

where. Especially as a designer who

where. Especially as a designer who doesn't have a rich front end background and all of a sudden you can make this thing and it feels amazing and you're like, this is the greatest thing I've ever made in my life because it's fully

functional, but it might be completely wrong. 100% and like, you know, I

wrong. 100% and like, you know, I started as a hybrid designer engineer. I

mean, honestly like dating myself, I think most designers code like we're writing code the front end code at the time. You know, I was like really into

time. You know, I was like really into the 37signals crew at the time and that kind of stuff where you're just like really close to building this live

experience. I think most a lot of people

experience. I think most a lot of people were like much closer to code and were kind of using it as a material. You were

kind of like a lot of designer engineer hybrids. Um you of course you had

hybrids. Um you of course you had specialists and like iconographers and visual designers and and that sort of thing, but like the traditional kind of like software design I think was like really kind of like playing both roles. And

then as the industry grew, I think people started to specialize and you had this new kind of like product design, which was definitely more on the just pure design and then we're going to have specialist engineers that are going to

go and build that. I think that like that's now changing, it's kind of swinging back where I think both can overlap way more. And so there's just a big question around what skill set and where when do you work where and how do

you work? It's just like shifting quite

you work? It's just like shifting quite a bit. Let's pull on that a little bit

a bit. Let's pull on that a little bit then because as somebody in a leadership position, you're having to think a little bit about like, where is this going? How do we want to work in the

going? How do we want to work in the future? If you do extrapolate, what does

future? If you do extrapolate, what does this kind of look like? So when you think about the skills that become more valuable, you mentioned curiosity. Is

there anything else that's top of mind for you that you're looking for in designers today? Yeah, I you know, in

designers today? Yeah, I you know, in some ways that I think nothing has changed as far as like what a great designer is. Our team I think does a lot

designer is. Our team I think does a lot of this is just thinking really deeply about like, what problem are we trying to solve? Who are we building this for?

to solve? Who are we building this for?

And let's try a bunch of different ideas and like, how do you kind of like converge on on an idea? And then of course craft and taste and you know, understanding of interaction patterns and and all of that. Like none of that

has changed and I think is just as important. I think it's just all of this

important. I think it's just all of this understanding of working with something that is changing very quickly that is going to evolve. It's not like set in stone. It's like it's changing every day

stone. It's like it's changing every day that can kind of shapeshift and do many different things. And then just like

different things. And then just like yeah, you have these new tools and so you can you can express your ideas very differently. Going back to my time at

differently. Going back to my time at Instagram, which was part of Facebook, I think one thing that was but that really drew me to that to that company was their deep investment in in design

tools. At the time when I joined it was

tools. At the time when I joined it was Quartz Composer. They had like all these

Quartz Composer. They had like all these like custom kind of stuff they'd built on top of it that like Mike Matas and and and a few other people had kind of like I think led the charge on. They

built Origami. That was like Brandon Walkin. And that was like so cool to see

Walkin. And that was like so cool to see that there was this like new tool that when a designer went from sketch to then using Origami, like you could totally see their ideas come across much better.

They had to think through not just how it looks but how does it work and how does it feel and how do you move between these states? And I think it at the time

these states? And I think it at the time it was we were shifting from web to mobile and I think that was really important cuz so much of it was about like how you interact with this thing.

And so that tool I think did a really good job for that time that point in time. What I saw is the people that

time. What I saw is the people that embraced it I think were able to up level their their work and their craft and their impact as a designer. I see

that same shift happening now with like these new tools that are emerging. I

think Codex or Cursor or anything can really unlock like a new way of expressing yourself for a a designer.

[clears throat] Yeah, cuz it's not even just about the visuals, it's also about how it feels, but in your case it's also like the content itself is design, which is really interesting. Like I've never

even worked in a place where that is as much of the design as the corner radius that it sits in. Yeah, and it's so interesting because a lot of us have probably worked in places where like

user generated content is kind of what people see. So like Instagram

people see. So like Instagram is kind of a shell, right? You're kind

of like when you're designing, you're sort of designing the shell and then you don't know what content's going to go in there. You don't have control over that.

there. You don't have control over that.

But this is like something in between because we do have some control actually over what goes in, but not really. Like,

you know, you don't know what the exactly the way the user is going to kind of use this or approach or ask. But

you can you can play a little bit with how the model should behave and how it should respond. And so there's like it's

should respond. And so there's like it's somewhere in between this kind of like you have no control and you have some control and you know, and so I don't know. It's just totally different.

know. It's just totally different.

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So you mentioned to me that the first two years were kind of holding on for dear life. You're seeing absurd scale,

dear life. You're seeing absurd scale, like the level of scale that most people don't get to experience. Now that you're kind of on the other end of this, like what are some of the more intentional shifts that you're trying to make as a

design leader? I'm still holding on for

design leader? I'm still holding on for dear life. Yeah, I figured.

dear life. Yeah, I figured.

[laughter] But I'm trying to not just let it all kind of come at us as a design team and try to figure out how we can be more intentional about some of the things

that we want to work on. I mean,

I think there is the classic stuff. Like

for example, we didn't really ever have a design systems team because we were moving so fast and we're establishing that now. I think what's cool about that

that now. I think what's cool about that is we're really trying to think of it though from first principles, how you prototype ideas and how does it work with the model? So we have a whole

system called the dynamic user interface library, which allows us to design things that the model can then interpret. And so that's like a new way

interpret. And so that's like a new way of thinking about this. And so I think there's that whole thing. There's kind

of figuring out like, what are the systems and tools that you need as a designer so that you can just like hit the ground running and and and do great work in this new way of working. And

then of course there's what is our process? Honestly, like it changes

process? Honestly, like it changes day-to-day. Sometimes we're off in Figma

day-to-day. Sometimes we're off in Figma land and sometimes we're off like, you know, prototyping things and we're firing off things over Slack and and giving feedback and moving really quickly. But I think we're trying to

quickly. But I think we're trying to figure out a slightly more intentional while keeping ourselves honest that you got to just be willing to just like roll up your sleeves and and try things really fast and Can we add a little bit

of clarity there? Like let us be a fly on the wall for a week as a designer at Open AI. Like how does it work?

Open AI. Like how does it work?

we have a lot of traditional rituals that of course we're trying we're always figuring out. A lot of designers will

figuring out. A lot of designers will just have an idea and explore it and we we have a channel for example that we call PD whip which is like designers just work in progress and you just throw stuff in there. It's got to be a

prototype or video or something. Like we

try to make it like something that people can like really easily react to.

That's just like a a place we've had for a really long time like an open place to just kind of share stuff and just like get ideas out and and riff. We do do crits and I think that they are generally valuable to like just get a

bunch of people to kind of like riff on ideas and that's really about just kind of like building ideas. We're still

figuring out do we do design reviews and if we do exactly how and then like day-to-day I mean I guess it depends on what you're working on. We do have a traditional kind of structure where you have like a PM that you're working with

and an engineer and honestly a lot of this is like building and iterating. We

I think we we try to embrace that process of like we're going to have to feel this out. We definitely don't spend our time I think like trying to craft the exact perfect solution until we know

that it even works and so I think trying to get to an early version that we can play with in the product I think it's like a really good milestone and then iterating from there and spending a bunch of time talking about well like is

there another way we could do this? Have

we looked at how this fits with this and and connecting all the dots. Of course

now like cuz when we ship stuff we have to be thoughtful about is this something we want to ship to all of our users and will this extend the system nicely and if not are there other ways or other

things that we can do to kind of like build out the system so that it all kind of comes together cohesively which is something we're trying to do more of to be totally honest. You've talked about the importance of systems thinking multiple times now. So it's obviously

like a core tenant of what it looks like to design at Open AI. We talked about what it looks like when it's good and when it's working. Are there pitfalls that you're trying to avoid where maybe

it's like what's the opposite of good systems thinking look like? You know? I

think what we're trying to balance I would say is how do we put out things that are experimental and early and going to change? That's like the research lab nature but then how do you

do that in a way that for the things that truly matter feel cohesive. So I

think it's more about just understanding the balance of like okay this is new we don't totally know versus like this is something that we feel like we really need to harden and we're going to get right. I guess what what is what is not

right. I guess what what is what is not good systems thinking look like? I you

know honestly I think it's just if you're a little bit too blinders on and just trying to say well how do we get this thing out as quickly as possible and not totally understanding that we have a bunch of other things going on

that are actually pretty similar and if we all all came together and that's honestly my job. That's why I think probably why I think about this a lot is like my job is to kind of try to connect all this stuff and say well what if we

did less here actually? What if what if there's a way that like we actually did fewer of these things but we did it this way maybe that pulls it all together. As

I think about the evolution of ChatGPT that's something that we're trying to figure out is just like how do we tighten up a lot of the new things that we're kind of experimenting with and turn it into something that feels like

you understand when to go to which tool or how to expose what you should what you could do with this thing in a way that is clear as we have new kind of features or new advancements like we

understand that that could maybe fit into this system all while recognizing that honestly we don't know because like there could be something tomorrow that comes out that completely changes the way you might want to interact with this thing. So you have to be super flexible.

thing. So you have to be super flexible.

Can we talk about that through the lens of the dynamic interface library then?

What are some of the design challenges or opportunities that you all are wrestling with there? How do you design this system so that it can render everywhere natively? How do you figure

everywhere natively? How do you figure out how to make it interactive? How do

you make sure that it's truly adding value to the experience and not just like doing what was done before but trying to think of like the AI kind of AGI pill version of whatever you might

be trying to kind of interact with or work with. And then I think the big

work with. And then I think the big thing looking forward is how do these things come together and and like how does the model eventually kind of have an understanding of it so that maybe it

can start to help us compose these with without having to have a designer hand craft all of these. We're not quite there yet but I do think that that will be possible very soon. So when you think

about these you're thinking about these like individual components that kind of stack up to a system that a designer can use an engineer can use and the model can use and how does that all kind of

come together? It begs some interesting

come together? It begs some interesting questions about what the future role of a designer even is in that world where you're you're kind of loosening all grip on what the interface can be. I mean I think it's an important question. I do

think that as all these tools let people make more things like you know you're going to need an editor. I think a good example like a good analogy of course is like before the camera if you wanted a

still of somebody you had to sit down and paint that thing. You had to be able to paint a portrait and not everybody could do that. If you wanted to it was you know time consuming and expensive.

Now all of a sudden anybody can take a photo. There are still excellent

photo. There are still excellent photographers and people that like master the craft and people that have taste and then there's you know people that use photography for their personal life and it doesn't matter like the craft doesn't really matter there. It's

about the memories and and moments and all of that. There's a similar way you could think about that with the fact that now anybody can write software for anything. I think that just because

anything. I think that just because anybody can do it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be good or the right thing to build or the right instinct. I

think we will as designers or or any function I think like your job's going to be more and more about kind of helping edit and direct and curate. I

don't think like the the job of a designer is going away anytime soon. I

think that if anything I think we'll be able to do more but I think that the core skills will still be just as important cuz I think people can recognize good software from bad software right? And we all know what

software right? And we all know what that feels like and it's not just about does it work but like how it works and how it feels and is it solving the right problems for me. You've talked about

this tension between designing for like present capabilities or maybe the most recent thing that the models have produced versus you know the super AGI

pill part of it. So like how do you deal with that tension and what are some of the more futuristic things that are rattling around your brain right now?

One thing we think a lot about is the capability gap. The capability gap is

capability gap. The capability gap is saying that the models actually are now at a point where they can do a lot right? If you look at Codex and what it

right? If you look at Codex and what it can do sometimes it's spending a lot of tokens it's taking a long time and then what people use let's say ChatGPT-4 today right? There's actually now a gap

today right? There's actually now a gap between what the models are actually capable of and that actually just happened very recently. I think as designers we have to think a lot about well how do you actually expose that in

a way that people understand what they can do with it and how do you give them the tools so that they can go out and do real meaningful work right in ChatGPT.

And so that's I think that's something we think about a ton. How do we shape the product give you the tools so you can really take advantage of everything that these models are able to do if they really sit and and spend the time to to

work for you. And we just haven't done that yet right? Like you know there's there's limited amount of functionality that you can do inside of ChatGPT unlike if you think about Codex Codex can go and like use your computer and spend a

bunch of time and use the different skills and all of that. And again you always have to remind yourself so much happened just in three months. What's

the next three months going to look like? What's the next like I also try to

like? What's the next like I also try to remind myself of the um you know we're working on this thing is three three years or whatever it is into its existence. When computers first came out

existence. When computers first came out and they were three or four years into their existence or five whatever you know and then where they are now and just each year how do you have that advancement and then more and more things were able to be done. It's funny

side note but there's this really fun podcast 30 for 30 which is like the sports podcast.

Yeah okay cool. So so 30 [clears throat] for 30's like the the show but they also have a podcast. Have you heard the one about Madden? No. Okay there's this

about Madden? No. Okay there's this really great episode about Madden football the game. This is a pillar of my childhood by the way so I'm I'm edge of my seat. I cannot wait to see how you loop this back in. I just remember the

story from that where they they'd made this like game on NES I think or maybe it was even before NES I don't remember.

They wanted Madden to be the spokesperson and Madden was super into it but he looked at it and he was like there's only eight people on the field or whatever five people on the field

like football has how many is it? 11? I

don't know. Mhm. Uh they're like they're they're not enough bits to do that. It's

technically not possible to put 22 players on the field. We can only put 10 total and he was like come back to me when that's possible.

[laughter] Wow. You know and then like a year or

Wow. You know and then like a year or two later like these the chips advanced and then all of a sudden they were able to make it. And that was like the very basic version of Madden where they finally had the 11 players and then he was like cool I'll endorse it like I I

want to be part of this I love it and then it's a really fun podcast cuz you hear him like in the booth recording like his sound bites and stuff like that. But it was a cool story of just

that. But it was a cool story of just like also thinking about how much technology advances like just on this regular basis and I mean we all know this as you're working with these models. They're not perfect like you run

models. They're not perfect like you run into these issues you know like why it falls down in a certain case or you know it's really good at this but it's actually like really bad at some other thing and

and you just have to have faith that a year from now or even less six months or you know and and you extrapolate out where that's going. It's like kind of hard to imagine but I think a lot about like that and and what it must have been

like to design software or build software 20 30 years ago when there was like all these such like limitations you were constantly running into and you're working with these details. I mean we're you know we talk about like context

management and context window and that sort of thing and like I don't know is that going to like feel archaic in in 5 10 years you know? And so Even the concept of prompt engineering I was

thinking about the other day. Like we

put so much emphasis on exactly how to format and structure and you had all those like copy and paste graphics that would be all over Twitter with the different color coding and now I'm like, I don't even think about that anymore.

Yeah, it's all changing so quickly. So

it's our job to kind of try to think about going back to like, well you do have to be deal with the realities of what it is now because if you go too far ahead, you can't put 11 people on the field. So like you can't design the game

field. So like you can't design the game that So trying to bring it back.

So you have to kind of find the balance and that's where it like really understanding what it's capable of now and then also like being able to push it and say, well we actually do want to be able to do this. So So how can we like

make sure we're trying to help set some vision for that? Is there anything that you are doing intentionally as a leader to help the design org push on that future or be more generative or more

risk-taking in what they're exploring? I

think it's a good question and probably something we need to be more clear about when to do it. I think that's the big question is finding when the right time is to do that. I think in some cases you want to do it, in other cases you don't

and I think what I'd like to do is find more time where you can kind of flip-flop [snorts] between doing both. I

think that's something we're kind of honestly trying to figure out as a as a team. Like how much time should I spend

team. Like how much time should I spend be spending doing that kind of work versus more execution and I think you have to be able to be very fluid. We

covered a lot of ground. What have we not talked about yet that you think paints a picture or shines an accurate light on what it looks like to design at

OpenAI and the culture that you have and just the way that you all operate? The

reality is that it is very fast-paced. We are figuring things

very fast-paced. We are figuring things out quickly. We kind of try to update

out quickly. We kind of try to update our own thinking very quickly and we have to evolve quickly with the technology and and as a team. And so I

think some people might assume we're like 2 years ahead thinking like that, but we're running very closely with where all of these advancements are going. And so that's just like a very

going. And so that's just like a very different way of working. You know, like things like things are changing underneath your your feet all day long and it's very exciting. It's really fun to be like, I don't know, we're going to

figure this out as we go. We're going to like We're going to try it. We're going

to turn the crank. We're going to keep iterating. We're going to keep going. I

iterating. We're going to keep going. I

kind of want to push on something that you said earlier. You talked about how in many ways, you know, being a great designer hasn't changed. You're solving

problems. But yet a lot of the things that you are talking about do feel almost more reactive to the technology rather than user behaviors. And I got to

imagine that that throws a little bit of a wrench into the design practice that maybe you would have at Instagram or something like that.

Sure. So what I should say, I I think to make it clear, I think that great designers can do both. Great designers

can both say, oh wow, we have this new technology. Okay, cool. How do we How do

technology. Okay, cool. How do we How do we package that up? But then I think other designers or other times our designers are thinking about, well actually it needs to do this. It needs

to be really good at this or here's how this could work. And it's just a blend now and you just have to think about one more thing, honestly. It's like you have to think not just about the problems,

the user problems and all that, you have to think about what the technology can't do that it should be able to do. So you

have to be able to do all that. So I

think it's basically just extending one part of the process and I think the best process for designers is thinking like, well how do we push this forward? How do

we make this be more useful if it could just do X, Y, and Z or here's kind of an ideal way this might work and then we can like work with engineering or research or whatever to like get it there. Okay, so for somebody listening

there. Okay, so for somebody listening who's inspired by the conversation, they want to join the team. You'll be hiring throughout this year, I'm sure.

Yeah.

What are some of the main signals that you would be hunting for in a design candidate? And what would you be doing

candidate? And what would you be doing to figure out if they're present and if they're the type of person that would thrive in this environment? I mean, I think there's just a few candidate types that we always look for. I'm always very

excited about the kind of more up-and-coming people that just have tons of energy. I think that It's funny. I

of energy. I think that It's funny. I

used to say like when when I first joined two two and a half years ago, you don't need a background in AI to like come work here. You have to be curious about the technology. And I And that's still generally true, but I think that there's enough now there's been enough

time where finding people that have started to experiment and play with this stuff and understand what it's good at, what it's bad at, where it needs to go and how we need to like push on these on the tools and the technology and the

products that we're all building.

I think there's like enough there to play with. I've always respected people

play with. I've always respected people that will go deep on some side project or get really passionate about some idea. You need the fundamentals. You

idea. You need the fundamentals. You

need to be great at just kind of like doing, you know, general product design, but I think that that other piece just like being truly curious and and interested in the idea and ideally

you've really spent time playing with it and and understand like and hopefully you have lots of ideas for for where we can push things. We're at this fortunate place where you're not just reacting to the technology, but you're you're

hopefully helping shape where this is going and like helping to expand the capabilities that we can put into the product into people's hands so that they can do more with it. And so people that are excited about about that kind of way

of working. Well, Ian, I appreciate you

of working. Well, Ian, I appreciate you coming on and sharing this with us today. You all have had a a massive

today. You all have had a a massive impact on state of design and even interacting like just creating these paradigms that we're all building on top of and so it's been fun to hear a little bit of the behind the scenes and how you all operate today.

[music] Yeah, this is super fun. Thanks for

having me.