Luis Ouriach - How are design systems changing?

Basically overnight, LLMs made design systems way more important. So how

should we think about what a system even is in today's world? But now the system becomes the [music] centerpiece of all successful engineering work. The more we rely on a tool to create our code, the

more we rely on a system to tell that [music] tool what to code.

>> How is this changing the shape of design orgs and the way that we collaborate as [music] a team? that starting from anywhere philosophy is the new way of working. You [music] might start in a

working. You [music] might start in a document, you might start in a canvas, you might start in a front end, you might start in any of those places, but ultimately you're going to be [music] bouncing through the tools. Welcome to

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

[music] Today's episode is with Louis Orios, whose role as a designer advocate at Figma means that he's constantly helping teams navigate today's changing landscape, especially when it comes to

design systems. So, we're going to do a little deep dive into all the trends that he's noticing today and what it all means for designers. [music]

But first, I asked Louie to give us a rundown of everything that's changed in the world of design systems since he was last on the show. the last two and a half, three years since we spoke about

Figma's variables launch everything's on the table and everything has changed.

>> Yeah.

>> But you still have threads of the same.

So I say that there was a overindexing on the importance of tokens getting that right. Refactoring systems that took an

right. Refactoring systems that took an enormous amount of time. Some companies

took a year, two years to to get to that point of refactoring. Once that felt stable, the industry threw us a curveball and introduced artificial intelligence, LLM based code generation

where people started to rethink what systems actually were and what their purpose was, at least those at the forefront. And that made me a bit scared

forefront. And that made me a bit scared and I think it made a lot of people a bit scared about what that meant for their roles and what their daily output would like be like. Then let's say that

was a year ago plus. Now we're in a position where that's a little bit more stable in what that workflow looks like and we're starting to see probably thankfully the importance of

documentation in consistent and predictable output. So I'd say there's

predictable output. So I'd say there's been swings back and forth between everything being important, nothing being important, and now we're landing at a position where all those things you

have been doing are exceptionally important for the new workloads that we're trying to establish.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I'm smiling because I've also had my own little vantage point just interviewing people. You know, I've interviewed like 200 people since we last talked. Something in the ballpark

last talked. Something in the ballpark of that. And there was definitely this

of that. And there was definitely this sentiment around how, you know, design systems are dead, yada yada yada. And

it's like everything's about speed.

Design systems just get out in the way.

And the pendulum has swung to the complete opposite end where everyone's doubling down on design systems because it's so clearly a driver of speed. And

all the documentation they wrote is actually really valuable. It's just not for people anymore.

>> Yeah. I would say to be totally honest, January 2025, I thought we are all toasted. We are in trouble here because our jobs are no

longer relevant. And that was just

longer relevant. And that was just thankfully a temporary feeling. Well,

couple of months. And like like you said, the importance of those docs, whatever format they were in before is going to be the foundation of everyone's

workflow going forward. It might just be written slightly differently and for a different format, for a different output, but guidelines are becoming paramount for everything we need to do.

>> Yeah, maybe we can just go a little bit deeper there. You said the purpose of

deeper there. You said the purpose of systems has kind of shifted as a result of AI. What's behind that? A lot of

of AI. What's behind that? A lot of people looked at systems as a team kind of potentially in the corner doing their thing, raising the bar of quality and making sure that businesses can scale

efficiently and at speed. But now the system becomes the centerpiece of all successful engineering work. Because the

more we rely on a tool to create our code, the more we rely on a system to tell that tool what to code. And the

less we invest in a system, the more we're going to generate just honestly rubbish into our systems that will just pile up like a landfill over the next couple of years and somebody's going to

have to fix it. So unless we now treat those systems as a centerpiece for change, then we're going to end up in that situation in a few years where a consultant's going to have to come in and fix all the mess.

>> You recently published an article called Agentic Design Systems. Can you talk a little bit about your thinking there?

>> This isn't a new phrase at all.

But people want to automate a lot of things and we're in a process now of figuring out what can be automated, what should be automated. And I speak to teams who do want to automate the

generation of their components and speak to teams who absolutely do not want to do that and want to automate some other aspects of it. It might be token pipelines. It might be some aspects of

pipelines. It might be some aspects of documentation. But we're moving to a

documentation. But we're moving to a world where a lot of this work can be done via tool or an LLM, whatever frame you want to pull on it. And we have to

decide as an individual, as a company or even as a team within a company. What

are our roles actually now? And what are the tools taking over and decide that as soon as we possibly can before that decision is made for us. Real quick

message and then we can jump back into it. An even smarter version of Lovable

it. An even smarter version of Lovable just released. It is 71% better at

just released. It is 71% better at solving complex tasks, [music] which means it can do more work more autonomously. There's more intelligent

autonomously. There's more intelligent planning. There's prompt queuing. You

planning. There's prompt queuing. You

can stack requests while lovable works.

And my favorite part, there's automated testing, which means lovable now tests your apps like a real user. It opens its own browser, navigates [music] flows, investigates edge cases, and catches

bugs for you. And the best part is when it finds a problem, it fixes it right on [music] the spot. I genuinely believe Lovable is the easiest way to build software today. So, head to

software today. So, head to dive.club/lovable

dive.club/lovable to try the new release. You know what?

I'm excited about the Granola MCP. It

allows you to connect [music] your AI tools directly to your Granola meeting notes. And as somebody who's been vibe

notes. And as somebody who's been vibe coding a lot of tools recently, this release is a pretty big deal because my meeting notes are some of the most valuable contexts that I have. And now I

can find specific [music] topics, pull out action items, and get any question answered based on my meeting history.

This is all available today, and I'm already building with it like crazy. So,

if you want to join me, head to dive.comclub/granolamcp.

dive.comclub/granolamcp.

That's granolamcp.

Now, on to the episode. I want to tap into your perspective as somebody who does work with a lot of these teams given your position. And you know, you see a lot. You see what's working, you

see pitfalls to avoid. What are some of the most innovative techniques or processes that you're seeing teams adopt as a result of everything that's changing with AI? What I'm seeing is a

lot of people feeling empowered and that that could be on one side a technically curious designer or on the other side it could be a design curious engineer or

maybe in the other angle of this triangle is a product manager that doesn't feel like they can ship and all of these people are feeling like within

reach they can get closer to production or maybe just a higher fidelity. I'm

very nervous about saying that everything can be production now because maybe that's not the point. Maybe we can get higher fidelity prototypes that we can test and validate a lot faster and still throw them away because that is

the point of prototype a lot of the time is to just test an idea. But what is stopping anybody in this process from contributing to that >> and I see this internally at Figma or externally with other teams where people

are for one of a better phrase bleeding into another person's job description.

And I think that is great because we are teams and historically whether we like it or not people have worked in their own silos and you passed an engineer a

file to build or a product manager passes you a PRD to investigate. The

question is why aren't we all contributing to all of these phases with expertise. It's not saying that

expertise. It's not saying that expertise is not required. Absolutely we

now get an opportunity to become even bigger experts or larger experts in our field. but we all collaborate tighter as

field. but we all collaborate tighter as an individual unit and not relying on those silos.

>> I know a lot of the answers for this episode are going to depend on the type of team. So maybe we'll hang out in

of team. So maybe we'll hang out in bigger company land for a little bit first. Like if somebody's listening and

first. Like if somebody's listening and they haven't actually taken many steps in order to empower non-engineers to reach this higher fidelity level of

prototyping or maybe have more access to what exists in code. like what are some of the baseline things that teams are doing that are taking advantage of the

moment that you know just should be top of mind for pretty much everybody in today's era and this this is a nonzitegeisty

response but hanging out together as a team more and building rituals that allow you to collaborate synchronously asynchronously that is a Slack channel

it's a document it's a Figma file or other file that you prefer to collaborate in. But doing that as a unit

collaborate in. But doing that as a unit and not saying I'm the product manager, therefore I own the PRD. I'm a designer, therefore I own the design. And I'm an engineer, therefore I own the

highfidelity version of this idea. It's

a designer having access to the codebase. It's a engineer contributing

codebase. It's a engineer contributing to the PRD and it's a designer but just flexing in and out of these phases of the process. I'm seeing so many speaking

the process. I'm seeing so many speaking of large company land so many large enterprises giving themselves a very aggressive Q1 target of basically

reinventing their process and that is exciting. It's a little scary. That's

exciting. It's a little scary. That's

what we're doing now is that design process that we thought was true is up for grabs because things can be done faster as a crossunctional team that which we always wanted. We always wanted

this. This is not a surprise or anything

this. This is not a surprise or anything that is kind of out of ordinary.

Speaking to CTO's who are telling me that this is not a design leader, it's a technical leader. CTO's telling me that

technical leader. CTO's telling me that they're able to work a lot more efficiently now. And my question back is

efficiently now. And my question back is what are you doing with their spare time and their response is building more products. People are seeing that their

products. People are seeing that their opportunity for growth is wider now and they can make more products based on user feedback which they can also get faster and build better businesses. when

process is up for grabs. I do think a lot of teams maybe get overzealous. I've

even seen it from time to time. I'm sure

that you have as somebody who is in more of that role for that scenario. Are

there like pitfalls to avoid or or signs or signals that would point to the fact that like hey maybe we are you know chasing the wrong thing?

>> Yeah, for sure. And this is linking back to the systems centerpiece is I've had a concern for a while that design systems being a siloed team means that people

can just say it's someone else's job. Uh

and to me a design system is a bar of quality in an organization and that's everyone's job. So the thing about

everyone's job. So the thing about reinventing process means that there's an opportunity for you to say is somebody else's job or not. And we still have to have clear lines of

responsibility and output expectations on each individual. The designer is still doing something specific to a designer's role. It's not, oh, the PM

designer's role. It's not, oh, the PM can contribute to prototypes now, therefore I'm not going to make one. So,

we have to have this level of acceptance of what a role can do at a bare minimum.

plus and that plus is defined by your industry, by your company, by your team, by your leadership, by your experience and your level within your organization.

The more optimistic person is looking to widen their skill set to become more generalist. The pessimistic person is is

generalist. The pessimistic person is is freaking out in the corner and thinking, I don't know what I can do now because I can do everything. It's up to an

organization to decide the bare minimum of what the expected output can be or should be and the designer to stretch it into different angles that they feel

like they'd like to. For me, that looks like as the the closest opportunity is to become a better writer. As a

designer, write more documents because that is in my opinion the best way to communicate an idea. You could use audio. You could record your voice.

audio. You could record your voice.

Regardless, writing down before you commit to a pixel is the best way to get buy in for an idea. And you're not going to get the ability to ship an idea

unless you get buy in. So, a document is still central to that. For me, it's kind of a spicy take in today's world.

Actually, [laughter] like the prototype is the new PRD is the jargon. Well, the

the thing is that as soon as you commit to a pixel, someone's going to have an opinion on the visual design, but you need to get it signed off. That in a in a forward thinking organization, you

have to have a design leader, a product leader, whatever the title is, sign off on your idea before we commit to it. And

the best way I've seen to be able to do that is to write a document of your findings and your plan and do a huddle around it as a crossunctional team. add

comments, ask for other ideas, maybe add a a loose mockup of your idea, but before we go and build that high fidelity prototype, let's make sure we're building the right thing. And that

goes against my instinct, by the way. My

instinct is to commit to pixels as soon as possible. I don't know. I I I do

as possible. I don't know. I I I do both. I I see value in both for sure.

both. I I see value in both for sure.

So, if anything, I think I just appreciate the more nuanced take cuz it's very easy to come on here and say prototypes instead of PRDs. I I want to double down on the team structure piece for a second and maybe I'll just toss a

hypothetical your way. So, let's say that you're brought in as a consultant for a let's say like a series B or that's growing and they're feeling the

pain of having basically made no investment into the design system up until this point. They don't have any dedicated people. There's no like

dedicated people. There's no like dedicated squad that's working on the design system. So given almost like a

design system. So given almost like a blank canvas, what would be some of the opportunities that you would pursue and what types of systems or people would you put in place to steward it moving

forward?

>> Firstly, I would say back to my point about quality, quality is everyone's job and quality is everyone's business and if we don't accept or pursue that, we

should be treating ourselves as failing.

That is something I just feel deeply. We

have to have a high bar and that is company dependent what that looks like.

But if we're not pursuing that there should be consequences uh because we're going to attract less customers, we're going to sell less business and we're going to produce less revenue. So that should just be sewn

revenue. So that should just be sewn into everything we do is what is our definition of quality and how do we get there? That is regardless of the system

there? That is regardless of the system because I think that the pursuance of quality gets you to a system.

before you've even know it. But

tactically, I guess you need a technically curious designer and a design curious engineer. And for the system not to be an afterthought or a

side project or something you're doing on top of extra work, it should just be a thread through everything that you're producing as an organization. So, are we building components? That's a system. We

building components? That's a system. We

don't need to put the label on it because I I worry that putting a label on something like design system can introduce conversations we don't want to have about budget

>> and hiring and specialism versus a front end engineer doing a really good job and a designer doing a really good job to me produces a system as a byproduct when we

start to scale it up. So your scenario you're building another product the easiest one is introducing dark mode that's when you have to start systematizing properly things like

tokens that is a conversation we can have at that time but by that time because we've all done a good job we have CSS variables and we can extend them if by that time we have raw values

across our front end we haven't done a good job and we would know that as we're building it that like slack is just not going to fly anymore. I'm feeling that even in my own work like the difference

of even just putting checks in like a clawed MDE file where it's like hey we don't use raw values in these places here's how we reach for certain types of

components and it just is automated in like a GitHub review you know it's amazing actually like you can feel how a very small amount of investment into

what this system should be or in maybe your language like where the quality bar should be and then how much the LLMs help you continuously hit it with every single PR from that point. It's amazing.

It really is.

>> Let me present the other side of the scenario though is that because we can generate anything we want at speed and so much of the success of an early stage

company is how much it makes the end user feel. How much they want to return

user feel. How much they want to return to you. That is incredibly important.

to you. That is incredibly important.

which arguably means deviation from the system is the win or the key because we need to be able to attract people differently every single time we talk to them. So what does what does an

them. So what does what does an infinitely flexible brand look like?

Because we're boiling it down to the brand at this point and that might mean that raw values are fine because for this permutation of the landing page we're experimenting and as soon as we

get into like a systematization we're committing to something. So there

is definitely an argument of do tokens matter anymore or absolutely they have to be there from day zero because we're thinking about scale at every moment and we have to dance between these two

worlds of experimentation and committing to quality. Experimentation can also

to quality. Experimentation can also mean quality, but an overtokenization of something can mean it's so robust, we can't deviate from it. And every stage

of your product or organization has to figure out where you lie on that line.

And maybe because everything can be generated and can take you half a second to scan a code base to see raw values.

Does the tokenization actually help you at that point? Or are you pushing the pixels around because you can? So the

world we're entering now is is a raw value fine or if it's not then how do you manage that? If a raw value is fine

let's just limit them to what the brand feels like and that can be written in document like the guidelines that you're talking about. We can express what the

talking about. We can express what the brand should make someone feel like and rely on the LLM to get us there. And

this is where I like dance over my own words because in some ways deep down I'm thinking system system. In other ways I'm thinking all the teams I talk to

every single day who struggle with this word adoption of people not using the right thing in the right place and that world is just going to be flipped upside down now. It's already happening.

down now. It's already happening.

>> It's already happening. Yeah. Even the

word system is weird now because like the point of abstracting something was to minimize the amount of knobs that you have to turn in order to make changes that scale across the codebase. But now

it's like the pain of that has diminished so significantly where it's the difference between a 10-second LLM call and a 25second LLM call. Like I I don't care, you know, it's still going

to be able to find all of the things. So

like what is assistant at that point?

And I do kind of like how you're bringing it back to brand actually and like the feeling that you're trying to evoke because the specific way that that is constructed I don't know maybe it does mean less now. I'm not sure. It's

weird like I it doesn't fit into my box anymore.

>> The the challenge we have and this isn't a new point at all but if we rely just on generation of code without a very strict indication of brand feeling we end up with all the things looking the

same.

>> Yeah. And honestly, that is fine for the majority of cases. But if you really want to take your scenario of the we've received a ton of funding, we need to accelerate, that is not good enough

anymore. So we have to figure out what

anymore. So we have to figure out what that looks like, what that feels like, what the tone of voice is, what the imagery is, and it dials us back out of what is a component to what is the

company's system of approaching acceleration.

So taking the label of design system off what we're doing is going to help. It's

going to bring you out of the corner and out of the silo and to the center of an organization's change. It's almost like

organization's change. It's almost like the baseline quality line for a product.

But like if you only stayed at that baseline at all times, then it's probably going to be a boring product that someone wants to vibe code in a weekend. So it's like given the baseline

weekend. So it's like given the baseline now where do you strategically deviate from the system and do things that simply don't exist in the set of rules that we're giving to the models

>> and there's elevations there. The person

spinning something up by themselves at a weekend might help them secure some funding to develop it further.

>> That doesn't mean that that thing you built in 12 hours is what you should ship. It's just a validation point for

ship. It's just a validation point for something. Then you accelerate all the

something. Then you accelerate all the way up up to the top of the line where you've got this fullyfledged tokenized system which you can expand and even

acquire and merge companies into and build out a more robust brand in a more horizontal way. But you have to figure

horizontal way. But you have to figure out where you are on this line which won't shift to understand what level of fidelity you need at every single point of a product not just the system because

a system feeds a product. Product feeds

a system. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a lot of the value proposition of a system was in making sure that things are consistent and standardized, but it does kind of feel like we're going to be getting a lot of that out of the box, [laughter]

you know? So, like that's not that's not

you know? So, like that's not that's not enough anymore. Like you you have to

enough anymore. Like you you have to kind of find ways to make it so that there is a level of attachment to a product. And I don't know, even I think

product. And I don't know, even I think Shaden played a huge role in this.

There's so much network effects around what the modern webstack is. And the

more that we kind of spin this flywheel of like everybody's building with Tailwind, everybody's building with Shadzian, everybody's building on top of Versell, the baseline is rising, [laughter]

right? It's like a good clean consistent

right? It's like a good clean consistent design is table stakes in many ways. You

know, >> I don't want people to spend their time reinventing something that already exists. I think that those days are

exists. I think that those days are limited, but making it feel like your brand is where you can put the energy on top of a system that is already proven.

We've spent so much time trying to figure out how to make accessibility someone's priority or a company's priority. And if you can get that out of

priority. And if you can get that out of a box, take it. You don't need to go and custom spin up your own version of a popover component. The problem's been

popover component. The problem's been solved. And that is amazing. the the

solved. And that is amazing. the the

quality bar, like you said, is is higher. So, let's focus on what will

higher. So, let's focus on what will help us sell more products and that might not be the most attractive proposition for the pixel pushing designer, but that's the job and that's

exciting. You can get closer to revenue

exciting. You can get closer to revenue and showing impact and getting closer to that promotion that you're desperate for because you're able to get go better access to stakeholders. I want to dig

into workflows and kind of like the practice of a designer. Again, just kind of tapping into your vantage point as somebody who's talking to a lot of teams. And the first thing I'd love your take on is like how wide is the gap

right now between enterprise and startups in terms of the way that designers are operating in these systems, but also just more broadly like approaching their day-to-day role as a

designer, whatever the heck that still means. Now, today,

means. Now, today, >> it feels like it's getting wider. And

the reason it feels like it's getting wider is because the access to tools is so vastly different based on your security standards as a company. If

you're in a legacy enterprise organization, it might be really hard to get an AI tool signed off. If you're a high-flying startup, you've probably just got these things out of the box.

You sign the contract and you just have these tools. So the have and have nots

these tools. So the have and have nots or the digital divide is something that we used to call it in this microcosm. it

seems to be getting wider. It does give me a little bit of concern because I don't want people to feel like they could be stuck in a role and not be able to get out of it into a more progressive

organization if they're in one that doesn't give them access to tools. So,

that's something that the industry needs to figure out pronto because that could be a potential problem. But how people are working, the startups are high-flying. They've always been doing

high-flying. They've always been doing that. They're always trying to push the

that. They're always trying to push the boundaries. But what I have noticed is

boundaries. But what I have noticed is that people want to get to production a lot faster. they want to almost skip

lot faster. they want to almost skip design and that is a potentially dramatic phrase but it's how it comes across to I have an idea and I want to

get it live on a domain now what's the easiest way to do that and that was the conversation I was having last week and on the enterprise level for an enterprise software you've got millions

of users you have to be a bit more considerate about how to release something so that then looks like how can we shorten the time to production

or what tools can we use to accelerate feedback on this? Or how can we increase the amount of users that get access to a beta or how do we use feature flags to

ensure that a subset of the audience can test this thing out for us? What's the

community approach to our software? How

can we build a team of people that we can rely on for consistent feedback because they care about us? And that is a playbook that I think everybody will use eventually as you go up the stack from startup to enterprise. But the

thankfully for me and for us is that community, people, users, passion is still incredibly important for the success of an idea. It's just that we're

doing it faster, but we can't skip the quality no matter how fast we want to move. One thing that Dive Club has made

move. One thing that Dive Club has made abundantly clear to me over the last year is that the practice of design is changing and the old process [music] of getting feedback just doesn't quite cut

it in today's world. That's why I'm excited to announce that Inflight is officially in open beta. It's the

feedback tool that I've always wanted and it's built for a world that moves at the speed of AI. So, I can share my prototypes, give [music] context and video walkthroughs, and Inflight makes

it easy to get the exact feedback that I need to move forward, whether it's voting on directions or maybe even getting the green light to ship a new idea. And all of this is available in a

idea. And all of this is available in a single link that I [music] can drop into Slack or maybe even share with power users to test out a new prototype. I use

Inflight every day and it's totally [music] transformed the way that I share work. So, I'm excited for you to try the

work. So, I'm excited for you to try the product and if you ever want to jam about it, just email me [music] at ridinflight.co.

ridinflight.co.

I can't talk workflows without asking you [music] about the uh clawed MCP release that you just dropped. I think

it was literally yesterday. So, what are some of the things that that unlocks in your mind that you're excited about?

>> It really does get me pumped for the world that I thought I was entering as a professional a long time ago where I have an idea and I want to test it

properly. I want to get it into a

properly. I want to get it into a browser and I want to feel it. I want to know interactions. I want to know

know interactions. I want to know transitions, timing, and being able to go from the canvas to the browser, test it, and be like, "That's actually not

not quite right. Let's go back. Let's

riff on it." That world for a nontechnical designer is going to open so many doors because you can communicate what your intent is so much faster because you can push it further.

A little phrase that we kind of throw around internally is um not faster, but further. And that enables people who

further. And that enables people who aren't technical jump in the browser, test something out, open the inspect, say, "Oh, that spacing should actually be 12. It shouldn't be 10 or 8 or

be 12. It shouldn't be 10 or 8 or whatever it is. Let's jump back into Figma and have 10 versions of this thing spinning around. Push that one to the

spinning around. Push that one to the browser. Push that one to the browser.

browser. Push that one to the browser.

H, still not quite right. Let's come

back via MCP or whatever we're using and have this feedback loop for ourselves without involving an engineer that might take days or weeks to come back through no fault of their own, just through

process. So that's part of the process

process. So that's part of the process feels like we could speed it up massively. The key to unlock it even

massively. The key to unlock it even further is the system. If you can push from your canvas to the browser and back all connected up to a system that lives

in a repo, then we're going to iterate so much faster. That is to me the gold mine of what we've been trying to do.

>> Same. I close my eyes and I picture like just having those two windows side by side at all times. Like that's how I want to work. There's there's an element of yes, it is the system and they're pointing at the same thing, but

sometimes I also just want it to like be a whiteboard, you know? I just want to be able to like quick scratch and like no, no, no, like kind of like this instead and just immediately have that go to cloud or Codex or wherever I'm

working and fluidly moving in and out.

Like it feels like we'll look back on the last I don't know what it is at this time. The timelines are blurring in my

time. The timelines are blurring in my head, but it's like the last like three to six months, right, as this blip on the radar where we had this false choice as designers where you had to kind of

pick this path and it was very difficult to traverse to the other one. And as a result, I wake up every day and I'm like, am I even a designer anymore?

Because a lot of times in the startup environment like you're describing, like I just open up a local host and bring an idea to life and hit hit send, you know, and uh all I'm doing is writing code.

But am I still a designer then? I don't

know.

>> This is the beauty that the role is getting wider and you tap in and out of whatever makes sense to you. When I

first started and I was contributing to front end in professionally, I stopped because things got so complex to set up

an environment. I remember Docker and

an environment. I remember Docker and >> mpm install and re React and bundling and I just thought that is not where I am right now. Firstly, I've got no idea

what you're talking about when you say these terms. And if it takes a couple of hours for an engineer to help me set something up, we've kind of gone down the wrong path. So, we we reverse out of

that into a designer being able to do this without thinking about what any of those things mean. The idea wins. It's

not >> a [clears throat] technical barrier that you have to jump over and pushes people further away, which is what happened to me. pushed me further away from

me. pushed me further away from production and more into the polishing pixels on the canvas kind of persona.

And now we can reverse out of that one and maybe meet somewhere in the middle where the canvas is very important for ideation, collaboration and general direction, exploration. But the browser

direction, exploration. But the browser is where we commit to it. We bounce back and forth between these different mediums to get the right idea, which I think is just exactly what we want.

>> I love the idea. It definitely feels like that's where we're headed in in that world. I'm pretty bullish on

that world. I'm pretty bullish on designers.

>> Anybody with an idea is the beauty of this. Uh I like the word maker because

this. Uh I like the word maker because it kind of doesn't define specifically your role in an organization. If an

engineer wants to play around with interaction details, absolutely go for it. If a designer wants to tweak the

it. If a designer wants to tweak the border color on a card because they've spotted that there's a better contrast against the background in this particular screen, please go and change

that token value. Don't feel restrained by the process that was before. I like

how multiple times you brought it back to collaboration too because something that I'm feeling a lot is like, yeah, I'm empowered for sure. I'm empowered. I

can do a lot. But sometimes it kind of feels like, especially in a remote company, it's just me and my agents, [laughter] you know, like all I am doing is just wielding my agents all day. And

I end up collaborating with Claude so much more than other people. And I don't know, it's like it's one of those tiny little signals where I'm like, "Huh, this feels weird. I don't know. I don't

know what to do with it yet. So much is changing."

changing." >> But do you think you're learning?

>> Oh, I'm learning like crazy. I think

that bouncing back and forth between you and a tool to get more sure of your idea before you commit to hey everybody what do you think about this I don't see a problem with that outsourcing everything

you do to something is where I get a little bit more concerned >> because we are the experts in seat to bring something to market and if we're

outsourcing our ideas our output our definitions of anything to a tool then we just need to ask ourselves what we really want to be doing And I would feel

deflated as a maker, as a creator, if I was just pressing like go go go all day [laughter] on a tool. Sometimes I do. If I'm making

a Figma plugin and I'm coding it, I absolutely don't look at that code. But

if it works, I'm happy. But I still had the idea. I'm laughing because like

the idea. I'm laughing because like yesterday basically all I did was work on front end and I use conductor now and I basically it's Pavlov's dog a little bit because you just live from one of

the toot of the conductor horn to the next. [laughter] Like it feels like I'm

next. [laughter] Like it feels like I'm playing this whack-a-ole game where it's like all right that agent needs me.

Okay, now that agent needs me. Now this

agent needs me. I feel this trap sometimes where like going back to what you were talking about earlier, it's so important to get buy in and to be sharing early and often because when you

can play pingpong with an agent all day on your idea and go way further than previously possible as a designer where I'm sweating the details on every single

part of this front-end architecture and all the hover states and interactions and everything, it's tempting to just keep refining and keep refining versus popping out and be like, "Hey, hey, I'm look I'm working on this like these are

the couple directions I'm thinking where that came very very naturally when my process was slightly more defined and always started with me you know hitting F on a canvas and drawing the rectangle

whereas now I can jump much further as step one a lot of pros and cons I guess we'll put it that way don't get me wrong I will start in code too and I think that starting from anywhere philosophy

is the new way of working you might start in a document you might start in a canvas you might start in a front end you might start in any of those places, but ultimately you're going to be bouncing through the tools at some

point. You might start in a slack thread

point. You might start in a slack thread to be honest.

>> Yeah.

>> And that will always come back to a process that goes linearly through these phases if you want to keep riffing and get the best possible output. But yeah,

I don't have a problem with starting in code because sometimes you need to feel something to know what's wrong and it can take a lot longer often to draw it out on the canvas than to say, "Hey,

generate me a web page for this thing."

And be like, "Nah, that's not right." I

would say though, these tools are not for, "Hey, make me an app." Or, "Hey, make me a website." That's just not how they're designed and not necessarily how I think we should be using them. But

boiling it down to real specific even like component level creation versus broad please solve the world for me don't using these tools.

>> I got a YouTube comment today and it was some skeptic saying like I have yet to see an AI design that solved a real problem. And I'm like well hold on a

problem. And I'm like well hold on a second here. What is an AI design mean

second here. What is an AI design mean to you? You know because to me that's

to you? You know because to me that's like assuming all we're doing is just saying make me a website. I was like, I'm using AI to get a level of control that I've never had before, you know, and bouncing in and out of tools

constantly.

>> But don't get me wrong, the the average person who starts a restaurant, they need a website. And if they can get that done in 15 minutes, they're going to take it. And that is totally fine by me

take it. And that is totally fine by me because if I can go and read the menu of the website and it looks kind of nice and I can get the contact details and know where they're based and all the prices are, I as a consumer also wouldn't mind that. When we start to

talk about software, we're entering a much different game and that's where make me a software doesn't fly.

>> I'm helping my buddy right now who's starting a local contracting business and he really wanted a website and I ask him questions like, you know, what do you want on your website? He has no answers. [laughter] He has no idea, you

answers. [laughter] He has no idea, you know. So make me a website is not only

know. So make me a website is not only valuable because maybe the skill is not there, but also the ability to articulate what you want is not there for the vast majority of people who do not do design or do not operate in

software. And so being able to just spit

software. And so being able to just spit something out on the page is probably the easiest way to even arrive at what you actually want because you can see and be like, "Ah, I don't want that. I

want this instead." You know? So I do see a ton of value in that.

Additionally, this isn't a new thing either because we've had the ability for people to go and spend $5 on someone making them a website uh for a while and

that made more makers or more people who cared about websites in this case. And

the way that that's the same way I look at this now is more people are going to be able to create their ideas. We're not

in a position to tell people what they can or can't make. But as soon as that restaurant website needs to open another chain or another store, then they might need a better website. That's why they probably engaging a professional to

build a better system.

>> All right. So, it's one thing to talk theoretically about how the world is changing. I want to talk a little bit

changing. I want to talk a little bit about your story though because you drew us this picture of January 2025 just a little bit. You know, there's a

little bit. You know, there's a nervousness about where is all this going? what does this mean for my role?

going? what does this mean for my role?

Obviously, everything has changed from that point. So, can you talk a little

that point. So, can you talk a little bit about your personal journey with AI and where these inflection points are?

>> Yeah, I I took a while of self-reflection and uh ruing what was about to happen and and came out stronger. I can't even tell you the

stronger. I can't even tell you the amount of React courses I bought over the past 5 years. [laughter]

>> I can remember at least three or four tweets from you about it.

>> You've been calling me out on this. H I

haven't finished any of them because I just >> don't have the interest or time. But Q2

last year, 2025, I thought, hang on a second, I could make plugins as a very easy entry point into what I've been

trying to learn. Pull up an AI tool. In

that early days, early days, that's funny to say that. In the early days of this, it was an enterprise chatgpt license and I was asking it to help me

make a plug-in, copying code from the browser into my >> IDE, >> like a cave, >> like a caveman. And it worked. And I

thought, "Oh, right. Okay, we're we've got something really powerful here where I can jump over those courses that I've wasted money on and shipped a plugin very quickly, a week, two weeks,

something like Then it got faster, couple days, then it was a couple of hours. And I think I've published maybe

hours. And I think I've published maybe five or six Figma plugins or widgets over the past couple of months, which is kind of nuts because they work. They

solve problems. There's thousands of users. People are giving me feedback.

users. People are giving me feedback.

It's open source. People can look at the GitHub repos. They can contribute it to

GitHub repos. They can contribute it to if they want. I received a GitHub star on one of the repositories.

>> Look at you. What the hell's happening here?

>> That's amazing. And I think that is what we have on the table is the ability to make utility tools for our use cases at speed using these tools. So I've gone

from the chat GBT in the browser copying code back and forth to a more integrated workflow where I'm using a a tool that allows you to have LLM based in the IDE.

I'm just chatting, bouncing back and forth, rewriting, rewriting and rewriting, getting back into Git workflows and branches and all that sort of stuff and hosting my code and GitHub

pages for landing pages. This just

opened doors that I had previously closed and I'm able to work faster on these ideas, get them out faster, get validation faster, and solve problems.

So all of these plugins or widgets have come from just conversations with the community about what they're struggling with and spotting an opportunity to help. So I'm in effect able to do my job

help. So I'm in effect able to do my job better as well.

>> It's inspiring because I'm also the kind of person who has bought more coding courses than I care to admit. I went

through a whole boot camp. I don't

actually think I ever technically graduated from it, but I spent all the money. They still took all my money. I

money. They still took all my money. I

just didn't get the the gold star at the end. I think I actually had some giving

end. I think I actually had some giving up of hope. There was like a couple years was like I'm never going to be able to do this. Like I'm never going to be able to do this. And going back to your word, empowering, I guess. Like I

don't know. I'm at the point right now where if I have any free time at all, I just want to build things. Like I just feel like I can just shoot lightning out of my fingertips, you know? It's

amazing. So I've been keeping a a Google sheet of startup websites for a couple of years. There's probably 8 or 900

of years. There's probably 8 or 900 websites in this Google sheet. I've had

a goal of just putting it somewhere. And

two nights ago, I opened my laptop on the couch and just chatting away and saying, "I want to make this website.

Here's my Google sheet. What can we do?"

And it planned it out. We built

something. And then I close the laptop and haven't done anything with it since.

So I can make a bunch of new stuff and I still don't finish them. But I'm still able to feel like that Russer in the evening was really useful to just

explore. I can explore at a higher

explore. I can explore at a higher fidelity. I used to work with a guy over

fidelity. I used to work with a guy over a decade ago, an engineer, and I would just come to him on a daily basis with like, I've got a new startup idea. Let's

build the Twitter for this, or let's build a new property management website, whatever it was. And he'd say, yeah, I've got some developers I've got in my contact book. Probably going to cost us

contact book. Probably going to cost us 50, 100,000 to make it. And I think, okay, end of the idea. And now I'm thinking, spend a couple of days prompting away and probably realize the

idea is not good. But at least I've been able to flex that and test it out. And

maybe one idea one day will mean something to me. I can commit to it. But

instead of committing financially now, it's committing with time. Little bit of money, like a monthly subscription. As a

designer, I think I'm not alone in this.

Sometimes you just want to throw things at a wall and feel what sticks. And

probably most of the stuff doesn't. And

that's okay. But we can do it faster now.

>> It also changes what the definition of success is, too. Because when software is expensive, in order to be successful, it has to have some semblance of scale.

You know, it wouldn't make sense for you to make something for your immediate group of friends in a world where you are having to spend the amount of time and money required to do it. But now,

like I made a Super Bowl app just for my family just to play games together while watching the game. And 15 people used it and it was a massive success and I will

totally do it next year. And it again, yeah. took took me about two hours. The

yeah. took took me about two hours. The

key thing I think though is just because we can make something doesn't mean it has to be widespread or has to have mass appeal because the reality is if you wanted to do that as a business that's the wrong way place to start.

>> Yeah. you need to go and market the idea now rather than build it and I've also worked on sort of startups as a side project where that hasn't been the focus where a couple of years has been sunk

into building something with no one who knows about it and that market has shifted and that won't change just because we have access to the tools we can make things faster we can get it into production doesn't mean there's any

eyeballs at all on it and no one's going to sign up to this thing so keep it tighter keep it the scope smaller and maybe something for your family is the best place to get that itch scratched.

>> There's a phrase that I'm on a mission to use as often as possible on this podcast, which is the niche economy cuz I totally think that's where this is headed. You know, you can create

headed. You know, you can create something that solves a problem for a thousand people. Kind of what you're

thousand people. Kind of what you're doing with your favorite plugins. You

know, people wouldn't look at that and be like, that's your startup or that's your business, you know, but all of a sudden like, well, what if you could do that 20 times as a designer? You just

solve any problem that you can find, you know? So given that, given all of your

know? So given that, given all of your aspirations, given this windy journey of the last 18 months for you, that probably feels like a lifetime. I know

it does for me. How the heck are you thinking about your career moving forward given where you're at?

>> Honestly, don't know because I've never known. I've never planned my career and

known. I've never planned my career and just taking the shots that have come up.

Or put it a different way, I've taken a lot of shots and some of them make the basket and some of them don't. But I

would not stop shooting. And I don't know where that ends. The industry shift will settle inevitably and things will boom up and down and I'm kind of just

holding on and focusing on what I like to do, which is help the community at scale build better software. Where does

that go? Hopefully just better software.

What does my role in that look like?

Using my platform to enable people to do that. Do I have a oneyear career plan?

that. Do I have a oneyear career plan?

No. 2, 5, 10? Absolutely not. 6 months?

No. [laughter] 3 months? No. The amount

of things that are changing on a weekly basis means that I think that it's a fruitless task for someone like me to try and plan their career because I can't even rely on a company's road map

at the moment [snorts] to know where I fit in that and that's for everyone. So

I'd say I'm going to continue doing what I enjoy pushing that as far as possible putting as much pressure on that as possible. If I'm not enjoying it then

possible. If I'm not enjoying it then what's the point? Do you feel pressure though as somebody who is in more of like a education role to keep up with everything, especially given how quickly it's moving?

>> That is difficult. I'll be honest. It's

being resigned to the fact that I will never know everything and I didn't and I would never will, >> the market getting much wider is kind of crazy. The tools, the expectation on

crazy. The tools, the expectation on designers to in some places become a lot more technical. I'm never going to be

more technical. I'm never going to be able to talk at the level of a full-time React engineers. That's just just not

React engineers. That's just just not going to happen. But hopefully I can help facilitate the conversation between a designer and that engineer to build a better workflow for them in that company. So yeah, I do feel a personal

company. So yeah, I do feel a personal pressure, not professional pressure to just know what is required at what elevation to get the work done and I'll figure that out. It gives me the opportunity now to lean into different

parts of the role, different parts of the industry and to find new enjoyments.

That to me over the last year has been getting back into GitHub contributions that me in the next 12 months, who knows? I'd hate to lose touch with the

knows? I'd hate to lose touch with the importance of writing. I'd hate to lose touch with the importance of quality bars. Pixels are still incredibly

bars. Pixels are still incredibly important. Um, personally, I've been

important. Um, personally, I've been focusing on visual design quite a lot, so that's always going to be there. it's

open like but take more shots.

>> I think I'm someone who has always just been the ultra early adopter everywhere.

Like I was obsessed with scrolling on Product Hunt every single day for years.

Try every single tool. Like I I just came so naturally to me and I think I've wrestled with this reality that I actually can't be that person anymore.

Like it's impossible. There are too many tools. Too much is changing every single

tools. Too much is changing every single week. And so it's almost like a failure

week. And so it's almost like a failure state to try. But then you have to develop new razors to use internally to figure out where do I invest my time?

What is worth pursuing? Why is 80% of my Twitter feed open call hacks? You know,

I don't even I don't even know, you know, it's a little bit intense as somebody who is just trying to kind of hang on for the ride, you know, and and I'm sure everybody feels that, which is

why I was asking the question, uh, because I know you do feel some pressure to to stay up to beat stuff. I do events every week and people always put their hand up and be very honest and say that

they're scared. They don't know what to

they're scared. They don't know what to do. And that is tough to hear, but we

do. And that is tough to hear, but we have the platforms to enable people to understand what is possible. And I think that you can easily be paralyzed by limitless possibilities.

Even what you talked about then about opening Twitter and seeing a specific type of content, you can just be flooded by people seemingly doing very similar things. I think that's probably one of

things. I think that's probably one of the reasons other [clears throat] than the obvious why Twitter community felt like it failed a little bit because people didn't know where to fit in or didn't know what to talk about because

everything just felt like everyone was saying the same thing. So communities

are still very important. If people

don't know where to go to find their like-minded people, they're just going to be feeling like they're alone. So

community is still incredibly important for people's careers satisfaction and to know what to do. I just don't know where it is a lot of the time because it feels a bit fragmented. I want to try a little bit of an out there question before I

let you go because I think there are a lot of narratives out there right now and some of them are probably quite safe to ignore and they're just overblown.

Some of them there is some truth and designers should kind of take it seriously. I'm wondering if anything

seriously. I'm wondering if anything comes to mind for you in terms of a narrative that there's not that much truth to it right now. you know like you you can you can safely ignore this

whereas you know actually this is where the world is heading and we can't just bury our heads in the sand as designers.

>> I went to my parents house at the weekend and I felt a very strong tonal shift in dinner conversation. My parents

didn't go to university but AI was raised as a topic of dinner conversation or after dinner conversation after a few glasses of wine. And the prevailing thought at least in my circles is

probably negative first when it comes to this stuff. But people were just telling

this stuff. But people were just telling me their use cases. My brother, older brother has a finance background. His

wife is a psychologist. My sister works in admin tasks that for a company that sells fire extinguishers. These people

are not who we are. But they were talking about how their jobs, their lives have been made easier with these tools. So my prevailing narrative that I

tools. So my prevailing narrative that I think we tell ourselves is not the mass market consumerred narrative. And I

think that as the dust settles, people will find real use cases that help them every day. And that's hard for me as

every day. And that's hard for me as somebody so into it to see because I get hit on Twitter with negative thoughts

all day. But I can see through it to the

all day. But I can see through it to the everyday consumer has a use case for this. My friend who works in marketing,

this. My friend who works in marketing, he has a personal open AI subscription with projects and he's got tons and tons of documents running all the time helping him immensely with his everyday

life. He's got ADHD. It helps him a lot.

life. He's got ADHD. It helps him a lot.

So I take myself out of the negative first mindset which is as a natural pessimist quite difficult. My personal

one of a narrative that I have but don't project necessarily is whether we like it or not as designers, makers, people, most software sucks and people don't

really care about the pixels. And that

has been a challenge for designers, me included in previous roles to convince people to care about it. But the role now is because there's so much software on the market, because there's so many

websites, so many businesses, we have to focus on sales. which to focus on getting revenue and getting users and signups and acquisitions. So the pixels are secondary to the success of the

business. And we can come to the pixels

business. And we can come to the pixels at a point where it makes sense or not at all. As we generate more things, more

at all. As we generate more things, more software is going to be created, more websites going to be created, more apps by people who don't have a design background. We just got to accept that

background. We just got to accept that and not try to fight it. There will be roles that you go for where your manager or manager's manager doesn't really care about the pixels and that is a fight not

worth fighting I don't think at the moment. I was thinking about my own

moment. I was thinking about my own answers. I think there's a narrative

answers. I think there's a narrative right now where people who maybe are slightly more skeptical of AI say the

blurring of roles is just because businesses want to pay less and of course they want you to do more and that's what's really happening but everything will settle. I don't really

believe that's true. I think that we have drawn an artificial line between a picture of the front end and the actual front end just based off of the

technical capabilities that were available to us. And I think that the actual front end will fall under design and that it actually is just a whole

collection of things that totally fall under the definition of UX. But as an industry, we've refused to admit that.

And so we've just punted it off to front end engineers who don't really care about the details as much as us. But

that at some point, we're just going to realize that's just UX design. And

that's the new role. There are more businesses being created. The hopeful

argument of smaller teams means smaller teams in more places on more problems being solved. As a person who enjoys

being solved. As a person who enjoys that startup accelerated pace kind of atmosphere, [snorts] that's exciting.

But for somebody who enjoys working in very large organizations, that might be the opposite feeling for you. But I do see more startups, more opportunities to

to raise money and build your own ideas now.

>> Yeah, I I totally agree. It's like there was a line, this is my economic brain thinking, but you know, there was a literal line on a graph where if you could not generate this much profit

based off of this problem, it's not worth pursuing. It doesn't make

worth pursuing. It doesn't make financial sense to do this. and that

line has just fallen. So there's a whole subset, there's this whole category of problems that previously nobody had the financial incentive to solve that are

just wide open. Look around you like local businesses. Oh my goodness,

local businesses. Oh my goodness, there's so many problems that anybody listening to this is totally capable of solving on their own fully.

>> Take a shot.

>> Take a shot. Yes. Yes. I like it. Well,

I I can't think of a better line to end on than take your shot. And uh Louie, I appreciate you coming on and giving us a little bit of like the insider scoop, but also just telling it how it is

because I think you're feeling this like everybody else. You know, it's a crazy

everybody else. You know, it's a crazy time and sometimes it's good to just shine a light on the reality and I appreciate you [music] coming on today and doing that with us. It's always fun.

Thank you very much. Pleasure as always.

Before I let you go, I want to take just one minute to run you through my favorite products because I'm constantly asked what's [music] in my stack. Framer

is how I build websites. Genway is how I do research. Granola is how I take notes

do research. Granola is how I take notes during crit. [music] Jitter is how I

during crit. [music] Jitter is how I animate my designs. Lovable is how I build my ideas in code. Mobin is how I find design inspiration. Paper is how I

design like a creative. And Raycast is my shortcut every step of the way. Now,

I've hand selected these companies so that I can do these episodes full-time.

So, by far the number one way to support the show is to check them out. You can

find the full list at dive.com/partners.