Ryo Lu (Cursor): AI Turns Designers to Developers

Over the last I don't know 15 years or so the art of making software fragmented a lot and then we kind of split into different roles. Each role kind of used

different roles. Each role kind of used their own tool. You use their own artifact. They think in their own kind

artifact. They think in their own kind of words and lingo with cursor things kind of flip again. for the first time that design is such an approachable

concept and skill set to a lot more people and it brings together sort of people who have aspirations for design and wanting to build things, wanting to prototype things, putting beautiful

stuff out in the world. There needs to be something for the human to specify what is good, what is right, how I want

to do it. If you don't put in that opinion, it will just produce AI slot.

People will always have their strength or their unique special skill. I see AI almost like it's almost like a universal

interface.

So design is kind of like trying to figure out what is the best configuration and the simplest state for all of us. The beauty is actually putting things all together.

Rio, welcome to the Async Z podcast.

>> Mhm. Uh Jennifer, you've been thinking a lot about sort of evolution of design um evolution sort of as it relates to uh infra as well as software development.

Why don't you talk about what got you so excited about having Rio and you know why we have this conversation? Rio and I uh got to know each other over the past few months talking about how large

language models and AI tools are going to impact not just designers, design engineers and how people are building prototypes and coming up with great ideas. I I feel like for the first time

ideas. I I feel like for the first time that um design is such an approachable concept and skill set to a lot more people and it brings together sort of people who have aspirations for design

and wanting to build things, wanting to prototype things, putting beautiful stuff out in the world much much easier and uh faster. So uh Rio has gone

through a lot of thinking and journey of you know um what design means what design means in the sense of having cursor being part of like the the building blocks of it like I I just

really wanted to have him on the podcast and talk about uh the future of both coding and design.

>> Rio Rio you've been at notion now obviously head of design cursor why don't you take us through your journey and how you've been thinking about some of these topics. I think to me it's like

building software um there's like so many layers of abstractions and depth that you you need to take care of and in order to do something really great you actually need

to know everything or like you assemble a team that works really well together with you know people with different strength on every layer. Maybe you have

the greatest infer engineers, people doing ML. Uh maybe you have, you know,

doing ML. Uh maybe you have, you know, um really good design engineers who really like they can just handwrite CSS and then they'll be like perfect. Um in

order for say one person to do all of this or learn all of this, it takes a long time of trial and error. You have

to build from the simplest things to you know gradually more complex, scale it up to more people. um share your workout to the public, see what happens, do this

feedback loop. And if you're doing it in

feedback loop. And if you're doing it in a team, sometimes it takes even longer because say you're just a designer, you you're doing some mocks in Figma and

then you shared it out, you got some feedback, then your PM needs to do this like PR thing and then run more meetings and then there's like more people

involved and then they're like and takes a long time.

and then maybe like a year later your design came out but then it's like 20% of what you wanted.

But with this new thing to with cursor you can just say you have an idea it might be a little ambiguous

you just tell it to tell the agent and then it might give you something maybe like 60% 70%

uh on the first shot but you kind of kind of skipped a lot of the you know complexities.

Um we kind of transformed from like you need to understand all this thing all these concepts of making software

then you can do something to I can do something now and then I might get something that's maybe imperfect not exactly what I want

but the process of iterating and like kind of poking at it becomes really quick and then as the agents evolve As the models get better, as it talks to

more tools, it understands visuals better, it can talk to Figma, the mocks that I had, it can talk to notion, all the, you know, ideas, the docs, the the

meeting knows anything.

And the most important thing is it knows the codebase, which is the truth, the material of how we, you know, build software.

So that kind of changes the whole thing.

It's like the tool not only you know impacts the individual software engineers like for them maybe like for cursor like we kind of

try to fit as many workflows and people as we can say there's like people who they pride themselves at like you know really think thoroughly write the most

clean code for those people they can just type and then we do the tab thing and the tab got really good at like it's almost like it knows what you want to do

next. Um so for those people they can do

next. Um so for those people they can do that but there's like increasingly more people doing the agent. Um

where like even for the most professional coders they start to do this new thing.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> I am trying to think of even myself as a uh as example um prior to joining the firm I was on the product side. I was

working with a lot of designing designers, uh, design engineering teams back then. It wasn't called that way.

back then. It wasn't called that way.

It's more like designers, front-end engineers, uh, and then, uh, UX designers too. Um,

designers too. Um, >> it was still a very disjointed workflow.

It's like, you know, a lot of the the design work happens more in isolated fashion with just the designers themselves. Like

themselves. Like >> they spend two weeks coming up with a concept.

>> Yeah. what does the UI look like and work with design uh UX designers on what the UX look like and then hand it off to the product team and works with engineers. Figma already bring that sort

engineers. Figma already bring that sort of process a lot closer that you can collaborate around one artifact that everybody can give inputs and prototype

and bring sort of more of a close to um uh the reality artifacts into into uh these people's hands. where

with cursor it's even one step closer is you can actually poke around and play with uh these artifacts that are functional and working.

>> I'm curious what does it mean for collaboration among these teams as you're >> mentioning um the collapse of that iteration

>> um and and the speed um and also what is what does it mean for the different roles that's involved in design?

>> Yes.

So I think maybe like over the last I don't know 15 years or so I think the the art of making software fragmented a lot and

then we kind of split into different roles each role kind of use their own tool you use their own artifact they think in their own kind of words and lingo say the designers are stuck in

Figma before maybe it's like sketch their word actually like you know files and then the the PMs maybe they're like just writing docs and running meetings

or maybe they're in Google Docs um and say the data people maybe like you know some other tool and then everyone's like kind of siloed in their own way and then

we need to kind of come up with a process to tie everything uh or like build better tools to kind of unify everything. We tried that at notion but

everything. We tried that at notion but the problem is like people have like already developed like so much like habits

there's like inertia to kind of change that or like change people's tools um or like kind of

um like you can't really force anyone to like adopt something new.

um that doesn't perfectly fit them. Um

but with AI, with no uh with cursor, things kind of flip again cuz we want to kind of build something where it can

kind of, you know, connect and absorb all of these artifacts um and formats.

And later maybe even like within cursor like there could be different views of the same code like showing the code as

raw code or like as is almost like just the very beginning.

um the act of making software is really just modifying the code like in some sense like the PM writing the PRD is modifying the code but they're doing it

through a more passive like organizational way maybe the designers influence it more on the visuals um but when you do this you know

disjointedly there's so much like back and forth collaboration issues as you grow the team it gets even more complex.

People start like breaking the software apart. Things are no longer simple, no

apart. Things are no longer simple, no longer unified. like we always talk

longer unified. like we always talk about like you kind of ship your work chart type of thing and then the different roles kind of fight uh like designers are right the engineers are

right the PMs are right but like you know there's this shared truth which is the code where like you know you can also gather a lot of information

around putting everything synthesizing everything together um then the agent can kind of handle all these things that you might actually not

know fully but it kind of you know knows the truth. It could know the present

the truth. It could know the present which is maybe like you know what's in your codebase what are the actual you know running tasks or projects even

gathering fe feedback or information from the real world. It could be also like you know from the past say like all the knowledge that you've accumulated

your team preferences your like how the codebase evolved in goods maybe there's also the future which is like say you're planning ahead you're like thinking

about the the vision you're maybe like ideating some like bigger ideas you can actually do all of this with

just one to one agent but it might you know for each individual user or team, it might take a different shape.

And then like what we want is like there's like a base experience that almost works for anyone, anything, but you can get more specific um if you know

what you're doing or if you have specific needs. You can even maybe you

specific needs. You can even maybe you know use cursor as if you were using Figma at some point in the future. Um

but the difference is you are not interacting with these siloed apps with their own like formats and then you don't have to do the

conversion manually with meetings or whatever like it just does it. Then all

you need to do is you're kind of thinking about the idea you're like iterating on it in whatever way that is the best for you. For the for the engineer, it might be like a code

editor, but maybe for a designer is something more visual. For the PM, it might be something more like a document.

>> That makes sense.

I'm curious given that there's a lot more focus and emphasis on this concept of taste after AI comes about and now there's also this coworker that's an

agent helping with >> writing code designing elements uh of the product. Where would the taste live?

the product. Where would the taste live?

Where does that come from? Can you rely on >> agents for having good taste? Um, is

that still heavily reliant on the creator that's the human designer or developer?

>> I don't really like people talking about taste as a word because I think it's so ambiguous.

>> Like how I see it is more like I think taste is kind of like there's a part of

like you're selecting out of you know all the options. Um but

in order to do that you have to kind of see everything or like you have seen it.

You have maybe dug into the past. You

have kind of figured out oh these are the ways people did this kind of thing.

you made a connection of, you know, some some stuff from the past where you've seen in nature or, I don't know, some

human made it or nature made it and then you kind of connected that to to your thing or the thing you want to do. Um,

or you kind of over time build like a like a preference. It's almost like you're self- selecting a boundary of uh this is what is right, this is what is

beautiful, this is what is good. Um

and I think it's very different for each person. There is no right, there is no

person. There is no right, there is no wrong. Um

wrong. Um it's more dependent on say like the things that you've seen. It's almost

like an LLM. But the problem with an LLM is like it actually has seen everything and it doesn't really have an opinion

or like it kind of confused itself thinking that people prefer purple gradients everywhere.

Um but what is good is like the LM because it has seen a lot of things. It

can do the baseline really fast and really good. Then the thing on top is

really good. Then the thing on top is taste or like your self- selection of what is good like you're kind of drawing the boundary. That is your decision.

the boundary. That is your decision.

Though the AI can increasingly help you do that. Say we have a new thing in

do that. Say we have a new thing in cursor called plan mode. If you type in the prompt and then you don't really want to fill in the details, you can

switch to plan go. it will kind of just build the spec for you and then you can add details, you can change it as you want. Um,

want. Um, >> yeah, >> but it's almost like I don't really believe in say you give the agent something longunning or like it's really

like oluded like a really non-specific prompt and then expected to give you exactly what you want. like it's just not going to

you want. like it's just not going to work. There needs to be something for

work. There needs to be something for the human to specify what is good, what is right, how I want

to do it. If you don't put in that opinion, it will just produce AI slop.

>> Yeah, you were alluding earlier to this sort of, you know, fight between product managers, designers, and engineers to or this sort of dance. um an engine of you were saying a few years ago the categories were somewhat different as

there is this blurring um how do you think these categories will evolve um over the years?

>> I think like people will always have their strength or their unique special skill or some spike.

um say like some people are more good at coordinating, some people are good at the visual space, some people are maybe good at architecting like you know the

lower level constructs. Um,

but I I think of all of these people as just like like they're software builders or makers.

Like we kind of started there like if you look back when so like the early computing era there was no title or people were maybe like

researchers were like but they they maybe designed the low-level architecture they maybe even you know built the UI and how to display the UI

on the screen and the whole thing maybe one person or two or five and when you did bad. And also I think

back then there were like less say economic constraints where they were funded and they weren't like trying to make money as much. So they kind of made

the whole thing really whole. And now

it's like you kind of break everything down.

You try to optimize them with like processes and cause optimizations and people's become like

you know boxed into little areas and problem sets when the whole thing is actually all together.

Um, and that causes a lot of problems I think like people people now make software that I don't know

like they don't even think of like like there's some like ideal that's kind of lost and people think too much on the

technical problems, the design problems, the money problems, not the whole thing or what we're trying to make better for people

but you know we're kind of going backwards now as you know they say tools like cursor

if you were you know self identified as a designer or developer or something like I used to also struggle with this I started like making stuff myself the

whole thing and then I came to the US I got a job titled product designer I I stopped coding

I made mocks and prototypes and I waited for them to happen for like years and they don't happen or like they ended up shipping as like a YouTube video.

That's crazy.

But, you know, with this new tool, a designer can build. they can actually like, you know, work on their craft, the the stuff that they really care about,

make that really good and let the rest, you know, be handled by the agents.

They can, you know, kind of put their taste on top and all the stuff that they don't want to worry about, give it to the agents.

Um, but you can also assemble like a really good team. So like there's like really good in for engineers, front end engineers, PMs who are like I don't know

not just running meetings get all of them together give them the same tool the same code base they can start covering each

other's like you know weaknesses and then amplify their strength and the agent kind of holds everything and you know instead of you pinging this guy uh

where is your design and knows.

>> Yeah, that resolves a lot of um the common conflicts of spending more effort on the functional part of the software or spending more time on the

>> artistic um aesthetic side of >> the the product itself and being appealing to the users. And you have worked at many of the very design focused design ccentric companies from

notion to even prior to that Asana like now given sort of the democratization of who can touch

that external facing um aesthetic part of the product. How do you think about influencing even I guess your current team and uh people at cursor to spend

more effort in thinking about that versus just the functional part of the product itself?

>> Yeah.

Yeah. One thing I want to call out is design is not just about aesthetics.

It is act like how I think of it is like it's all it's it actually includes all the say the architectural designs or like all the concepts of what this thing

is or like the company say for notion as an example notion is a pure conceptual product

meaning every single concept was designed by a person.

So like in in notion it is really just blocks pages databases the workspace and then everything kind of works around

these concepts and then at every layer there's like a representation of them there could be like you know at the very top is like the UI or like the brand or like the visuals the aesthetics but then

there's actually the aesthetics every layer how you architect say like the front-end code and architecture how you know, how the reactive stays sync and how you render stuff to like how do

you like store these objects, how they, you know, relate to each other to all the core concepts of the thing. And if

you look at software, it's like it's actually really simple if you look at the concepts themselves. Um, so design is kind of like trying to figure out

what is the best configuration and the simplest state for all of this.

Some people maybe only focus on the visuals or the interactions or certain slices. Um, but

slices. Um, but I think the the beauty is actually putting things all together as well as you can. So I think it it is really

you can. So I think it it is really about what I just talked about is like not seeing design as just should we use a six pixel border radius

or four.

Um but it's rather like how do I design the most simple system, fewest number of concepts, fewest

code paths to do the most things for most people.

You you guys obviously have incredible product market fit with developers. Can

and we've alluded to a bunch of it, but can you share more about maybe either how you guys have navigated the idea maze of how you want to serve designers or just more around what what kind of tooling you you think there's an opportunity to provide?

>> Mhm. Yeah.

So, I think cursor like is still like our primary focus is on professional developers and teams. Um

but because of that like people around them are already here.

>> Yeah.

>> And I think for the longest time we've been actually intentionally making cursor pretty hard to get in for say the

nontechnical people. Um but they're are

nontechnical people. Um but they're are here now and they actually struggle to get in and they really want to get in.

Um, one example is like when you open up cursor, there's like three buttons. It

says open project, connect to SSH, clone repo or something. As a beginner or like a non-techno person, I can't understand

any of this. Um, but what if say like we just kind of give you the agent view blank, you can just start doing things.

Like there's a lot of little things we can kind of fix to just make cursor feel more friendly and welcoming for these people

um who are like kind of engine people who are um maybe they know software concepts or certain layers but they might not be

able to code. Um I want to make make sure that when they come in they can like without feeling overwhelmed or like feeling like ah this is like a code

editor. It's an IDE. It is more like I

editor. It's an IDE. It is more like I can start doing things and as I start doing things

um I can maybe like pick the path that I prefer. So like a designer maybe

prefer. So like a designer maybe maybe they're just like kind of chatting with the browser next to it.

Um as the agent is like making edits they can kind of preview the changes they can maybe like interact in the browser pick this element change like ah I want to swap this with something else

and then boom it happens. Um

so how we do it is not um say creating new products or splitting cursor that is the same thing but just like different preconfigurations and packaging of the

same thing.

Because like kind of like what I just said like thinking about the concepts like cursor itself is actually really simple or like AI agents in general are

pretty simple.

um what you want to do is actually like not um like if you look at I don't know like a chat GPT agent versus like a cursor

versus like a replet a vzero a notion agent even the architecture or how they work or like they're almost the same.

Um so what if we can come up with like a set of you know universal shared concepts for interacting with AI with

agents with code with software but you can kind of mutate each each one to fit more people and to fit more use

cases.

Um, and then each of them can leverage say the best model to do this UI thing with the best view that fits me. I can

configure it however I want. If I want to see everything, I can. If I don't want to see anything, I can too.

This leads to my question of over the last few years um and I don't know if it's few years or a decade there is the concept of purpose-built tools for

certain persona whether it's web flow for you know um persona or use cases like for landing pages >> vers um visero for more of the you know

front-end developers building um building uh nextjs apps um there's tools for designers there tools handle from design to engineering

>> where now there's more of a concept of >> the everything app chatbt is kind of everything app >> notion is kind of everything app uh you can go to it for your note takingaking but you can also publish notion pages

cursor is becoming more of a everything app is a path that we're going down towards of having these all-encompassing apps that can do a lot more things that

used to be captured by a single purpose app is there still place for purpose-built tools for a specific use case or persona. How do you see that?

>> Yeah.

>> Dynamic.

>> I think it's just like different philosophies of doing things and making software.

Um I think there's like almost like two ways you can look at the thing. There is

this like the user centric human centered design path which is you know you start

from a problem you identify the group of people who have this problem figure out you know what they want build really specific

solutions for them versus like there's the more system angle to think about things where you're just kind of looking at the software

itself, how it is composed and then think about where do I tweak a little bit to satisfy this constraint or to make this use case

work or to enable this tool to work for these people.

I think it's like fundamentally two different philosophies and then I think it is much easier to do the say the user centric uh way

um but it kind of limits you from the beginning because when you start building these specific solutions

they only work for those specific people. If you want to grow the people

people. If you want to grow the people or you want to grow the use cases, you actually need to kind of tear apart everything you have your core concepts

and a lot of people just can't do that.

So what they do is instead of doing that they add more things, more concepts, more features and then there will be a point where this thing no longer serves your initial

group of people anymore. The simple

thing is no longer simple. the

purposeful thing is no longer simple.

And all of these purposeful apps, they're kind of selfish. They are

siloing people, siloing workflows for file formats, creating islands.

When if you look at the thing like all these purposeful app whatever like I also work at ASA asauna the core concepts are really tasks and projects

everything around tasks and projects everything they add needs to work with those and that naturally limits what it can do

versus say like notion like how we see notion it is not taking it is disguised as note takingaking Um like you come in you can start from a

blank page you can type but then what you're doing is actually like you know blog pages databases and a workspace each block is almost like a JSON objects

a page is just a array of JSON objects and then we render each block in the you know the layout and the type it is and then you can put them in a database. Now

they have you know more properties they share more stuff there's more hierarchy and all pages can nest each other that is notion but then you can do whatever with it you can have a task project

database they all work together they can be a list they can be a board do whatever you want but then the problem is you know for

these more universal type of apps it's like because it's so open-ended it's kind of hard to get started that if I don't have

the patience to kind of figure out how it works, I might not even get to the test and projects.

So there's always that tension, but it is fixable.

You can build better packaging, you can use AI. Um,

use AI. Um, so I think there's just like my personal uh preference is I would try to build

something that works better for everyone than just ah this these people are the people we care about. I don't care about everything

about. I don't care about everything else and then I think they should use my thing. That's not how you do it.

thing. That's not how you do it.

We talk about AI, we talk about agents and we talk about how it really um speeds up um building things and prototyping. But when it really comes to

prototyping. But when it really comes to these type of you know helping users to understand a product better on boarding learning the new concepts also to you as

a as a designer design leader um how does like interacting with AI really improves the usability utility of the

product?

Mhm. Yeah. I see AI almost like it's almost like a universal interface and then the the bare minimum of it is

really just a prompt and then you get some response. Then you can kind of put

some response. Then you can kind of put this into like different forms. It could be like a little input like a chat box.

Um it could be like a sidebar, you know, you see the chat. It could be maybe you select something, you can do stuff with it, but it could also say like you

completely transform this layer. It's

not chat. It's not like an input. It's

more fitted to say it's more purposeful even. Um, but

underneath it is still the same thing.

It is still the same AI, same agent, same architecture, same like we can flip different models and prompts and stuff.

And then fundamentally that that is what it is. But because of that you can actually build a lot of different layers and shapes. Then each

person can find the shape that fits them and then it will feel more comfortable. Um

but also there's always this like baseline thing which is it's just it's almost like Google like chat GPT is just a box. You can actually put whatever but

a box. You can actually put whatever but there will be more specific tools that fit each person or each use case better.

>> Does every software from now on becomes a chat box to begin with and what's the role >> of UX design plays in that?

>> Yeah, I think like imagine um there is only chat.

I think that will also be like a really bad experience because you know you stare at a blank and put you need to do something. You need to initiate the

something. You need to initiate the thing. You need to ask the right

thing. You need to ask the right questions. Put in the right prompt. You

questions. Put in the right prompt. You

might not know what kind of response you will get unless you play with this thing a lot. as a new person maybe like you

a lot. as a new person maybe like you know they might try it the first time they get something that doesn't feel like what they wanted and they're like

ah this is not for me this is bad um but I think there's there's so much potential where like I think the models today can already do so

much stuff for a lot of people for a lot of use cases we need to kind of design a mechanism to kind of help

transform that input output into the form or format or views or workflows

of the people you know today get them through that thing to hear instead of like forcing people to be ah now you need to use this tool and then

you actually don't know how it connects with your current workflow you need to figure it out you don't really know what how it works it feels kind of scary ah what do I do you know versus like you

actually ease them in through the thing they are used to. And I think those are actually the more optimal form factors for say the individual

person or the use case itself cuz I I know like I I just don't want to like typing a question every time or ah it's give me like this wall of text of text

response I need to like read versus say like uh your you know the lines that you autocomplete just appears you just press tab or like Maybe I just

select some element in my artboard and say ah make four variants of it and boom it's there but underneath it's the same thing.

>> On this question um I I I have um one more one more thought is um when when thinking about creativity a lot of times when you have more

constraints and more guard rails it's actually more of a friend to uh to bring to creativity than not. Whereas now we have a much more open-ended world. We

have a much more capable um tool that we can explore a lot more unconstrained domain and fashions.

>> How do you still try to apply constraint I guess in your um line of work?

>> Yeah. And how do you think the software itself now that we have uh this open chat window and chat box that can still brings that constraints in to give the

builders >> more inspirations and creativity?

>> Yeah, I think the biggest constraint is it's kind of like simplicity in a sense.

Um meaning like there's a limit of how much concepts or things you can expose to any

given individual at any given time for them to kind of figure things out.

So there is a natural constraint on that side. For example, like on the cognitive side, there's maybe like a constraint on space. So like cursor the

window you can stretch it like this or up. What if it's like this then you

up. What if it's like this then you start reducing things where like you're kind of like prioritizing what to show what is the most important and then those things actually don't change that

much or like it is really important to figure those things out and then you can kind of build a mechanism where

you can kind of accommodate more things.

say like there's secondary level things that maybe some people want to do. Maybe

it's like more specific modes of operations or parts of the workflow.

Maybe it is like um for different kinds of individual or preferences. Um but they are still like

preferences. Um but they are still like kind of layers of the core concepts or

things. They're not kind of linearly

things. They're not kind of linearly like additive throw out all at all all at you at once.

Um and I think the the the interface where how software manifests themselves or how we design even it will start becoming

less about say the designer decides ah these are the buttons where they are and then it's like a fixed thing but rather it's like there's like shared

concepts and shared me mechanisms of the same thing but it could say they take different forms where you can kind of expose ways for people to customize

and make them their own. Um

then it's like the designer what they're really thinking about is like what are the most important concepts? How do they relate to each

concepts? How do they relate to each other at every layer? Say like for 80% of people the defaults what should they be what should be the simplest state of

this app or this thing what is the default for maybe like you can start forking it for different people and then it's like maybe at the second layer

there's like you start exposing more like the power user features or the the different archetypes of what you can do

but the default should still stay simple and then the ideal is like a lot of the tools um they don't really tell you what's

going on or how the things work.

Um one example is like you know most of the CLI coding agents today is like they kind of force you to use this tiny little window with this tiny prompt like that's almost like all the interactions

you can do and then you're kind of delegating everything to the agent. you

don't really know how things work versus for cursors like if you prefer something minimal I think it's fine you can do that but you can start digging into more

things you can customize the agent you can make your own custom mode with like different model preferences and which tools I want which prompts I want you

can pick like uh maybe like instead of viewing just code I want like a preview I want like a doc thing I want a browser

I can change all the colors. Like it's

all up to you. I can prefer the keyboard. I can prefer the mouse.

keyboard. I can prefer the mouse.

And then the designers, what they're really doing is they're thinking of what is the minimal set of abstractions,

the system to kind of handle all of these permutations.

I love that concept of you're not just seeing the tool itself as a tool, but it's actually a toolbox where you can customize and configure it to fit your purpose and build your own tool

>> um that you know fits uh your workflow and and give a ton of flexibility to to the end user. That's sort of the eos of cursor and notion that the more you unpack from the beginning, there's more to come.

>> Yeah.

>> Um >> there's more to play and tinker, >> right? because I think there's a lot of

>> right? because I think there's a lot of us who are actually really into that kind of stuff.

>> For sure. Yeah. Rio, you have an impeccable taste and sense of design. Uh

I'm very curious on your day-to-day life, how do you cultivate um your envir the surrounding environments, your own

>> um surroundings uh to continue to find inspirations and bring the best design out to the world.

Mhm.

>> Are there things you do, practices you want to share with the audience?

>> I don't really have like a routine or like it's kind of sporadic.

Um like I don't sit in Figma all day and making mocks. Um,

making mocks. Um, I like um it's like doing everything at once type of type of vibe. So like I might be

thinking about a like longer problem.

Um, I would maybe like just write. I like

writing and kind of thinking in bullets.

I'll like go out of the office on a walk and then take my phone with like a notion page and I'll just start writing.

I'll make sketches.

I'll maybe play individual space. I'll maybe

like, you know, build a prototype and code. Um,

code. Um, a lot of my inspirations come from like not forcing it and kind of leaving

some blank space to let things simmer.

A lot of it comes from like just looking at stuff or look looking at everything, not just software.

So like you can look at print design, graphic design, motion, films music art

anything that humans made. The nature

side of things are really cool, too.

Like learning about natural systems. I I have a biome major. So like there's a lot of similarities and like you know how many layers of things you can build,

how they interact with each other. Um,

looking at the past helps a lot. Um, so

like my Rio OS project kind of started from like last year I was just like a b I

bought a bunch of old Macs and iPods and I was just playing with them and I wanted to like kind of recreate the feelings. I actually really want to ask

feelings. I actually really want to ask about that because a lot of you know designers profile page has the most >> shiny forwardlooking futuristic designs

where you have like I don't know which year it is like a Mac OS >> interface with like the original version of iPod icon.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> Um tell us more about about the real OS project.

>> Yeah. I started the thing um from so I was leaving notion and I make noises when I am in meetings. So like, oh no, we're

it's all the same thing, stuff like that. And I wanted to make them a little

that. And I wanted to make them a little gift. So I built like a soundboard app

gift. So I built like a soundboard app uh with cursor. It was just one app.

Like it looked like really bad like Tailwind default styles. And then I just said, hm, what if we like made it more

like retro Mac OS? And then it put it in like a almost like a more retro Mac OS type window

basically like put it in the box and then I'm like add a menu bar and I add it on on top. Um

then I'm like now I have a menu bar and a window. Why not just make more apps

a window. Why not just make more apps and more windows? And then that's how it kind of started. And then I just couldn't stop for like I don't know four or three months.

>> Yeah. But a lot of the interfaces that I created I started from it's like it's kind of inspired from

system 7.

There is like accuracy but also like I added some like future stuff in it. Um

and then I actually made like more themes. I added like a Mac OS 10 theme

themes. I added like a Mac OS 10 theme like the first Aqua theme. I added like Windows 95 and XP and then if you swap

between them and you play with the OS it feels really authentic to each but then it's actually the same thing. So that's

kind of like the the message I want to kind of tell people is like we've been almost doing the same thing over and over again from the very beginning but

maybe given you know the technical constraints of each era.

There's like just that's how it ended end ended there and how it ended how how it came to be.

Um but we kind of carried a lot of these concepts and patterns over to even now and then we we are actually still living

in it. Um

in it. Um and I don't think things will change that much. Meaning

that much. Meaning um there is these like timeless things that don't change much

and like it kind of all comes back to people who are trying to come up with some really familiar ideas and then

bringing them to like a new medium.

But we're doing the same thing again with back in 1984 and now like people are just I don't know using paint to

draw some pictures. There's like a text editor. You can type some stuff. There's

editor. You can type some stuff. There's

like a you know different different concepts that we put in little pictures. The

icons >> the desktop like none of that really changed.

>> Yeah. the uh timeless uh concepts and and software we're using is the browser, the the player, the uh the chat windows

and those are all on the on the real OS um project. So for the audience who want

um project. So for the audience who want to check it out, it's at real.loo.

>> Yes, os.real.loo.

>> OS.real.loo.

Awesome. We'll wrap there. Thank you so much, Rio, for for coming. This is

awesome.