The End of the Designer–Engineer Divide

My personal KPI at cursor this year is to turn all the designers into coders. The roles will start blurring. The designers will start coding, the engineers will start designing and then our shared language is code. You start not by say getting [music] everything perfect. You actually start by building. If you get something bad or like ugly, it's actually your job to make it pretty [music] the way you want it. And that's the part that the AIS can't really do right now. As we break the boundaries

between these tools, [music] as everyone can start talking with the code, magical things can happen. [music]

Today, I am excited to welcome Rio Lou. He's the head of design at Cursor, the leading AI coding tool used by more than a million people worldwide. Before that, he was a founding designer at Notion and a product designer at Stripe and Asana. Today we'll talk about his background and design process and then we'll hear his thoughts on the future of design in a world of AI. Rio, welcome to Design Review. >> Thank you. >> Maybe to start off, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background

and how you got into design in the first place. >> Mhm. I was just like making websites since I was 11. I just kept making bigger websites. The first one was um for this anime that I really liked. I just made it for myself. And then I started making like community websites like low forums and then I made one when I was 17 for like Apple fanboys uh in China. >> Um that got like kind of popular and I just kept doing it. When I started I did not know like what's the difference

between like design or engineering or product. It was just the whole thing. Then I became more like a professional designer. Um, I made a couple startups myself and then I got an offer from Asana. So I came and I became a designer. >> Were you technical all those years like when you first started to design? >> Um, I would say I kind of self-taught most of my software design building parts. So, I studied CS and bio in college, but most of the CS courses were like so ancient.

They did tell me like more systematically how to program, but they weren't that helpful. >> Mhm. >> Like how I learned is really by just making stuff, building things without knowing what what the I'm doing. Like I did not know the the concept, the words. I just I want to do this. I'll just figure out how to do it. Use whatever tool that's there. And then you learn by doing that. >> Yeah. >> But now it's like with the agent with cursor you make this process so quick

like instead of you felt uh like coding is a little scary. It wasn't like you know it's not something that we as designers is supposed to do or like you just feel like in order for me to start something new or like prototype I need to learn all of these like low-level concepts that are kind of dependencies. It's kind of scary >> and that'll take forever, right? >> It will take like the fear. >> It will take like month almost like you need to like really focus on this and

then go to a boot camp and whatever >> versus now >> you just ask the agent and then if you don't know like exactly what you're doing, agent's able to like fill you with the gaps. It can do research for you. It can search the web on uh what is the best way to do XYZ and it will help you do that and then you learn and you learn by doing and you get the result really quickly and you can iterate really quickly. >> Yeah. >> So that's the difference >> and it sounds like you went through this

journey of being >> frustrated that you were kind of put in the design box of like this is the little piece that you should focus on >> and now you have all these tools and you're able to actually build the thing that you envision that you've designed. and you can make it come to life and be real. >> And I know you kind of have a personal mission this year. >> Tell tell us more about that. >> Yeah. So my personal KPI at cursor this year is to turn all the designers into coders. >> Mhm.

>> And then I don't want them to be say we're forcing you to start learning how to code or like how does the code editor work? How does get work? All these little details, but rather now it's time to just start building. like you actually don't have to care about all the details anymore. Just let the agents fill the gap for you. But now you can actually start coding without knowing how to code. But you know like as designers, as people who worked on software so long, we all have intuition

of how things should work. Like we all know these things like I don't know say like version control for get files and folders all these things. We know them. we just maybe don't know exactly like what is the right way to do it at this time or all the little details. But now it's like you don't have to think about it anymore. >> So for anybody watching maybe they're a designer, >> they feel stuck in that box. They haven't been able to build the thing. >> Yeah.

>> Break out. What's like the first step? Like what are the things that they should do? >> Yeah. >> To put them on that path to your KPIs of turning them into developers too. It's actually fine or it's good to play with the more like vibe coding tools. So like Figma make or vzero like those kind of help you get started in a more constrained fashion >> and they kind of work with your existing workflows better but you will run into a point where like those more constrainted

version of coding doesn't let you do everything and then that's when you go to cursor >> and then you realize that oh the stuff I do in cursor and the stuff I do in Figma make or vzero are actually the same or like they feel very similar. It's very simple. But then in cursor you can actually do everything like everything anything cuz it's just like we are kind of unopinionated. It is just like a suite of tools and agent with an editor that can write any code anything iOS web you can even write

a novel like a book with it. Mhm. How long have you been at Cursor? And tell us more about your role and and what you do in the day-to-day there. >> I've been at Cursor for almost 10 months, but it feels like five years >> like in AI time. So, I'm the head of design. I was like the first product design person at Cursor. When I joined, we had like 20 people. Now, we have 250 people. >> Yeah. >> Our team is still really small. We have like four people including myself. Three

of us work primarily on the product and then we have uh Justin who works on the brand. We're trying to expand the team a little bit. Mhm. >> Um, everyone on the team codes and I think how design works at cursor the difference is that one a lot of our engineers they also kind of design cursor because cursor primarily like at its core it is still like a tool designed for professional developers to do stuff with AI and kind of augment themselves. >> Right. >> You have a lot of your own users at the

company. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like every single person at the company is a user and then every single person hasn't has cool ideas and as you know like engineers they also are very different each of them some of them prefer like doing everything in the keyboard. Some of them are also like you know button clickers. People have different preferences of the suite of tools they need. They might want different buttons to appear. The core of the system needs to be really simple,

company. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like every single person at the company is a user and then every single person hasn't has cool ideas and as you know like engineers they also are very different each of them some of them prefer like doing everything in the keyboard. Some of them are also like you know button clickers. People have different preferences of the suite of tools they need. They might want different buttons to appear. The core of the system needs to be really simple,

but it kind of adapts to different needs and different people's like preferences. Um, figure out like say I wake up today and then boom, there's like three new buttons. Why do we need them to be there? What are the things that we can unify and clean up so that you know things feel simple, but then you can still do all these things? How do different projects and ideas fit together? How do we decompose them and then merge them back? How do we keep the thing simple? But still like you start

simple but you can gradually get to a pretty sophisticated place. You don't lose functionality but things get more organized. >> Yeah. It's like layers of an onion. You want it to seem simple at first glance, but if you want power tools, you're able to uncover those. >> Exactly. >> Talk about um you've been there 10 months now. >> You've shipped a lot of really major things and worked on and designed a lot of really important changes. Can you talk about some of those?

>> Yeah. two biggest thing that I've done. One is the first day I joined. The problem was cursor maybe earlier this year it was more like a couple features slapped on top of VS code. There is the tab which is the inline completion thing still like the world's best the most magical tab experience. We had the chat which was you're just talking to the model with maybe some codebased information maybe not and then it's just gives you like a textual output. It doesn't do anything.

>> That was like the primary interface of cursor and it's it was like a little sidebar on the side that you have to toggle it open yourself. And then there's the composer which is like the chat but it can offer to edit some files and that's the only thing it it did is like if the chat outputs some code you can apply the code changes to me that and the chat is basically the same thing. >> Mhm. And then like November last year, Cursor added the agent. That was

actually what hooked me to cursor. Like I tried cursor three times before I I turned every time. I had to search on the web how to turn on the agent. I couldn't find it myself. >> It was like a little check box in the composer tab that says normal. It's like normal versus agent. Nobody knows what normal means, >> right? >> And there was like other things. So like there was a bug finder, there was some random crap around and then the first thing I did was let's just unify

everything. The things that should be similar or like gobbled together actually you know one thing. So we merge the chat, the composer, the agent into one thing and then it's just agent and then agents can have different modes or like how how how I think about it is they're all agents same agent but with different settings applied to them. M >> say like ask mode is just the agent without editing capabilities or maybe like you know we're adding a thing called plan mode that is just the agent

everything. The things that should be similar or like gobbled together actually you know one thing. So we merge the chat, the composer, the agent into one thing and then it's just agent and then agents can have different modes or like how how how I think about it is they're all agents same agent but with different settings applied to them. M >> say like ask mode is just the agent without editing capabilities or maybe like you know we're adding a thing called plan mode that is just the agent

before it wants to you know run the plan build the stuff you have to hit a button we just block you from doing that but they're all talking to the same thing and to the user we just flip the default so you always get the agent when you open up cursor that's the only thing I did And then the agent took off like that. like we kind of see the data from like primarily tab users, primarily agent users like >> and then the second thing I did which is pretty recent is like after we flip the

default to agents we just noticed like the world kind of changed and also like there were you know newer agent tools that are almost pure agents and everyone kind of moved from even earlier this year primarily still writing code but then it's kind of assisting you >> to now the agent writes most code and then you're mostly interacting with the agent. >> So with cursor 2.0 all I did was cursor used to say show the default UI hierarchy from like a file ccentric

view. So you have a list of files you have the editors that show the file themselves and then the agent is kind of like on the side. All I did was I flipped the order and then in this new agent layout when you start it's just one agent. When it's empty it's just a prompt box. You can do whatever. As you do more maybe you run multiple agents you can see like multiple agents their states. You can swap between them. You can see ah this one needs my review. This one's blocked. This one's still

view. So you have a list of files you have the editors that show the file themselves and then the agent is kind of like on the side. All I did was I flipped the order and then in this new agent layout when you start it's just one agent. When it's empty it's just a prompt box. You can do whatever. As you do more maybe you run multiple agents you can see like multiple agents their states. You can swap between them. You can see ah this one needs my review. This one's blocked. This one's still

ongoing. Maybe it can run for a long time. And then as you're doing that, you actually don't have to look at the code if you don't want to. But if you do, you hit this review button and then we list out like every single change you can just scroll through and then review really easily versus say it before everything's like in this really file ccentric view. When you open up cursor when you have nothing, you still have like a blank editor, a blank file tree. It's really hard for like a person who

ongoing. Maybe it can run for a long time. And then as you're doing that, you actually don't have to look at the code if you don't want to. But if you do, you hit this review button and then we list out like every single change you can just scroll through and then review really easily versus say it before everything's like in this really file ccentric view. When you open up cursor when you have nothing, you still have like a blank editor, a blank file tree. It's really hard for like a person who

who isn't used to coding to do anything in that state versus now we flipped it when you start uncursor in this new world you can just type in your prompt boom see what happens >> you've talked a lot about you know simplifying UI simplifying interactions is there a lesson in there for uh design founders as they're building their prompts >> yeah I think of like design you can do it in two ways one way is more like like I call it the traditional human- centered design way. Meaning like you

start from a set of users, their problems, you come up with like really specific solutions for their problems. Um, and then you can design like a little world for them that way. The problem with that is like as you start working on more problems and then you ask you make more of these specific features, it's really hard to kind of put them back together. And then what you ended up usually is more buttons. Bun bun bun bun bun concept concept concept more levels of nav and hierarchy

then a thing that you were designing for this small group of people that solve their problem becomes something really massive that's hard to understand that doesn't really work that doesn't conceptualize as well versus you design in a more like systems first way meaning you kind of decompose the problems into what are the parts s the primitives, the low-level concepts. When they work together, they solve the problems. And you try to keep that core concepts, the

the core set of concepts and primitives as simple as possible, but they all are somewhat flexible. Say for for example when we were working on notion like the core concepts are just blocks, pages, databases and the people the teams and then notion is just like different configurations of these things and then when they get put together they do amazing things that kind of emerge complexity. So it's all about figuring out for the world you're building what are the core

elements that actually like they will always stay they won't really change but they will evolve they will you know >> make new connections each of them will get better and then how do you map your you know user problems the things you want to do your road map your ideas to this thing under and then ideally you don't add things all the time. You're actually like decomposing things, merging them back, figuring out what is the better configuration of the stuff

that you have. Now, if you tweak that a little bit, boom, you solve the problem. >> Yeah. I think one of my takeaways is um as products scale and certainly, you know, you probably cursor is one of the fastest growing products ever in history. Yeah. >> Um the tendency is to keep adding more features and the the product expands in complexity as the as the user base scales and you know all the use cases expand and if you're not intentional about going back through and rethinking

things and pairing it back down to the simpler state, it's very easy for these products to get out of control and then it becomes something that is for nobody. Yes. >> Because it doesn't have an opinion. Yes. >> And it's impossible to work with these primitives like you describe. And it sounds like that is an exercise that you are regularly going through. >> Oh yeah. Maybe like on paper or like to the users like the concepts don't really change but underneath it's like getting

rebuilt every couple months. >> Mhm. >> And then things that were maybe like disjointed they get unified as we go. It's like a healthy tension. It's like people want to add things, people want to experiment. You let them do. You let them be. They built some stuff. Maybe they actually just slap a button here. But then like as designers, we can help people like rethink how to fit things better. Like what are the common parts that are shared that can you know if you

fix this common part, it not only makes this feature better, but makes everything better. >> Awesome. I I would love for you to walk us through your design process at Cursor and how you've built some of these things. >> Uhhuh. So, one thing I would love to see here is if you can time travel us back to cursor, maybe before you joined or around the time that you joined, talk about your feedback looking at the site, especially now, >> and and then pull up the most recent one

and talk about some of the changes that you made along the way. >> Let's go. So, I just pulled up cursor when it started in 2023. Wow. >> What is this? What does it do? >> It's very dark also. >> Yeah, very dark. Very like not sure what these gradients are. >> Yeah. >> Not sure what this is either. >> Mhm. >> It's like >> Yeah, I see some blurry code. >> Very very not sure. >> A text box. >> Looks like the fonts are not loaded, but it might be something. >> Okay.

>> Not that great. Chat with your project. Ask about codebase. >> All right. Now, we're getting into a little bit more specific. >> This thing is kind of crazy. >> Mind follows you. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So extra. Like what are you trying to do? Like you want people to focus on this line, >> right? >> Like what the hell? >> Yeah. It's distracting, huh? >> Yeah. >> Or it makes you think you're living in the future right now. It's like Tron or something.

>> But if you look at all these UI, like I just don't know what I'm looking >> Yeah. That's always the problem with showing specific screenshots especially of code is it's impossible for somebody to get the context of it. And a lot of the code examples and stuff is like so foreign like as a reader say like maybe I'm doing like a B2B SAS app or I'm doing healthcare and then I see some random agent interface service code like I I just don't it doesn't talk to me >> right it's not your code right

>> all right we got a bunch of social proof here >> okay back in the days cursor what is really good at is the tab but there's no tab >> what the hell >> yeah what's the biggest thing like you go to make change on this? What's like the number one thing that you want to change and and get right on the next version? >> Kill all the gradients. >> Why? >> Just very distracting. You're like trying to create a scene, a world for people to come in and when they come in, you're really like disoriented.

>> Mhm. >> Like you don't know what what is this or >> Yep. That second section is the thing that I would most change. >> This one? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. It doesn't show you anything. >> Yeah. I can't figure out what it's actually me of and it's prime real >> zero information about what the what cursor can do. >> At the chat tab, the composer >> when you toggle these things on, it actually defaults you to the chat tab. You have to click composer. >> You have to find this normal/ aent toggle.

>> You hit on agent, then you can do something, >> right? >> Versus this, >> right? >> You can just do something. >> Yep. And it defaults to the agent. You don't have to go through and click all the things, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yep. >> That's it. >> Okay. Let's take a look at um the latest version. >> Yes. We kind of clean up all the It's like the foundation of the brand. >> Mhm. >> Like fine-tuned every single detail from the logo, the type face. We have like a

custom type face called Karthogic. >> Um >> I noticed it's not dark mode also. >> Uhhuh. But it's like the idea is it it should follow your your system. >> Ah, okay. So that's a default. >> But if you're dark, it's still dark. >> Yeah. >> But I don't want to kind of, you know, >> give people brightness in the day if they want. >> Right. Right. >> Yeah. Make cursor feel a little less alienating. One of the ideas of like say behind these what we call like wallpapers

>> is that they're they're now like just great art created by humans. >> Mhm. >> Um like a lot of these >> you don't lose the human connection, right? >> Yeah. like they're not AI generated. They're actually like from past artworks in the 80s and in the 1800s and stuff. One thing that's cool with like our new site >> is that like all of these are interactive. >> Oh, that's cool. >> They are real. >> I thought it was a screenshot. >> They're actually real code.

>> I made a lot of these. It's like you can actually >> you can just try it out live. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then like a lot of these things actually work. So you can swap between different examples. Mhm. >> So maybe like this is more for like ML training. >> This sounds like you're you're learning how cursor works. >> There's like a rule that's being edited. >> We show like a bunch of different like industries. >> That's so important because you want to get people to the aha moment of using

the product. And the best way to do that is not >> download it and install [clears throat] it and then set it up and figure out what project you're going to work on. It's just like here it is right here in the browser. You can start using it immediately. >> Yeah. And then you can actually type in it and then boom, you can download. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Each of the pages are also really simple. >> It's just like boom boom boom. And then you can dive into them if you want.

the product. And the best way to do that is not >> download it and install [clears throat] it and then set it up and figure out what project you're going to work on. It's just like here it is right here in the browser. You can start using it immediately. >> Yeah. And then you can actually type in it and then boom, you can download. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Each of the pages are also really simple. >> It's just like boom boom boom. And then you can dive into them if you want.

>> Yeah. And it seems like you have one key point for each one that you're trying to make. It's something that you are showing with a screenshot visually to illustrate as well. >> Yes. It's like kind of calling back to like the the core concepts that I just talked about. It's like >> the side should also just show those. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. And then >> Yeah. So, go back to the homepage for a sec. Let's let's look at all of those. >> Mhm. >> And I'm curious which you picked and

why. Okay. Agent agents. >> Yep. >> The tab. >> Yep. Tab autocomplete. >> And this is like the ecosystem/ cursor is everywhere, >> right? It's connected with all the other tools that you use. >> Yep. Some testimonials. >> Mhm. >> These are more like ways for you to kind of go into different spots. There's one for enterprise, one for learning models. >> Mhm. I would love for you to walk us through your design process at Cursor and how you've built some of these things.

why. Okay. Agent agents. >> Yep. >> The tab. >> Yep. Tab autocomplete. >> And this is like the ecosystem/ cursor is everywhere, >> right? It's connected with all the other tools that you use. >> Yep. Some testimonials. >> Mhm. >> These are more like ways for you to kind of go into different spots. There's one for enterprise, one for learning models. >> Mhm. I would love for you to walk us through your design process at Cursor and how you've built some of these things.

>> Uhhuh. I'll first show you like something I do for work and then I'll show you something for fun. >> The first thing I showed is baby cursor. >> Mhm. >> And the idea is a lot of times for designers when we explore ideas, we actually don't really care about like the technical implementation details of how things work. So if you want to do your prototype in a in a production level codebase that's really massive and complex, it actually takes more time than say you just build a little

environment for you to play with your ideas. You can kind of reconstruct parts of the UI and the interactions. It doesn't have to have all the details, but once you put them together, you can actually feel like like you can feel it almost like like alive. So baby cursor is like a scaled down simplified version of cursor. >> Yes. >> That is like it in many ways and it becomes your own personal playground for you to just add new features and explore different ways of doing things to try to

get it right before you eventually wrap it back in into uh grown-up curs. >> Yep. So I built this in I think an afternoon maybe like couple hours. It has all the hot keys the primary like interactions that we have here. Um there's actually like a integration with like AI models. So I can ask like what is this and then you can see the live output. A lot of the stuff here like they feel like the real cursor but it has like say little details I want that is not even in the product like I want

to make the keyboard navigation really well. >> Like you can actually select all the parts of the chat. There's like a little preview here where you can see live output of the code. >> We added the internal browser. So maybe that's like how this thing ended up. Um >> and that started in Baby Cursor. >> Mhm. And uh one example that's kind of cool is I was trying to like explore some ideas of how we can run multiple agents at the same time. So I made this like you can say translate to Korean

and translate to Japanese and then when you hit this it will run the agent at the same time. >> Cool. >> Um you can see both live outputs. You can kind of pick and compare different changes. >> Mhm. >> And like this kind of stuff for you to to make in Figma is going to be like insane like >> Yeah. because a lot of the outputs are like from the AI. There's a lot of live states and you know different things show up and not very >> The problem is you would spend forever

designing this as a mockup with fake data. >> Exactly. >> And and you'd have no way to like actually test what it feels like to use it and then you'd have to wait forever for an engineer to free up and be able to prototype it for you. So you could compare different ideas and you can just do that instantly. >> Exactly. Like it's so easy. >> Yeah. This is kind of like how cursor used to look like like pre one uh pre 2.0 you know we talked about like there's the

files there's some editors there's the chat that's kind of like on the side >> and then let me show you like cursor 2.0 No. So, we kind of flipped the order of things like you kind of focus on the agent what they did. You can make a new one really easily and we have like this internal browser where you can see the code output. Um, you can keep like cursor really clean. Like if I'm just like doing stuff say in my little prototype um real OS, I just do this. >> Mhm.

>> It almost feels like a lovable. >> Mhm. But the difference is you get the whole thing like you you still get like all the files, the git tools, the search, >> you get the full like command pallet. You get everything but you can always like you know start with a simp simpler state focus on you know ideating or planning or making stuff. >> I love this. This is rios. This is your own personal playground right? >> Yes. Yes. Yes. Um yeah, just show us high level like what have you built here?

>> It's kind of meta. I don't know what I'm doing, but the idea is I started this thing from just making one app in this in this OS. Started from this soundboard app that makes sounds. >> Uhhuh. >> And I just asked the agent, hm, put it in a window. And then it made this like dragable window thing and then added the menu bar. And then I was like, hm, why not just add more apps? Mhm. >> And I kept kept making new things. I made an iPod that actually works. >> Uh I made a time traveling browser

>> goes back in time, but also you can jump into the future. Go back into like ancient times. These are like generated by >> What happens if you go to 1000 BC? What did the internet look like back then? >> Oh, wow. It's in Korean, too. But you can actually change, you know, the generation. >> Mhm. >> You can also set like a scene. I don't know. Maybe you're in the UK and then let's try refresh. It's going to fetch the latest apple.com content. >> Mhm. >> Pass it to to like a LM and then it's

going to generate the page for you. >> And as it does it, it makes like a elevator music. So how I would um start a new thing? So in 2.0 we have a new mode called plan mode. >> And then the idea is maybe you don't really know all the details of what you're doing. you kind of want to ideulate with the agent, come up with better details, then the agent can build the stuff exactly how you wanted it. So maybe we can ask the agent like I want to make sharing new applets easier and more discoverable.

Then we can try like see what what the agent comes up with. Mhm. >> Um, what it's going to do is it's going to search through the whole codebase, figure out what's what's there, come up with a plan. It might also like ask a few questions back so that if there's something like ambiguous, oh, here it is. You can just like talk talk to it and then at the end it will come up with a plan. So, bricks to share. Let's see. Not obvious. You can share an app that's saved.

Two. What would help better? Maybe. Let's see. Make it auto open. And then three. I don't know. Let's just let it be. So once you answer the questions, it's going to make a plan for you. >> Mhm. And the plan looks almost like a PRD that your PM writes. >> You can actually like edit the thing if you want. Let's see what it wants to do. Add a share button to the viewer. Mhm. Add a button for the fee cards. Mhm. Okay. So, if you're okay with the plan, all you need to do is to hit build and then

it's just going to do it for you. Mhm. And with our new composer model, like it's four times faster than sonnetss and it's like twice as cheap. >> Mhm. >> So things will happen like almost like pretty quick before before your eyes. >> Mhm. >> Um Aha. Cool. Let's see what what's what's going to happen. Adding more buttons.

cards. Let's see. Is there like a share button? Oh, fixing some bugs. Oh, okay. Let's see what happens. Share button in the toolbar. Uploaded. Let's see if I get this. Aha. Little share button. >> There we go. >> Let's see what happens when we click on it. Hey, it didn't work. Maybe like let's ask it to hook up the share button with the share model. Then it's going to fix it. Let's see if it worked. >> Oh, >> nice. There you go. >> Beautiful. >> Cool. >> That's great. And the cool thing is you

didn't even have to touch any code, right? You basically just spoke in English. She got a PRD, >> which designers are used to today. >> Yep. >> And you just kept telling it what to do to fix things. >> Did it. >> If you want to look at code, it's here. >> It's there if you want it. That feels approachable for any designer to do, right? >> And start building something themselves. >> Yeah. So, one thing that I think we're going to fix maybe like even in the next two weeks is

>> like when you start cursor like you're you're faced with like three buttons at least the the version before >> where it says like open project clone repo connect to SSH like you don't really know what the hell like those things mean. >> Yeah. Many designers >> and then our new like landing page is just like boom you just start. >> Mhm. And then the agent is going to help you start a new project if it's not there. >> Yeah, that's great. So you obviously, you know, you design your process is

very different at cursor and I'm sure you see lots of people that are working with cursor to design as well. Talk about how design process is changing overall in in the age of AI and certainly cursor as a tool. Probably not. >> The roles will start blurring the designers will start coding, the engineers will start designing. >> Mhm. And then our shared language is code. It is not just picture frames, not pixel values, but code. You start not by say getting everything perfect, every

single bit of detail. You actually start by building. You start with a vague idea. You put it in the agent. It comes out maybe like 60% 70%. You need to be comfortable with like a somewhat bad output and figure out a way to turn that into the thing you want. And as the models and agents get better, that process will just get quicker. >> Mhm. >> Maybe like the first time it comes up is actually the the thing that you wanted, but then you know what's next? How do I

get to somewhere even better? The agent's able to do that too for you. >> You've described this as like sculpting, right? Is that a way that designers should think about this? Like the difference before was like we started from uh let's do some wireframes and sketches then we paint each of the layers and boxes with like styles and colors and type and you're like painting stroke by stroke but you're painting on a on an artifact on a canvas that's not real versus the

new way is you just ask the agent and you get this clump of thing. It might not be great. It might not be perfect, but it is the thing and you sculpt it. You mold it. You You just say, "Ah, this part I want to make it like that instead. I want to kill this part. I want these things to be merged together." And as you kind of do do more revs, the thing gets closer to what you wanted. And it is the whole thing. It is the full thing. It is not an artifact. it is not like pixels stuck in a canvas.

>> And I think we saw that when you were um you were adding the share sheet, right? >> It was like the button appeared but then clicking it didn't do anything. So you got it like 60 70% of the way there and then you're like, "Okay, now we needed to do this thing." >> So you told it what to do and then next time it worked. >> Yeah. It's like if you get something bad or like ugly, >> it's actually your job to make it pretty the way you want it. And that's the part

that the AI can't really do right now. then we can actually focus on our craft like figuring out like how to push this thing even further focusing on the details making everything fit together. One thing that I find um there's some projects we've been doing internally and using a very similar process to what you're describing here and I think one of the things that I find is we pay a lot more attention to like even the interactions and motion and all these things that are really hard to do when

you're just in a frame somewhere and when you get to experience it >> now all of a sudden all these other layers come alive that you get to experiment with and test and >> it feels like everything is just going to level up so much more because of this. >> Yes, it's like like it's not even just for designers. It also includes say like your PM's writing some Google doc that's stuck. It never gets updated. It's always like disjointed from the real thing right?

>> As we kind of fit these so different parts of making software together, as we break the boundaries between these tools, as everyone can start talking with the code, magical things can happen. like people don't feel the barriers anymore. People can start understanding each other. People can help each other better. >> Yeah. And so in that world, what are the skills that designers should be focused on becoming great at? >> One, you need to really go deep into the

details and the craft because that is the part that the AI will probably like take some time to catch up. And you need to be almost like a more system thinker, not just focusing on one slice of the problem. The more you understand the the other layers or the other concepts that maybe you don't know yet, the better you can, you know, piece things together better with the with the agent. You might not know the best way to do like I don't know front-end app web app applications but you know as you

learn more about the constraints in your production technical systems you can also instruct the agent better so that it can reuse better patterns and tools then the thing you built is better versus you don't really know much then it might just give you something mediocre. It's like a new more powerful tool >> to use and you need to learn how to use it effectively. >> It's almost like the more domain knowledge you have >> plus the agent plus you know knowledge of the codebase and everything that

connects to it the more things you can do and it's not just for designers it's for everyone. >> How do you think interfaces are going to change in the future? There's a lot of talk of >> adaptive UIs and generative UIs like how how do you think about that? Where do you think that's going? the interfaces will stay but they get completely decomposed and then maybe the AI composes it or maybe the AI kind of figures out what's your preference and then applies it. We used to say ah when

I want to make some dogs I go to Google Doc and like an app and then it's kind of fixed or like I need to track some issues I go to Jira it's also kind of fixed like they have their own views their own data models all the concepts when the AI or the agent or cursor is really good at just kind of breaking apart all of these things and then kind of summarize synthesize everything back together. But the problem is I don't think say just showing text or raw output is the most efficient way for

people to say parse the information or do stuff with it >> when it makes sense. I still want a to-do list. I still want a table. I still want to see the picture, the preview, the states and track with it even instead of doing that in separate apps and I need to stitch them together myself. It's just in one place maybe in the same agent in the same chat. And then the tool itself can also morph to what your like your way of thinking how you see the things. Maybe for a designer

the cursor they use might look or feel a little different than the cursor that your devs use but it is still the same thing. It's just the same thing reconfigured. Certain things get hidden by default. Certain things get shown by default. The dream of the adaptive UIs is that they can show the right thing at any moment. >> The problem with it is that how do you get comfortable and set user expectations around what it is? And it sounds like what you're saying is

>> it's not about generating it different every single time. It's about generating the right thing for the right user in the right context. They can be familiar and the same for them. It's it might be different for me than it is for you. Right? It's like the fundamental system and how say what are the pieces, how they fit together, how they're laid out is the same. >> Mhm. >> But then maybe like you know the user can also set their own preferences. The AI can kind of help them find their spot

and then they can start there. But as they use the tool, as they do more things, it might change. It just fits them better as they use it. any advice for designers starting companies and building products >> just high level advice that you think would be most helpful for them going forward. I think the [snorts] most important design problem is to think about like given the thing you want to do now and 10 years from now what are the core concepts that won't change how

do they fit together and then from there you can kind of see what is the first step what is the most essential pieces I need to start and then as you go you kind of figure out how things will evolve and where you are today. What are the little steps to get there? >> Mhm. >> The closer you get, the clearer it is, but also this thing they're there might also be pretty clear and it doesn't change as much. >> It's interesting. There's a quote from um Jeff Bezos. Somebody asked him like,

"What do you think is going to change over the next decade around Amazon's business?" >> And his answer was like, "Well, I can tell you the three things that are not going to change. Uh-huh. Yes. >> People are always going to want more selection, lower prices, faster delivery. >> Exactly. >> And so it sounds like what you're saying is finding those core elements >> is like that's the thing to focus on and making sure that that is always accessible even though the way people

interact with it may change and evolve over time. >> Yep. >> Those are the important things to make sure you get right. >> Yeah. Like that kind of defines what the thing is, what the company is about even. >> Rio, really appreciate you joining us today. >> Great.