Tommy Geoco - The state of the design industry right now

AI fluency is going to eventually just become like an ambient thing. I don't

think we're going to like highlight that language forever. But I think right now

language forever. But I think right now it is important language cuz a lot of companies are like, "Yeah, we want this designer who can come in and think we want someone who knows what to do with the question, what if in a way that

doesn't feel like it's from 2012, 2015, you know, 2018." That question seems to be being answered by like what are you showing that you're sharing? Like social

media is the new discovery engine right now. Like that is the way to for better

now. Like that is the way to for better or worse that is the way to prove that you are someone who is experimenting.

Welcome to Dive Club. My name is Rid and this is where designers never stop learning. This week's episode is with

learning. This week's episode is with Tommy Goyoko who just finished visiting some of today's leading design teams like Verscell, Perplexity, Ramp and

we're going to go deep into everything that he's seeing around AI workflows and where design is headed next. And to

start, I wanted to dig into his recent state of prototyping survey to figure out what details stood out the most.

The number one thing that stood out to me was that designers who are currently vibe coding are more satisfied with their workflows.

I hear a lot of no and we both hear a lot of noise, man.

And I did not expect that. I was very curious to see because I was like, I know this is happening a lot. How much?

And are people happy with it? because I

assumed I mean we hear the stories like meta incentivizing token leaderboards you know and this like just like being crammed down the throats of employees people seem to dig it in these in this

survey and I thought that was really unique I also thought and I wish I had parsed this a little different but it's the people who are currently doing the majority like so if a majority of their

workflow is spent on vibe coding activities it's design engineers that makes sense lead principles Okay. But

then it's like non-designer roles which might be students and researchers. Then

it's managers and then it's like your general junior mid-level IC. And that

part was fascinating that managers are doing more than junior and mid-level IC's. Either things are trickling down

IC's. Either things are trickling down and people are experimenting and then they're going to pass it, you know, they're going to pass learnings down, which is kind of what we've seen on location. But it also might mean that

location. But it also might mean that like some managers or teams haven't yet made room for the rest of the team. I'm

looking at a bunch of junior and mid designers that uh are getting cut out of the process is what that data says.

Yeah. Yeah. And and that to me it's like, you know, I'm trying to give a little benefit of the doubt, but ultimately it's like, yeah, we need to make more room at at companies. I don't

know if it's trending in that way, but I'm starting to see more and more of that at certain types of companies anyway. I think it's interesting to

anyway. I think it's interesting to think about the types of vibe coding too because the experience of somebody who is building all of these crazy processes or systems or files to get a tool like

Figma make or even BZero to look and feel like their design system versus somebody who's just every day they open up production codebase and just start exploring and shipping. That is a pretty

big chasm too where I get a lot of people coming to me that are frustrated because they're trying to bend these tools to their will and then there's another class of designer who really is I mean what's a design engineer and

what's a designer if all you do is ship designs in code that ultimately make it into the product itself that line like we don't even know have the right language to talk about these different types of roles. Now,

I feel like there's a a group of designers who aren't aware just how common I guess I wasn't either, it is for designers to roll their own tooling that they're using in their workflow and

then either like tossing it to the side or like starting to share it internally with other team members. 59% of

designers have built their own like tool for their workflow. And and sometimes when I say, "Oh, all these designers are creating internal tools." Someone will respond and say, "Yeah, it's all AI slop." And I'm like, I think we're

slop." And I'm like, I think we're misunderstanding what we're saying here is that you had some sort of visual asset, you needed some effect applied to it and you rolled a tool to help you and

maybe you threw it away after or in the case like when I went over to Verscell, they had this uh a brand designer, I can't remember his name off the top, really talented guy, had never coded before and now was vibe coding a tool.

their marketing team would like put out blog posts and they were like why do why does the design team need to create like the OG blog post cards for every page like that's not a good use of so he

built a tool that just allowed them to insert any sort of images and it just like already had all of the branding and the sizing baked in they just roll these things out quickly and I'm like and that

just became a tool an internal tool that's cool and so cuz it was really interesting that they started referring to him as a brand engineer and I'm like what is a brand engineer and And then he showed me that. I'm

like, "Okay, that kind of qualifies it."

Actually, that's really cool.

I'm seeing way more people trying to hire brand engineers. I never even considered that as a role recently. That

is a thing. Brand engineers are on the rise.

I think every blank engineer is going to be on the sales engineer, marketing, you know, like I feel like everyone is compressing to, for better or worse, builders of some sort. I talked to Will

King, design engineer at Snowflake yesterday. He's like, "I get it. I love

yesterday. He's like, "I get it. I love

systems thinking. I like that it's all going towards this. you know, we're we're building factories. We're

industrializing this even further. But

there is like a loss of the like free form creative workflow, the exploration part that some people are just going to have to like reckon with. And it's like where does that go? Does it just get eliminated or does it sprout up in a

different area? Like does everyone have

different area? Like does everyone have to be a builder? And I just thought it was an interesting question. I love the building and design systems and just like systems thinking side a lot. But

like I recognize that part is that's something to reckon with. How much how much time do you spend on that stuff?

It's more that the nature of it has changed, right? And I actually I think

changed, right? And I actually I think about this a lot. Part of me is almost slightly self-conscious about it. But I

do the vast vast majority of my, you know, messy explorations with AI now.

Like I I feel like I have made the jump to the quote unquote creative director where I'm just working with AI to show me a certain thing 50 different ways and then I'm pulling the pieces that I like

and then combining them again and finally I get to somewhere I'm like, "Yep, that's good." And then I take that from like paper, run it through cloud code and now it exists on local host.

And then I will sweat the details and and actually do the like precision designing in code which is that's crazy, man. Like that's

a very very different workflow than I've done at any point in my career. And

sometimes I wonder, am I losing some of the critical thinking associated with doing things manually and hitting command D and making tweaks myself? And

yet I'm able to go through, you know, a spectrum of explorations that is so much larger than I could do in a day. And I

can do it in minutes. And I always see things that I didn't plan on seeing. But

that's different, right? Like it's just a different thing that I'm bringing to the table. It's different muscles that

the table. It's different muscles that I'm growing. It's maybe different

I'm growing. It's maybe different muscles that I'm atrophying too, you know. I don't know. I I I'm kind of TBD

know. I don't know. I I I'm kind of TBD on I think what the impact of that is for me even as a professional yet. Real

quick message and then we can jump back into it. People are getting answers from

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I started something two weeks ago where I'm I'm forcing myself to have one day of no AI where like I I know tasking because I've

been building these like open claw systems. It's really nice to get the context inside of that of like my intent and there's like inputs everywhere. What

am I thinking? What's what am I working on? What did I vote was worth my

on? What did I vote was worth my attention on Twitter? this conversation

and and so I'm trying to figure out all these ways to get like really meaningful Tommy's worldview context into this system, but then I'm like, okay, it's really nice because my outputs are really rich from this thing and then it

starts to become a crutch. So no AI allows me to really think through things again and then also I leave the day and I have like more context now that was like truly authored by me and I can feed

it back. So it it kind of serves like

it back. So it it kind of serves like two purposes and I'm seeing how you definitely feel it like when you don't have it the productivity feels really different. I feel stunted at first for

different. I feel stunted at first for sure. I think the biggest difference for

sure. I think the biggest difference for me is I don't do near as much thinking from a blank canvas. My thinking would be enough thinking to give AI a pretty

good set of guard rails for it to explore in the directions that I want it to go. But like sometimes if I'm going

to go. But like sometimes if I'm going to design a new layout or component or section of a website, I will just run a prompt to get AI to go do a bunch of

things on the canvas and I won't think critically about that design until I see something. I'll see 20 things and then

something. I'll see 20 things and then I'll be like, "Oh, that's interesting.

Oh, that maybe we should do this instead." But like that's when my my

instead." But like that's when my my critical thinking starts at the point where I'm already looking at something rather than blank canvas. Maybe I'm

typing words, drawing arrows, doing rough little sketches. Like that doesn't currently have a role in my process, which is, you know, it's different. It's

different.

You have this like spectrum of probabilistic to deterministic design.

And I really like working over here.

Like here's a question I have for you because it's I'm really interested. We

see we see so much noise online. And

what's been really nice is to just ask people like what's your actual workflow like right now? And you shared something recently that was you had made like these buttons but it was like the AI had made these buttons but it was like in

the perfect design system of inflight.

And so what was the process for you of like what inputs were collected to the point where like you completely were out of the process and it just like spun those up? It actually ties back to a

those up? It actually ties back to a single cloud session that I had maybe a few months ago where like most cloud sessions I started off saying I have no idea what to do here. Like I feel like I

should be using markdown files and passing context through my codebase more effectively. I feel like you should be

effectively. I feel like you should be reading rule sets and gathering context more effectively given the prompt. And I

wasn't doing anything. And I was like, what do I do? And I actually went out and I found a bunch of uh like Dan Shipper articles and a bunch of every stuff and I and tweets that I had bookmarked and I just fed a bunch of

stuff in here. I was like, consume this.

Help me think about a plan. I have no idea what to do. and it created this chart of nested uh you know context you know cloud MD files throughout the codebase at different levels that would

teach it how to achieve certain things and one of those is a set of visual rules and how I like components to be built and to be honest I've never even opened the file I don't actually know

what's in there I just regularly contribute to it like if I get an output that I don't like I'm like yo never do that again this is what I want instead

and then it just goes and it does and it look like if I'm going to build a subtle interactive element like Vid probably

wants me to use this tertiary style with this hover overlay like blend that adds a little bit transparency on top of the gradient. And I just get that out of the

gradient. And I just get that out of the box now. And I get all my little inner

box now. And I get all my little inner shadows out of the box now. I never get things with borders anymore. I only get things with like using inner shadows to simulate borders. And it just took one

simulate borders. And it just took one pretty dedicated session like I worked with Claude for probably two hours on this set of files and just refining it and feeding context into the system and

then from there it's just taking a beat to tell it that something sucked and explaining why and then say never let this happen again and I have done it like a hundred times. I really think that sort of black box because I do the

exact same thing like I have not looked at much of my code in a long time and my open claw setup is very much like I know it's matching the intent based on the

outputs. I'm not going to go read a

outputs. I'm not going to go read a markdown file. Who has time for that?

markdown file. Who has time for that?

But I mean it's it's like a really fast satisfying loop. And so when I hear

satisfying loop. And so when I hear people say GPT 5.5 is worse than Opus 4.7 and I'm like what does that mean?

You know like what are you comparing?

Are you just saying like you oneshotted a thing and that probabilistic output that you got from one versus the other on that given day was better or worse?

Cuz that's not a very good way to evaluate it. Like how does it drive, you

evaluate it. Like how does it drive, you know, like like there's this sense of like you have to drive them for a little while. When you drive it with intent and

while. When you drive it with intent and you're just like screwing into like that's wrong fix, that's wrong fix and you do that a few iterations. I think

then you have a good feel for like how it drives. So, I've never understood

it drives. So, I've never understood this like oneshot mentality of like I compared three of the same prompts. It's

like you just shot like a bunch of probabilistic stuff, you know?

I hate those tweets, man. I hate those tweets. It's like that's not even

tweets. It's like that's not even design. I get how that would be really

design. I get how that would be really appealing for somebody who's not a designer. But the fact that so much of

designer. But the fact that so much of the discourse from professional designers exists around which models put things out of the box in a more pretty way or which models have less purple gradients, it's like, what are we doing

here? AI gives me a level of precision

here? AI gives me a level of precision that I've never had in my career. And

yet we always are quick to say like, "Well, AI slop." It's like, "What? What?

This is an AI slop? I'm making micro decisions that I didn't have a grid for a year ago." And it's only because of the abilities that AI gives me.

It's really hard to talk about right now. You have to really talk to somebody

now. You have to really talk to somebody about like how are you using it? How are

you evaluating it? Oh, you've gone down a rabbit hole that like hasn't like that's a dead end. Okay, let's pull you out of the rabbit hole first and like make sure we understand like here's how you drive. All right, now that we

you drive. All right, now that we understand like what driving means, now let's talk about like some of the other things that like are tertiary to it that can inform because there is starting to emerge, I think, a right way to talk

about I know designers hate talking about like using tools, but like that's the that's the moment we're in. How do

you use these things? How do you install them? And so for me, it's like how do I

them? And so for me, it's like how do I talk about agents right now? It's this

like headless design concept. I think I think everything that you just described on how you created that button, these documents, this intent, like I don't think there's the future where we're

going from tool to tool and reinventing that over and over. All the hours spent just like screwing in our intent the correct way is going to become just a briefcase you carry from one tool to the other. You know, like like Ramp's glass,

other. You know, like like Ramp's glass, they they realized they needed it for their company, so they just built it internally. They shipped it. This way,

internally. They shipped it. This way,

you know, someone who's who who doesn't have this like baseline education on how any of these work, it's already on their computer and it just literally onboards them. Cool. You're now connected to

them. Cool. You're now connected to workday, you're connected to whatever data sources you need in a secure environment. Now, just like you you have

environment. Now, just like you you have your briefcase of context, use it wherever you need to. I think that's going to be the same in in so many contexts like design. That's going to be true for design. I feel like actually

inflight would be a great use case of this if you guys decide to go that way.

I was you're in my iMessage conversation right now.

I I think I think also uh I think like households eventually will have this, right? Like I was talking to you I think

right? Like I was talking to you I think at one point about this idea I had like I don't know you call a product like hearth or something. It's just the family's context layer. It's like your life 360 for anyone who doesn't know

like which tracks your children on their phone cuz as parents you want to make sure they are where they say they are or it tracks how fast they're driving cuz if you have a kid who's driving you definitely want to make sure they're staying on the speed limit. You might

have that data, you might have the family calendar, you might have like all these things. And so now a family member

these things. And so now a family member doesn't have to vibe code their own agentic setup, but they have a tool, they have this context layer that like when when all these tools become consumer friendly, they can just like

connect it to it and it has context. I

think that's going to be in every vertical. I've got to imagine.

vertical. I've got to imagine.

Yeah, I think about that a lot cuz like I have visual language context right now and then there's context from the code architecture or some there's some

business logic in there. I also have some running brainstorm context from Claude. Like Claude understands what

Claude. Like Claude understands what inflight is but it's not it's not always amazing to you know hook in and pull in get everything or maybe it's a little bit out of date or it's like talking about this idea that I thought was cool 6 months ago that I don't really think

about that much more. I'm really

interested in the idea of like you teed up inflight but gosh whenever I'm riffing with Claude I should be able to give it all of the feedback I've received as context. I it should know

that my co-founder Kyle always hates on the lack of negative space in my designs. He always thinks of two, you

designs. He always thinks of two, you know, like that should exist, you know, that should exist there. Or it should, if I'm designing a certain surface area, everything's going to be going through quad or, you know, codeex, your tool of

choice. It shouldn't matter, right? Like

choice. It shouldn't matter, right? Like

I love your briefcase analogy, but like that model should be able to seamlessly tap into all of the decisions that were made about that area of the product a year ago, right?

And it shouldn't be no copying and pasting from you. It should just be able to get everything, you know, like the design brain, you know, like the the brain YC tweet kind of went viral yesterday actually. I have, you know,

yesterday actually. I have, you know, mixed opinions on the viability of that at a large scale, but when you're looking at a single vertical, maybe it's a family, maybe it's design context,

that's going to be a huge part of how we work. Yeah, I think the general purpose

work. Yeah, I think the general purpose tool might have a place eventually. I

don't think that's the right answer right now. Maybe I won't just like

right now. Maybe I won't just like outright say it's not the right answer, but it's not interesting to me. Um, and

and one of the things I asked Diego at RAMP was like, why did you guys build Glass? like why didn't you just use one

Glass? like why didn't you just use one of the general purpose tools that are out there that like co-work or something you know and he's like because co-work is good at general purpose glass is good at RAM and it's like that that context I

think is a really important piece that a lot of people haven't experienced what that means and so it's like I have my open claw and it's really good at Tommy like it's very it's not like oh it talks

in Tommy's voice it's like it's really good at everything Tommy and when you have that it's it's so different than just using chaty BT or like claude code

for something. It's really like you said

for something. It's really like you said like if if it could be like hey we did it this way but you know Kyle's not going to love this and you had a customer call last week that you know they called out something kind of interesting. Might want to flag that

interesting. Might want to flag that that's an edge case. You know that's pretty wild. The other thing too is you

pretty wild. The other thing too is you know we talk about this and immediately I think people are so binary about this.

It's either handcrafted human authored or fully automated. I don't think that that has to be the case and I don't like when things are fully automated. There's

people who talk about like, "Oh, I got my agents and I got these processes to run all night long." That's my nightmare. Like, don't do that. You

nightmare. Like, don't do that. You

know, like I could see that being interesting if you have like a really specific well-outlined micro task that needs like to be iterated on, but I want the friction. Like there's a preserved

the friction. Like there's a preserved level of friction that I'm finding is kind of important to me so that I make sure like let me fact check intent. Let

me like re-steer you know you you drove like I fell asleep. You drove in the wrong lane. Let's like get you back over

wrong lane. Let's like get you back over here. I want to make sure I have the

here. I want to make sure I have the opportunity to do that more. And those

lanes like it's a really fun process.

Like I at least for me personally, I don't feel like I'm losing myself or like replacing myself. I feel like I'm very much steering and driving. And then

the other piece with that briefcase analogy is while it's there on demand, you have customer insights potentially and you don't have to like go in and find them. But who's to say you don't

find them. But who's to say you don't that's not just like you just open the briefcase. Go if you want to like go

briefcase. Go if you want to like go fact check some stuff. Get in there and get your hands dirty. it just this is just a progressive disclosure problem, right? And I and I feel like there's

right? And I and I feel like there's this binary thinking that like AI means fully automated and it's like no, in fact, I think some of the better workflows are the ones that aren't fully automated.

Yeah, agreed.

Are you using like what are the what's your stack? Go ahead.

your stack? Go ahead.

That's not fair. I was going to ask you let's we'll trade really quickly. We'll

try to real quick, but I'm going to ask the question slightly differently. And I

want you to pretend that a, you know, legacy or that hasn't adopted AI is been watching your YouTube videos and they're like, "All right, this person's super plugged in," which you are. They bring

you in. You're like a series A consultant effectively, and they're like, "Hey, Tommy, we want to save money on tooling, so we are getting annual

contracts. What are the annual contracts

contracts. What are the annual contracts that we should commit to as a design or oh man yeah

that's hard that is a hard question because the one luxury I have is I don't have the security issues the security kind of compliance problems that I think

a lot of these enterprise companies have let's imagine that you know sock 2 even isn't a requirement which I think a lot of the company I think a lot of these tools if they don't have sock 2 are got to be like right on the horizon, right?

So like let's imagine it's like midlevel security requirements. You really can

security requirements. You really can lean into what you think what tools empower an org and shape an or in a way that you would be happy with.

Right. Well, for the work for design work, this is what I'm seeing and what I would recommend first from a high level like prim if you think like sort of primitives you have canvas. I canvases I think are always going to have a place

in this workflow. What's your canvas tool? I think you need some sort of code

tool? I think you need some sort of code intention tool. I like codecs a lot. I

intention tool. I like codecs a lot. I

really like the cursor codeex new UI pattern for agents. You need like an agentic coding tool inside of this process. And then I think you need your

process. And then I think you need your briefcase. You need your context. You

briefcase. You need your context. You

need a thing that ingests everything and it's like a backend to to the the two types of tools that you're using. And

then you need the surface area where the work lives. And that maybe that's like

work lives. And that maybe that's like linear, right? Maybe you're like an

linear, right? Maybe you're like an Atlassian person and they have an agentic tool there. I can't remember what it's called. So, it's like you need you need the work surface area where where the work the source of truth of work lives. For us, when a video is

work lives. For us, when a video is done, the source of truth is not like the script we wrote in notion. The

source of truth is like where that thing gets uploaded in our back end, which might be like frame.io, right? Like when

if it's in frame.io, we know it's done.

That's like a place where if it gets uploaded there, it could become a lot of different artifacts. It could become a

different artifacts. It could become a task to upload on YouTube. it could

become a description we need to write.

So you you need somewhere where like you guys know like the work is happening, the intention of the work and then where the work is done. So I think like a linear a tool like that and then you need the interface. You need like Slack.

I really hope Slack is paying attention to this because talking with agents through Slack, it has a lot of areas where I think that process could be better. talking with agents is very

better. talking with agents is very different because I'll scroll through like seven different chat instances with my one agent and it's just it's kind of messy and you can like lose context

easy. So there needs to be a better tool

easy. So there needs to be a better tool for that. But right now I think Slack is

for that. But right now I think Slack is still pretty good. The way I've seen people using it in Slack is good. So So

you need like an interface surface area.

You need where the work lives surface area. You need a canvas for more

area. You need a canvas for more deterministic work and you need your agent or your like interface for coding for more probabilistic work. You know,

when I think about a canvas, there's three that are on my radar right now.

That'll get me in trouble. I still think Figma's in the game. A lot of even a lot of these like agentic teams that are like super forward thinking, like they're using Figma a lot still. Like

this is still a big part of the the equation. Totally. And as long as Figma

equation. Totally. And as long as Figma continues to innovate with these the the agentic side considered, I would consider them um in paper is paper

didn't show up in our like top 30 tools on this survey, which it was wild to me because every conversation I'm having, I'm hearing Oh, and we're we're playing with paper right now. Like I'm hearing paper pop up more than any of the other

new tools right now in the canvas side.

And then uh pencil.dev is really interesting. And I think Tom I think

interesting. And I think Tom I think Tom's a sneaky little winner. I think

he's going to come out with something like he's going to continue to make that product really good. The other thing is is is it's not just when you when you think about stacks like these two, there needs to be like a shift in how you

think about work. And that's the hard part. It's like, you know, I think when

part. It's like, you know, I think when we started installing like assembly lines and stuff, people came in early and just like tried to install new equipment on top of old factory

workflows and it didn't work, right?

Until Ford came out and said, "No, we got to like rearrange the entire factory." A version of that has to

factory." A version of that has to happen right now. Metal Lab has a team called Team Zero. It's like three people. They're tasked with like, "Hey,

people. They're tasked with like, "Hey, you pick the project, the client, assuming the client's cool with it.

you're going to just do like a fully automated like or not a fully automated but you're going to explore AI in a way that like the rest of the company's not and you're going to report back to us how it goes. They have a they have their own set of criteria for how they

determine success on that. And I think that's a really smart way for a company to mitigate the risk of hoping that they reinvent the whole factory floor. This

way this team can come back and just say like here's what's working, here's what's not and they can kind of slow roll into it, you know, versus then you have the ramps who are just like no we're just like everybody do it. And

that those are like the two different types of ways that I'm seeing factory floor restructuring.

Okay, let's use this as a launching point because you've now went on the ground with some of the most prolific design teams in the world. Perplexity,

Verscell, RAM, Metal Lab. So talk to me a little bit about the unifying threads or signals that are standing out to you about how the best design teams are operating today and what they're

exploring. I think the number one is

exploring. I think the number one is that the company is making room for the experimentation and it's expensive. It's

expensive in token cost. It's expensive

in cuz you you go down rabbit holes that like are throwaway work. A lot leaders are saying, "No, I'm going to unblock it. We're going to throw spend at it.

it. We're going to throw spend at it.

We're going to give people time for this." you know, and it's coming in

this." you know, and it's coming in different flavors, but at the ones who are really doing it well, like Ed Verscell, they do a Friday hackathon presentation every Friday. And it

started as like a fun thing for a very specific group. And then other people

specific group. And then other people from cross functional departments were like, "Hey, can we get in on that?" And

people just like create things. They

they're they're presenting like startup killers at every single one of these things. And those things just get sheld.

things. And those things just get sheld.

Like it's wild to me. And we were there just for one week, like just a little company getaway that they did. And

everybody the ideas were like the sales team they would go out and you know like a typical hackon they'd recruit like a designer or an engineer and if they didn't have one they'd just do it anyway and it was like people are fighting to

get in line to present on that Friday now it's so companywide I'm trying to do that it's hard right like I feel for everybody that's like man when do I get time to do that you know you get both ends I've done experiments where I'm like I can't believe how well that

worked I can't believe how efficient that was and then I've done other ones I'm like I just spent an entire night trying to build like a custom icon generation platform on top of the quiver

API and I just didn't really quite get it to work the way that I wanted to and I'm like I wonder how much money I just lit on fire in 6 hours of my life. You

know, the three reasons that people are saying from our survey that they're not adopting the tooling are pretty tied. It

was like a multiple choice question and it was that the outputs they didn't feel like were good enough yet. It was too expensive in some cases and that there was no time. like people are frankly too employed and if their company's not

making room for them, people are already spending like their weekend probably trying to get stuff out the door just so they can show up Monday and look like it got done last week. So on top of that, you know, I I feel for that a lot and that's why I put the onus on like the

leadership to be like, "Hey, you have to make time." And if if if it's really

make time." And if if if it's really expensive, another way I've seen this done is they'll just do like the hackathon once a month or a quarter and like give like a week to people. You can

do kind of the carmarmac week method where it's like hey go heavy on work time on an idea and then like let's present it and and like that could be like a really cool lessons learned

opportunity. The one thing I I'll call

opportunity. The one thing I I'll call out to you about that is if like you do make room for people to go heavily in some sort of hackathon like just squeeze their brain in the base you got to

attack on like a day of rest afterwards cuz it's cognitively a lot. Do you feel that? Do you get cognitively wiped out?

that? Do you get cognitively wiped out?

Yes. I don't know. I think I'm on my own weird creativity roller coaster and sometimes I don't know what the dominant factors are.

You're just having a carmarmac year.

You're just like I can go so hard for like four or five days where I'm just flying, you know, everything I'm putting out feels good.

I'm being incredibly productive and then, you know, it'll be a Tuesday afternoon and I'm like, I'm just going to go walk aimlessly because I don't know what to do with my life right now.

There is another piece of this that says all the things that I've just talked about and have seen skew more helpful to people like me who are changing lanes a lot whereas like when you get to like

the specialist focusing on like individual tasking you can get a lot out of it but like at some point like there's a faster ceiling maybe I'm not sure maybe and and it might be more like

agentic like kind of system related but I'm starting to wonder that too. I love

this stuff because I switch lanes daily.

You know, I tweeted that months ago, but the ability to effectively multitask, like being able to paralyze work at a really high level is one of the core

skills of operating in this like AI world. Like I always have multiple

world. Like I always have multiple different types of tasks going simultaneously or I'm working on different work trees simultaneously, different linear issues simultaneously.

Maybe I'm designing and coding at the exact same time and you're just bouncing in between. Like my tooling answer is

in between. Like my tooling answer is like I use conductor for everything and they have this little choo choo sound that you can turn on when an agent is done working. Like I just move from one

done working. Like I just move from one choo choo to the next choo choo and it's like this little game of whack-a-ole.

And the choo choos are doing all different kinds of things, man. They're

doing all different kinds of things. And

and that's like my entire life is just like choo choo option spacebar talking to my computer. Choo choo option spacear talking to my computer. And I just do that all day.

I want to I want to say something too because like we're geeking out on I don't get to talk to a ton of people I feel like who have the perspective that we have. We've got this like 10,000 foot

we have. We've got this like 10,000 foot view where we talked to I I don't think people realize I was trying to count yesterday how many conversations I've had with designers and design leaders this year and it's it's already in like

like almost 200. I think it it's been w like daily I'm having multiple conversations. The thing that I I'll

conversations. The thing that I I'll tell people is that, you know, when I talk to you, I like geeking out about this because we can compare a lot of notes that I think I can't compare with a lot of folks. But I also will say this

is still really early. It is

accelerating pretty quickly, but if you hear us yapping about this and you're like, "This is really overwhelming. This

makes me have a whole bunch of FOMO."

Like, you are fine to wait. I really

think you can wait at the moment for some of this, especially all this agentic stuff because someone's going to come out with a tool that is eventually going to make me want to offboard of my open cloth setup because it's just so

well done and it works really well and and and most importantly, the change cost is really cheap. That's probably

going to be the great time to get in on this stuff. You're not going to have to

this stuff. You're not going to have to worry about all the like tightening the screws the way I have to do right now.

You know, I think that there will come a time where and at that point like it'll be really cognitively easy to get into it is my thinking. 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 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 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 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 transformed

the way that I share work. So, I'm

excited for you to try the product and if you ever want to jam about it, just email me at ridinflight.co.

Let's zoom out from there then and tap into that kind of vantage point and perspective given the fact that we do have a lot of conversations with people in the industry and leaders, teams, that kind of a thing. So, maybe going back to

some of the onsite team visits that you've done. I'm curious, especially

you've done. I'm curious, especially given, you know, what you're talking about with the open claw stuff. Like, I

know that a lot of people listening right now feel this little tinge of pressure and maybe this worry that they're falling behind and how do you adopt? Which direction do you point

adopt? Which direction do you point yourself when it feels like you go in every single direction simultaneously?

Did your time with those teams do anything to shape the way that you think about the future role of the designer, but even more specifically like where we should invest and what we will even

bring to the table as professionals in the months and years moving forward. I

have so much to say about it. So there's

like in there there's the sentiment you hear from just like the working designers and there's a lot of sentiment that's good and there's some like very there's the decelerationists there there's people who are afraid then

there's the accelerationists then on the other side it's like what are people actually focusing on what are they becoming what seems to be happening is more people are finding themselves being

given responsibility is what I'm seeing and having to lead something whether it's like the agentic installation or people or even both. I want to see those

rules starting to have compensation to match that. That's kind of that was like

match that. That's kind of that was like my hypothesis from 2024. I showed like this visual that it was like as the tools get better, the capacity for work starts to open up. Like you can do more in a day. And they think there's a

cognitive component of that that wasn't addressed cuz that's true.

But you can do more like you have more time, you have more ability, but you stack more things inside of that open space. Compensation should increase.

space. Compensation should increase.

That's the hypothesis. And I actually want to run a survey this quarter tracking where that's at for teams and like where where I think people should invest skills or where they're looking at it is just like being able to build

intent and zoom in and out like the ability to move between altitudes not just of like product thinking and then like the interaction moment but also from workflows. Ben Bloomman Rose had a

from workflows. Ben Bloomman Rose had a really good answer to what makes someone an AI native and it's not about the tools like it's not about like there is some competency there sure but to him it

was what do you do with the question what if and and I feel like that framing is really where I would rather have designers focus because I'll have some people who are like hey what do you

recommend I I do right now should I create a project should I like should I play with cloud code and I would just say like tune out the noise for a second and think of something that you have as like a problem and and like a problem

every designer has is the blank canvas problem. It's the hello world project I

problem. It's the hello world project I think to get you into this stuff and then just go and figure out how to solve the blank canvas problem for yourself.

Meaning we would do crazy eights, you know, we would fold a piece of paper and we do quick crazy eights in 8 minutes, one minute per idea to come up with like some solve some problem, some interface

problem. what is the version of that

problem. what is the version of that with the tooling available and go and just explore a couple of tools to figure out what is the blank canvas problem.

Oh, maybe you open up paper and you just like use a new tool to do stuff you're already familiar with. Or maybe you open up Claude Code and you vibe code like eight quick variations. Or maybe you go

even deeper and you're like, "Hey, how do I connect Cloud Code to Paper's MCP?"

And then how do I actually create a plan in cloud code and have it execute it in in papers MCP so that I just open up paper and I have like eight probably shitty versions of this intent that I

can just kind of like decide what's trash and what's interesting. Just do

that and and do it in a way that's like interesting to you. Don't don't look for like Tommy's newsletter. Don't look for the dive club newsletter and figure out what you should do. Just like tune it all out and pick up a couple of things

that like you found curious. like

practice thinking and and just try it and start to build your own little database of insight around what you're learning and what you like about your workflow cuz everybody's workflow and this is the the one thing I have seen a

lot is different like if we were to put screenshots up of everybody's workflows yeah that are emerging there's shapes and sizes and like oblong and weird and they're just very custom right now

even within an or even within an or the delta between workflows within an or like I've been doing a lot customer calls and it's shocking, man. Like

obviously everybody had their own process and means to tap into creativity, but people are using fundamentally different tools, ways of

working, ways of thinking. Like the the spreading apart of the creative design process has gotten so extreme.

It is chaotic. And and I think there's a lot of value in the people, the teams, the individuals who are just sharing their workflow. And I think it's

their workflow. And I think it's important to remember that like that's a good activity right now. And you know, you don't have to attach the language to it that like, hey, here's my workflow.

You should do this, right? Like strike

should from the vocabulary right now.

And just like compare compare workflows, compare shapes because we will eventually converge around some better practices around this stuff, but we don't know what that is yet. And so

right now the best thing you can do is if you want to get involved in this this type of work to just try to find workflows that like are are good for you and spend like 80 you know some percentage of time on the familiar stuff

that gets the work done and then some percentage of the time like where you have you make room for yourself to explore a workflow and to the point for the people who I said you can wait like we're going to converge we are going to converge around stuff if you have the

luxury and you don't have to get involved yet you can wait and there probably will will be like a concentration of like these are the better workflow I think something that makes our journeys similar but also

unique maybe to the average designer who's listening is we both made this investment in distribution putting our ideas out there kind of seeing it where it would take us and at least for myself

I kind of rode this wave of Figma throwing in a bunch more technical features. There was this new type of

features. There was this new type of design that felt a little bit more like engineering honestly and and it was it was really easy for me to just tinker. I

was curious. I just went for it. just

tried every little different tactic and kept putting ideas out there and it wasn't like do this. It was more, hey, I tried this. This was really cool. I'm

tried this. This was really cool. I'm

going to try this again tomorrow. And I

think we're in this moment in time where that opportunity is wide open again for people who do kind of want to like grow within the design community. There's so

much hunger and desire for people to just see workflows and the different experiments that people are running and the different learnings that others have. And if you just show up, try

have. And if you just show up, try things, be curious, and then treat probably Twitter like a little journal of the things that you're learning and the experiments that you're running, like this is the moment in time right

now to reap the rewards of being publicly curious. I've been very

publicly curious. I've been very prescriptive to uh the last couple of people who are newer designers and they asked me like, "Hey, what should I do?"

I said, "Okay, do the thing I just said there, like pick a pick a project, do an experiment, go to Twitter, share it. You

don't have to act like you're a guru.

Like this is not about guru. This is

don't in fact in fact don't. Yeah. Build

in public and just say here's what I did cuz here's the thing like the things that really pop off. So if you want to talk about just like algo maxing it would be create like vibe code something really visual something that's like

weird and unique like a 3D graph or you know some 3D space and time thing and just share it. And like that it's so easy to vibe code for content now. But

if you want to make it useful, and that's what I would recommend is create something that is specific to a workflow you want to solve for a project and then just capture the the visual artifact out

of that. There's some moment in there

of that. There's some moment in there that's really visually interesting and just share it and then a few bullet points on what you learned and like you just farm like that would work so well right now for client work for lead genen.

I don't know if you're seeing this. very

curious to hear your perspective too.

But something that I'm kind of starting to notice specifically in more of the job market is that there's this demand, not on paper necessarily, but there's

this demand for designers who can help level up the rest of the org and the way that they work and the AI systems and the the person that can just kind of blaze the trail, you know, and if you

can position yourself as that, whether in an interview or even just on your Twitter profile, it's a massive massive massive green flag in today's job market. Have you seen that at all?

market. Have you seen that at all?

Yeah. The the thing that's been really interesting again like it's the internal tool building. If you are not a

tool building. If you are not a designated leader at the organization, the absolute best way to find yourself being leaned on that way is to do something that brand engineer did at

Verscell. Find a crossf functional use

Verscell. Find a crossf functional use case where design is needed by marketing for a task that like you don't have time for, you don't want to spend time on and build an internal tool. I think they

said there were like 1500 vibecoded tools inside of ramp that they had made, right? And the question is like, well,

right? And the question is like, well, how much of that is throwaway? Well,

most of it like most of it is throwaway.

And and so the question was like, well, how does like internal adoption happen?

Well, it happens just like anything else happens with a product. It's useful.

Someone tries it and then it starts to spread like, oh, so and so built a thing for this and and that sort of thing like you are you are installing something new. you

are now the subject matter expert on that thing that's getting installed people are going to start looking at you and saying hey like that was really interesting how do I do that and they'll start making time for you like that is almost a way where if you work at a company that doesn't have a lot of time

for this stuff but you do have the ability to use the tooling that way which is another issue too right that's a fantastic way to do that and that's what I would recommend multiple episodes are coming to mind where people who've

built the early prototyping playgrounds at notion Atlassian stripe like they were catapulted internally in the or you know like it became a it became a big deal all of a sudden where different

designers were relying on him and there's just so much to figure out and designers you know we're problem solvers and it's interesting to think about how a lot more of the problems that we will

be solving in our day-to-day roles might be internal rather than userf facing and there's actually more bandwidth for that now too as we can accomplish the userf facing task much more quickly people are like why would you create tools that would replace yourself you're

just replacing yourself you're you know this is a self-owned And you know at RAMP there's two things that stuck out to me which was they really want people designers to focus on like creating 10 out of 10 experiences on like the

friction points that matter. You don't

need to be creating the blog post image for marketing you know like that's probably not the best use of your time as a product designer. The other thing that was really interesting to me was the tools that do get adopted internally. Like they look really cool,

internally. Like they look really cool, man. Like, and I'm like, whoa, that's

man. Like, and I'm like, whoa, that's weird because anytime I've ever worked on an internal tool, I remember when for Quantcast like our account managers needed something, it was just like make the thing work. It was like it was a bunch of ugly things strapped together.

It just worked. And then even when it got leveled up at some point, it was still just subpar because now I I'm looking at like there was a tool. I

can't remember what it was. It wasn't

glass at RAM. and Diego and Simon Corey had been working on like this drop cap letter and and it was like you were going to get this summary every day and the drop cap letter was just like like

this tapestry with the old like you know Renaissance language and it just looked really beautiful and I was like that's crazy that that much attention to detail went into this internal tool. I get it

like that makes a lot of sense and I think that that's potentially I mean like I just I just think it continues to grow in the directions like that. I'm

not thinking about Shopify's artifact tool. They had that tweet and it's like

tool. They had that tweet and it's like one of the best designed products of the year and it was just an internal tool.

Yeah. I received so many DMs in the weeks afterwards, people being like, can you just build this for invite? Like

this is what we want for inflight. You

know, in my head I'm like, yes. But then

the other part of me was like, I don't know if I can design a UI that good.

Like legitimately, I that internal tool might just be beyond what I am capable of making. Which is insane because

of making. Which is insane because you're right. Like if you would see

you're right. Like if you would see somebody even that had a resume where they're like, I've been building internal tools at X company for the last few years, your brain immediately is like, well, they probably don't have the visual skills. You know, they're

visual skills. You know, they're probably just building really gray box functional UI. But that is not the case

functional UI. But that is not the case anymore. No, it's it's it's really

anymore. No, it's it's it's really interesting and and I, you know, I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm not like

cautiously optimistic. I'm not like full-blown I there are some people who think move everything out of the way, let the acceleration of this happen as quickly as possible because we got to

get through the painful middle as fast as possible. I've heard that take and I

as possible. I've heard that take and I mostly align with that take, but I do still think don't go 100 miles an hour.

Probably go like 60 m hour. Like let's

go the speed limit and let's pay attention to like what we're seeing as we get there. But let's get let's try to get there. I think getting there is a

get there. I think getting there is a worthwhile cause. All right, let's talk

worthwhile cause. All right, let's talk to a very specific listener for a second who they are working at a Midwest mid-tier agency. They've been there for

mid-tier agency. They've been there for 3 or 4 years. They did some random freelancing before that. they're not

going to win people over with their resume, but they believe that they have the skills to take a big leap and to land one of these roles that people care about and kind of puts them on the map,

per se. Help them think about where to

per se. Help them think about where to point. What are the types of ways that

point. What are the types of ways that they should be spending their time? You

only have so much time outside of day-to-day work responsibilities. What

artifacts or processes or pieces of knowledge, what can they do to equip themselves to take that leap and play in the big leagues? I think the biggest thing you can do to add value right now

I I really think and not every designer wants to be a systems designer like someone who's thinking about systems and I I can appreciate that. Um, I do think

there's a world where a lot of very visual specific folks are still valued, but I think right now the biggest thing you can do is to go in and to try and

help crossf functional people do more design work easily, like parts of the process. Enable your marketing team to

process. Enable your marketing team to create that blog image without needing you, right? Like create a design

you, right? Like create a design function that is enabling crossunctional partners. I truly don't think you're

partners. I truly don't think you're going to cannibalize yourself. I don't

think that's what's happening. I don't

think you're going to build these processes and then they're going to be like, "All right, thanks. See you." I

think like they're going to find more and more things that need that sort of system thinking. I think there's going

system thinking. I think there's going to be more things that need like actual product contributions that aren't the things that crossunctional partners should be focusing on. And you're going to have a lot more time to do that. When

you have a lot more time to do that, I think of someone like Andrew Wendling.

He's this wonderful designer over at Iverson Studio and now he's living in this wild generative image video world and and combining those with coding

projects and and getting these like really rich experiments. Ameilia

Watenberger shared some of her like just blog posts that are these combinations of interactions made between different generative images and like really thoughtful philosophizing posts about

the future of interface work. And it's

like those things become possible because you now have time because you've enabled these systems that remove the toil of what you have to work on. And

let me push on that a little bit because you could make the most high impact systems at this old company that you're trying to leave imaginable.

It's a whole other set of challenges to figure out how to stand out in the market on top of that skill set.

Demonstrate that value.

Do it in a way that gets people to spend more than 10 seconds on you as a person.

So where do you go from there? because I

think the fact is that's not as easy to sell as the kind of goofy gradient machine that you were talking about gets clicks on Twitter.

I don't have the perfect answer. I don't

want to act like I'm a subject expert on how to get hired today. I'll tell you what I'm saying. Intern programs that still have whiteboarding, but like before that they do 20-minute exercises of vibe coding. Thought that was really

interesting. You know, they want to test

interesting. You know, they want to test those capabilities. Yeah. I was like

those capabilities. Yeah. I was like they said they didn't want to see like Figma. They wanted to see like, hey,

Figma. They wanted to see like, hey, vibe code this. And it was for product design. There's like people who are

design. There's like people who are trying to figure out how to evaluate AI fluency. And I think like AI fluency is

fluency. And I think like AI fluency is going to eventually just become like an ambient thing. I don't think we're going

ambient thing. I don't think we're going to like highlight that language forever.

But I think right now it is important language because a lot of companies are like, "Yeah, we want this designer who can come in and think we want someone who knows what to do with the question, what if in a way that doesn't feel like

it's from 2012, 2015, you know, 2018."

That question seems to be being answered by like what are you showing that you're sharing like social media is the new discovery engine right now. Like that is the way to for better or worse that is the way to prove that you are someone

who is experimenting and that you you're exploring what to do with the question what if in ways that like a lot of other people aren't. Let's say that you're the

people aren't. Let's say that you're the hiring manager and you're talking to this hypothetical person that I've been bringing up the last couple questions and you are trying to figure out

specific questions or measuring sticks to get at this level of AI fluency.

Mhm.

What are you reaching for and what would what signals would you hope to see?

Right now, what's really I mean this is I think the biggest question that I want to know is like show me your workflow.

Show me how you design something. you

know, take me through an idea that you've created and and that is something that I want to know. I want to watch and pick apart and ask why and see which tools are involved in that. That's a

challenging thing because I don't think people are like, "What do you mean my workflow?" Like, "Well, I went over

workflow?" Like, "Well, I went over here. I asked some customers. I went

here. I asked some customers. I went

over to Figma. I made this thing." I

think the things that I want to know is, "Okay, cool. Yeah, totally get that." Is

"Okay, cool. Yeah, totally get that." Is

there anything you've played with and like why did it work or why didn't it work? Oh, like, well, normally I would

work? Oh, like, well, normally I would pull up Super Whisper and I or Whisper Flow and I would just be like and then it would like look like this, but I don't I don't want to show you guys that cuz that's like a bunch of waste of time. I'm like, no, no, show me that.

time. I'm like, no, no, show me that.

Like, actually, show me like what are you why did you decide to do voice?

Well, because like I'm kind of rambly.

I'm not a great communicator if I just talk, but AI's like really helped me condense my thinking. And so then I can take that and I can plug it into this prompt over here. and I found that it could actually generate this plan

better. I'm like, okay, cool. Now we're

better. I'm like, okay, cool. Now we're

on to something and like let's dig into that, you know, and not everybody has that workflow, but that's what I'm looking for is like, have you played with workflows like this? How are you thinking about it? Like, why did you

decide to do that? If I'm looking for like AI fluency, I'm looking for I'm looking for that. I'm looking for people in the playground of not just like you have a playground where you've vibe coded, but you've also like you're treating your workflow a little bit like

a playground. Whatever your alt tab is

a playground. Whatever your alt tab is on Mac looks different at any given week. I'm going to pull back the thing

week. I'm going to pull back the thing that you said earlier, which I feel like is a little bit intention with this, which is it's okay to just wait because what you just said is totally

what I'm seeing as well. And I have this in the talent network, we have this product that kind of powers everything behind the scenes called decimals. And

I have this thing I can hover over and it shows the green and red flags that a hiring manager is looking for in any given role. And it's really interesting

given role. And it's really interesting to look at the trends across those green and red flags. A red flag that I by far the number one red flag that I see is

that a candidate has not demonstrated any interest or curiosity in new AI processes or tools. What you're

describing is kind of that's the that's the opposite, right? Like that's the green flag. If you can show up and be

green flag. If you can show up and be like, man, I've just been exploring in every different direction and I did this one thing and that it really this worked kind of over here and I'm playing with this new tool. Like hiring managers love

that. They love that. I don't have the

that. They love that. I don't have the perfect answer for the balance. I'm

trying to be responsible with language and not just crush people into fear about this. Again,

about this. Again, 60 miles an hour versus 100 miles an hour. I do think at some point because

hour. I do think at some point because you have to understand what it says about you as a designer though if you're not experimenting. It says you might

not experimenting. It says you might just be too damn busy. You may not have the luxury and that's very real. That's

a very real thing. You work at a company or at Oracle where like the mandate is like we are we we do not think the future of design work looks like that.

and they might be right, but I from my understanding Oracle is like very very anti- that direction and maybe that's the situation that you're in and there's not much you can do about that and it's probably going to be okay cuz like you'll figure that I I

do think there's going to be a a second adoption wave that occurs. But I do think if you're somebody who's like looking for a job right now and you want to stand out, like if that's that's what

we're talking about is standing out, having a shorter loop to getting that next piece of work, it's a really positive signal that you're exploring these tools because it says it's it's a

100% says you give a [ __ ] It doesn't mean you don't give a [ __ ] if you're not doing it, but it's 100% means you give a [ __ ] if you are doing it. And and

sometimes the biggest differentiator between two people is like how much gas they have in the tank. How much give a [ __ ] do you have? If you're going to keep up with this stuff and if you're going to do really good work, you have to care a lot. You have to care a lot

about this. You know,

about this. You know, I'm going to put you on the spot here.

The chances of us getting this right are almost nothing. But let's say that we

almost nothing. But let's say that we have this conversation 6 months from now. We run it back on an episode.

now. We run it back on an episode.

Yeah. What topic do you think that would be much more in the zeitgeist that we would be talking about that, you know, isn't as top of mind today?

Well, I I mean, I think that context layer, the headless design, I think that's where this is going. I I will I like making predictions and I like fact-checking my predictions because it helps me like hone my worldview. Like,

am I full of [ __ ] or am I like paying attention to the right things?

I've been on a little bit of a run. it

hasn't always been the case, but I feel like feel like I'm I'm plugged in and I do I think we're gonna see this like headless design topic this because I'm I'm so early we're so early talking about open claw installations

and like ramp building glass and I think over the next few quarters we're going to see that really accelerate. I think a lot of companies are going to realize like oh agents are using tools what does

that look like and what does that mean?

Dan Sheper just launched um that writing tool and that was a really that was a really like compelling case for working alongside an awakened AI that's just paying attention that's like hey

actually you should do this over here or actually this thing this insight came in like maybe you can consider this like I think there will be the first conversation is the installation of that

briefcase moving tool to tool and then after that I think is going to be like okay how are people actually working with an AI that is like always on in the tool with you.

I think that's gonna be a real conversation that comes up. And that

sounds like sci-fi to some people like we're there already. Like we were there.

It just hasn't been wanted yet.

There's just a lot of friction to creating and managing the briefcase.

Correct. The onboarding is terrible right now. The onboarding is like not,

right now. The onboarding is like not, you know, but I think it's going to get solved very quickly.

You think about the design of the interior of the briefcase and where are the folders? What goes in where? What's

the folders? What goes in where? What's

the taxonomy of the little file paper?

I've never had a briefcase, but I would imagine, you know, there's like little compartments inside of it. The design of that is going to fall as much on designers as anybody else. It's a whole different type of problem to solve.

Yeah. And that's why you see like Google Stitch launching like the designd file.

You're going to see a lot of I think initiatives trying to standardize what that means. Like how do you standardize

that means. Like how do you standardize intent? and and and we're we're moving

intent? and and and we're we're moving in that direction and it's going to look probably very different a year from now.

And how do you share the lessons derived and the best practices derived across an org too because something that we said in the very beginning is how we're not even reading our markdown files. I don't

even read my markdown files. So how is another designer going to have any clue what is in there? You know, like there's like a visibility challenge that's going to be really interesting to think too.

That's that's a really good point. I

haven't thought about that as of yet.

Collaborating collaborating around these black boxes is going to be a challenge that needs to get solved.

Totally random question left field before I let you go.

If you had to take a W2 role at a company tomorrow, where would you want to work and why?

Oh man, I think it would be Versel, dude.

Yeah.

Really?

I left that like they're not full of [ __ ] like they're they're really working in this way and I am just a builder and I really think the future belongs to builders. There was like something I said the other day which was like I think the future is bright but it

has to be built and I love being surrounded by people who are just like building who just like are obsessively about building in a direction that betters things and and I that was one of

the coolest cultures I've seen. there's

a gravitational pull towards more technical products right now that I think gets kind of the cream of the crop of the designers that skew builders or more like the early adopters, you know,

and so it's no surprise to me, I guess, that those cultures are attracting the level of talent that they are because anybody who's freaking out right now that all of a sudden they can build their ideas wants to be in that kind of

environment where they're told to just run crazy. And so yeah, there is a

run crazy. And so yeah, there is a little bit more of a separation maybe in terms of the the different tiers of orgs and what that makes possible for a designer. So I get it. Anything that we

designer. So I get it. Anything that we haven't talked about before I let you go that quick plug. We got a party coming up.

quick plug. We got a party coming up.

We do have a party coming up. If you're

listening to this, come to San Francisco for config. And the last night is Detach

for config. And the last night is Detach and it's going to be so fun. Detach is

this um idea that Jesse Sho Walter and I had two configs ago. It's where you and I met. I think I think it was like 150

I met. I think I think it was like 150 people just like let's just invite like once the conference is done let's not have a mini conference let's like just I I told Jesse I was like I just want to get drunk with all the designers that I

see online and hang you know and and uh we did we had it turned out great then last year it was like a little bit bigger I think we had like 300 and we've been like selling out every year and so this year I'm like cool we got like a

threetory at 25 lusk really cool venue it's got like a beautiful roof rooftop and we got like 400 people and it's like the people who are hitting me up who are coming like Verscell's team's coming Brett from Design Joy who never leaves

out of his house. He's like, "I'll be there." And I'm like, "Heck yeah." You

there." And I'm like, "Heck yeah." You

know, Josh Pucket. It's just so many cool people. And I'm telling you, if if

cool people. And I'm telling you, if if you have an interest in like really networking in a way that's like not pretentious or anything, come to the party. Come hang out. Like, I want to

party. Come hang out. Like, I want to have a drink with you.

You get to a little taste of how amazing this community is. and Tommy, you've played a a pretty outsized role in contributing to it, shaping it, and super appreciate you coming on and

sharing a little bit about what's on your mind and what you're seeing today.

I think we should make a regular practice out of these because that vantage point is a good one and things are moving way too quickly to have a full year in between episodes.

We should have like a a byianual state of the state of perspective, you know?

I think that I think this is the first one of those and we'll have more. So

inspired by you by the way. So that's

where it all comes.

Right back at you. Right back at you.