Dive Club (Deep Dives) 🤿

Helen Tran was an early designer at Shopify and is now leading product design at AngelList. But in between those two roles she also ran her own startup for three years. So the goal of this conversation is to figure out how that period of time impacted her design practice so we can all learn how to design with a founder’s mindset. In this episode we discuss: - How Helen is approaching design leadership differently this time around - How Helen constructors hypotheses to influence product strategy - Why Helen made sacrifices to her production skills - The keys to designing in a pre-PMF company - The #1 way to help founders - + a lot more Helen’s website - https://helentran.com/ Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub N ow you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Today we're talking with designer and entrepreneur, Hunter Hammonds, who has grown 5 different agencies to millions in revenue in less than a year. So in this episode we walk through the different stages of building an independent design business—starting from positioning yourself as a solopreneur all the way to scaling operations to 7 figures. We get into the weeds about: - Hunter’s framework for selling yourself on a landing page - The tactics OffMenu uses to convert more leads to customers - Why Hunter thinks MRR is a misguided metric - What operational fat you can trim to increase margins - How you can improve your sales calls - + a lot more - Petr Knoll - https://twitter.com/iampetrknoll (design partner OffMenu) - Christian O’Brian - https://www.linkedin.com/in/obrienchristian/ (CEO OffMenu) - Sahil Bloom - https://twitter.com/SahilBloom (partner OffMenu) - Agencies - Instrument - https://www.instrument.com/ - Basic - https://www.basicagency.com/ - Ueno - https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/06/twitter-acquihires-creative-agency-ueno-to-help-design-new-products/ Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

Ready for a masterclass in positioning? Nick Pattison has been working for himself for well over 10 years... but recently he's laser-focused on running 1-week brand sprints (and it's working). So this episode is a deep dive into his new freelance playbook: - The automations that allow him to focus on sales and creative direction - Lessons learned from running 25+ brand sprints at $15k each - How Nick focuses on growing his creative muscles - His strategies for presenting work to clients - Why he stopped writing proposals - + a lot more… - Nick’s agency: Primary Studio - https://primary.studio/ - Nick’s talent company: Stellar - https://www.stellar.work/ - Nick’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/thenickpattison Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

This episode is the ultimate design founder story. Dennis shares all of the ups and downs along his journey to build Amie—a new productivity tool that captures your emails, calendar, and to-dos in a single beautiful product. Some of the highlights: - Where Dennis draws inspiration - The traits Dennis looked for in early hires - What Dennis looks for in design candidates - The backstory behind Amie’s viral website launch - How Dennis balances his intuition with product feedback - How Dennis thinks about innovating vs. capitalizing on familiarity - Things 3 app - https://culturedcode.com/things/ - Stefan - https://twitter.com/_animify the Amie design engineer - Devin - https://www.cognition-labs.com/introducing-devin—AI coder - Brian Chesky interview - https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/brian-cheskys-contrarian-approach on Lenny’s Podcast - The Amo app - https://amo.co/ - Dennis’s custom Amie pants - https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEoOIsjW0AUYiTj?format=jpg&name=900x900 Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Over the last few months, design engineering has by far been the #1 most requested topic. So I wanted to get the inside scoop from the team at Vercel to learn more. In this episode we get to hear from: 1. Glenn Hitchcock - https://twitter.com/glennui (Director of design engineering) 2. John Pham - https://twitter.com/JohnPhamous (Lead design engineer) The goal of this conversation is to help people understand the role that design engineers play and to outline a path you can take to develop some of these skills. We talk about: - The strategy behind Vercel’s new website - Why Vercel built a design engineering team - How designers collaborate with design engineers - What Vercel looks for when hiring design engineers - How Vercel is always building with re-usability in mind - + a lot more - Maggie Appleton’s quote on software creation from our group interview - https://anthonyhobday.com/blog/20240122.html - vercel.com/ship - Framer components - https://drams.framer.website/ (inspired by Dieter Rams’ design principles) - Screwball scramble - https://us.tomy.com/screwball-scramble/ - Dead Simple Sites - https://deadsimplesites.com/ Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Since the beginning of my design career, I’ve looked up to Metalab. So this interview is a special one because we get to learn from their Head of Design, Michael Wandelmeier. We go deep into how design works at Metalab and talk about specific strategies around: - Mike’s go-to storytelling tactics - The importance of opinionated design - When they ignore constraints on a project - The unique way they map out user journeys - Tips for driving alignment on complex projects - How they use the “ridiculously early hypothesis” Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

One of the tools I'm most interested in right now is Relume. 200k+ people are using it to design and build websites faster with AI. They have a massive set of Figma/Webflow components which allows them to take a unique approach that “respects the process” of web design. In this bonus episode, their co-founder Adam gives us an end-to-end demo where he sitemaps, wireframes, designs, and builds a full website in ~30 min. We then get into the weeds about: - How the web design process will evolve with AI - What this means for the role of designer - His journey as a design founder adapting to AI - Where Relume is headed next as a company 👀 Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 - Relume’s Figma library - https://www.relume.io/figma-library - Relume’s Webflow library - https://www.relume.io/components - Galileo - https://www.usegalileo.ai/explore (another AI tool we mentioned) 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Rich Arnold was the Head of Design at Vine, a design lead on the early Instagram Stories team, and now he works as a design manager at Coinbase. So this episode goes deep into: - How Rich grew as a storyteller at IG - Why we cant let data be the designer - The importance of “zooming out” in your work - How to grow your creative problem solving muscles - What it takes to design successful consumer products - Ian Spalter (Old Head of Design at Instagram) - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianspalter/ - Rus Yusupov (Cofounder of Vine and HQ Trivia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus_Yusupov#:~:text=Rus%20Yusupov%20(born%20May%204,and%20CEO%20of%20HQ%20Trivia. - Lapse (Mobile App) - https://www.lapse.com/)

If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems teams around the world. So in this discussion we talk about the types of challenges he faces at Big Medium and how he’s envisioning the future of design systems:

One of the most requested guests has been Gabe Valdivia. He was an early designer at Facebook, a designer manager at Google, and has led design for different startups over the years most recently as the head of design for Patreon. But in the last year he's made the jump to start his own practice and position himself as a fractional design partner for early stage teams. So a lot of this conversation gets into the weeds about what it's like to design 0 to 1 experiences. We talk about tactics for speed, storytelling, prototyping and a lot more... Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

As soon as I read No More Boring Apps I was hooked. Andy Allen immediately became one of my design heroes and now I use his Not Boring apps daily. So this conversation is a behind-the-scenes of his journey, an analysis of the state of software design, and a glimpse of where we’re headed next as an industry. Some highlights: - The design tools Andy is most excited about - Andy’s advice for people wanting to learn 3D - The differences between good and great design - The 4 things needed for design to have cultural impact - How AI will empower us to deliver tailored software at scale - Why the future of design tooling might mirror the game industry Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

In this episode we get to hear from Jenny Wen who is the person who originally designed and brought Figjam to market. This conversation is full of inslights like:

This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc. 1. A unique way to stand out as a design candidate 2. How to grow as a vision caster 3. The question every freelancer should ask clients 4. The curse of knowledge in web design 5. When systems thinking is most important 6. Strategies for Figma variables 7. The Craft Flywheel 8. How to know which details matter Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

This episode expands on 8 key insights that I took away from interviewing designers like Soleio, Kevin Twohy, Molly Hellmuth, Soren Iverson, etc. 1. A unique way to stand out as a design candidate 2. How to grow as a vision caster 3. The question every freelancer should ask clients 4. The curse of knowledge in web design 5. When systems thinking is most important 6. Strategies for Figma variables 7. The Craft Flywheel 8. How to know which details matter Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

Soleio made a name for himself as the 2nd design hire at Facebook and eventually went on to lead design at Dropbox. Now he invests in extraordinary software startups like Figma, Framer, Vercel, Perplexity, Replit, Universe, tldraw, and dozens more worldwide. So in this discussion we go deep into: - The fascinating story behind project Motion - How Soleio’s skillset evolved during his time at Facebook - When it makes sense to invest in craft (and when it doesn’t) - what Soleio looks for when hiring designers - How startups can attract the top design talent - Why Soleio is so excited about spatial computing - The type of companies Soleio is looking to invest in next Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Galileo recently broke design twitter with the launch of their new generative AI tool for builders. So in this episode we talk with their co-founder and lead designer, Helen Zhou about: - Her journey as a design founder - Why user research for AI tooling is unique - How AI will change the day-to-day role of a designer - Her response to concerns about LLMs and creativity - The potential breakthrough use case for UI generation Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

Webflow has had as big an impact on design as any company over the last decade. So this episode is an inside look at their design culture, rituals, and key insights from their Head of Design, Kevin Wong. Here’s a preview of some of the ideas we cover: - How Webflow executed a massive rebrand leading up to their conference - The different types of prototypes for driving alignment - The role of design systems in their latest visual refresh - How designers can handle situations where stakeholders disagree - Ways to improve the way you share your work via Loom - The rituals and processes used by designers at Webflow - How design casts vision with “north stars” Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

In this episode we get to hear from Ryo Lu who was one of the very first designers at Notion. This conversation is an inside look at the Notion design process, how they think about product, and a lot more: - How Notion approached the user research process for AI - Strategies for improving your systems thinking - How design at Notion sources feedback on meaty problems - How Notion thinks about their design system - What Ryo is looking for in your portfolio - How to operate outside the traditional “design” role Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub Now you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪

In this episode we’re talking with Molly Hellmuth who is the creator of UI Prep where she has an incredible newsletter, design system, and course where she’s taught hundreds of designers all over the world. This discussion gets into the nerdier side of Figma 🤓 We talk all about: - When it does and doesn’t make sense to adopt variables - How to make sure you don’t invest in a Figma strategy that you later regret - Molly’s favorite Figma plugins for design systems - How she’s building components differently in V8 of her UI Prep design system - Her journey as an independent creator - + a lot more Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub

There’s a new design super team emerging at Clerk and in this episode we get a behind-the-scenes from the leader, Derek Briggs. We get into the weeds about: - How Derek assembled an A-list team from scratch - Why Derek pushed for a dedicated UI engineering team - How Clerk is approaching their massive redesign - Why Derek doesn’t believe in design deadlines - The business case for prioritizing quality - Derek’s #1 piece of advice for younger designers - + a lot more Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿 🌐 dive.club 🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclub