OpenAI’s Head of Design: This is the best time in history to be a designer | Ian Silber

0:00 been doing this sentiment survey of the tech workforce. Surprisingly, designers are just the most Unhappy on every dimension. We're unclear right now what is expected of a designer. Someone who might be classically trained in a certain way of working now feeling like oh my gosh, I need to really change everything. You believe that's the best time in history to be designer. We're all extremely early in this process. There's just a huge opportunity for designers. Nobody should feel behind right now I think that if you literally start it today you're gonna have a leg up on pretty much but people there's just so much opportunity to change the way we work to make great things. If you look at engineering It's just a completely new job versus a few years ago. I'm curious how that translates to product design. Engineers have ten or sometimes like hundred XR productivity, but our design team hasn't because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out. Still very messy and fluid. We had a podcast with Native Design Club code, Jenny Wynn. She talked about there's been this traditional design process. Prototype, mock, studies research, iterate, and now there's just no time for that. There's certain features for Chat GBT where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time.

1:11 We try a hundred things we throw out ninety nine and we finally ship one. And other things we really embrace building in public. We take big swings and then we learn quickly. Do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer? I think it already is an incredible product designer. Today my guest is Ian Silber, head of product design at OpenAI. Ian's been in this role for three years now. Which is a lifetime in AI time. Prior to OpenAI, he was at Artifact, the news app from the founders of Instagram that I absolutely loved.

1:41 Before that he spent eight years at Instagram. The role of design is in such an interesting place right now, and Ian has such a unique and insightful and fascinating take. on the future of product design and what the AI tools that we use every day will look like in the future. A huge thank you to Sileo and Joel Lowenstein for suggesting topics for this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out Lenny'sProductPass.com. For a year free.

2:05 Of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world. Available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers. With that, I bring you Ian Silber. Ian, thank you so much. For being here.

2:20 I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I'm even more excited. Something that I'm very excited to get your take on. I don't know if you've watched me doing this, but I've been doing this uh sentiment survey of the tech workforce over the past couple of years.

2:34 I think it's the biggest survey of its kind, where basically survey people in tech. About how they're feeling. about their careers, their work, their roles. Especially with the rise of AI this last year. And

2:47 designers and user researchers. Are just the most unhappy on every dimension, like every actual dimension. They're the most

2:58 overwhelmed, the most anxious, the most the least optimistic, the most worried. uh the most tired Also the least likely To recommend their role. Two people entering the workforce.

3:11 I'm curious if you are seeing this yourself. In the design community. And if you are, what do you think is going on? Uh, first of all, it's an incredible survey and it's such great I think information to have as an industry. Um And I think it's something we need to unpack. I you know, and

3:27 I see I doubt I see a mix, uh, for sure. I think like I can speak most of design. Um And I mean I talked to a lot of designers

3:37 That are very optimistic and very excited. Um And so I see In my world I see I luckily I I'm or I I I see a lot of that.

3:48 But I can totally understand why people might be feeling very uncertain. Right, because there's so much discussion about Well Is the role changing? Should my expectations be different? Um

4:02 And You know, well do I need to Do I need to do X, Y, and Z? Do I need to be shipping code every day? And you know, someone who might be uh sort of classically trained in a certain way of working, now feeling like, Oh my gosh, I need to like really change everything.

4:18 And I think it's to me right now it feels like The the uncertainty of of that I can totally understand, right? Because As an engineer, I think people have already already sort of gone through that ship. Like we see that engineers are working totally different. And we also w you know one thing I do here and I this came up a lot in my own team. When when we did we do similar surveys internally.

4:40 One of the big things that came up was You know. We see that uh Uh you know, engineers have ten or sometimes like hundred X their productivity.

4:50 Uh But our design team w hasn't, right? Because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try a bunch of things and throw them out, right? Versus Maybe working with a coding agent, you ask it to do something that's pretty binary. Now at at this point it it usually sort of gets it pretty well. Um And but the design process is really still very f messy and fluid and you

5:13 think you have a great idea and you try it and it sucks, and then you try it again and it sucks and you you give it to you know, users or intern you get internal feedback and it's wrong and and you you still have to go through that arduous and kind of messy, but really fun process. Um And that hasn't really comp that

5:32 It's compressed in that you can get much more ideas out fast, but uh you still need that that whole sort of feedback. Loop. There's the alignment of getting many people, uh, you know, especially in a bigger company, like that it still t has a lot of overhead. So The point is that I think that it's we're unclear right now, like what is expected of a designer and

5:53 That that lack of clarity I can see totally lead to you know, um, some some fears, uh or some unease, I guess. But on the other hand, I've seen that I mean our designers What's been gr what's great, I think, about at OpenAI is like we're such an experimental company.

6:10 We are driven by, you know, research and we treat our company as a research lab and we totally embrace that. And that's a new thing that I really kinda learned and and have really l come to love about OpenAI is that Started as a research lab. that DNA is like deeply embedded in everything we do. And as designers, I think that, you know, you come here, we look for people that are

6:34 N don't have a background in AI, but are like really curious about the tools and How it can work. And we found that like Just by

6:44 sort of supporting that excitement to explore that people Feel less pressure. Um, it's not like you need to change the way you work, but It's more about encouraging exploration. Um

6:56 And when we've done that, when I go and talk to um both very senior designers and early career designers at our company, they're so excited because they I I literally was just asking some people before this'cause I wanted to get some different takes and They you know, I think the feeling is that like they have so much more Ability to

7:15 Be creative. to express themselves to try bad ideas and throw'em out. You can just like really move through lots of different ideas and it becomes this incredible way to create. And the things that I'm seeing for my team at the the bar is raising, um The the

7:32 I think the thinking is getting stronger the more that they're using um these tools. So I think for the people that that that are starting to embrace this, they're starting to feel really excited and realizing that they have just so much agency as as designers. And like Um you know, so much more ability to have like really high impact, uh as as a as a designer. This episode is brought to you by our season's presenting sponsor, Work OS.

7:57 What do OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, Replit, Sierra, Clay, and hundreds of other winning companies all have in common? They are all powered by Work OS. If you're building a product for the enterprise, you felt the pain of integrating single sign-on. Skim. Rback, audit logs, and other features required by large companies.

8:16 WorkOS turns those deal blockers into drop-in APIs with a modern developer platform built specifically for B2B SaaS. Literally every startup that I'm an investor in that starts to expand up market ends up working with WorkOS. And that's because they are the best. Whether you are a seed stage startup trying to land your first enterprise customer, or a unicorn expanding globally, WorkOS is the fastest path to becoming enterprise ready and unblocking world. It's essentially stripe for enterprise features. Visit workOS.com to get started, or just hit up their Slack where they have actual engineers waiting to answer your questions. Work OS allows you to build faster with delightful APIs, comprehensive docs, and a smooth developer experience. Go to workOS dot com to make your app Enterprise ready today. What I'd love to do in this conversation is help folks that are in that bucket of

9:05 Well this just sucks and things aren't going well. Because as you said, and this is exactly where we found that survey is About half of people are having the best time of their career. having the most fun, the most optimistic about where things are going.

9:19 And then the half are not having a really hard time. And Exactly what you said. The people that are having a great time. report like the main the most the strongest correlation is they feel amplified.

9:30 By AI. It's actually making them better. And that's that the way you described engineers. They're they're seeing that now. They're like, Holy shit, I can do so much more. And so just to kind of reinforce the point you're making. Thing attributes of people that are doing well. Um

9:45 Feel amplified, very curious, have time to explore, feel like they can be more creative. Is there any more thing more along those lines of just like patterns of people that are doing really well and having a great time that might be helpful for people to hear that are not having a good time? When I see Yeah and and the the folks that I think are really embracing this, right? They are using it

10:05 every step of the process to kinda help them, right? And it and I think it helps, you know, we have we have a community, of course, of designers that are all trying this together. So if there's any way to kind of uh find that and that that's something that uh we should think about more as a broader community, how we kinda help each other. But like I think that learning kind of different ways of working, right? And so it might be Okay, I have this idea. Let me just actually start by trying what if I just threw this right into

10:31 Codex or Cloud or whatever tool you use, like Throw it into it uh into an agent to help you think about it, to help you prototype it. Just try a different way of working. Um, it doesn't necessarily mean that that has to be the exact right way, but um I don't know. I think we found that just people that are are embracing this that are adaptable. I think adaptability is like another

10:52 term that I think we all hear a lot now, but it's like so true. It's like Knowing that This stuff changes very quickly. What Didn't work.

11:01 I mean Literally like within You know Six months this entire industry has shifted.

11:11 I remember I was actually out on on paternity leave uh towards the end of last year and I was working on some side projects. I was trying some Uh coding agents and it just like It worked, but it just kept kinda running into these hiccups. And and then like a month later, like codex drops and I try it again and it's like oh my gosh, it just works.

11:32 Um And that I think changes a lot of the design process because now all of a sudden if you do have an idea, you can like clop it in there and just try it. Um And so anyways, I think it's it's just really about like Not being scared. I think another thing to think about is that We're so early. We're like so in early innings of this entire

11:52 Um Evolution, right? It feels like things have changed a lot. And it feels like maybe we're pretty far into this shift. But The good news for anybody who is trying to design or get into design, whether again, like if you're

12:07 uh early career, late career, or you've never even Like actually design anything, but you've been thinking about it. is like we're all figuring this out as we go. Nobody has like some perfect answer. Um about the how the design process should work.

12:24 Um And it's pr whatever you think is working today will probably change again. And so I think what's encouraging about this is that Nobody should feel like behind right now. I think that if you literally started today, you're gonna have a leg up on pretty much most people. Um

12:42 And uh just really thinking about like how you can just make great stuff. Um and uh there's just so much opportunity to change the way work work or to to uh just to make great things And What we think is like really cutting edge today will look so archaic and You know

13:00 Uh A year, let alone a month, right? And that's something I've I've learned. You know, I've been at Open Air for three years and I think about the stuff that they you know, we were working on when we when I first joined, um I mean, I remember getting a demo of of like

13:17 our our early voice mode that we hadn't shipped or computer use that like You know Barely worked. Uh and now it's like become That's uh it literally has become part of the process of how we design. We use Both of those tools.

13:31 to to build software and and so anyways the point is it's like changing very quickly We're all extremely early in this process and nobody really has like the it figured out. I love that. You've also when we were chatting ahead of this year, you actually told me you believe this is the best time in history to be a designer. Yeah, I mean I I I truly believe this. Um I can't even imagine, you know, I so when I uh okay. History lesson when I was getting into design, I mean I was like

13:58 Uh Amen. Teenage years, right? And I I was like Uh you know, to learn things it was like You know, I would uh I I was kinda like learning just design and code and

14:11 You could like view source on a HTML webpage and kinda see how things were built. And that was like kinda how you had to learn and You know, um You could I don't know, it's like Dreamweaver and you know, like there were these really T tools that actually were really cool.

14:29 Um but to compare those to today if I were just getting into design, the fact that you can like learn so quickly, you can kind of like have an idea to Working version of it in like like a matter of minutes. Um

14:45 Uh it's just You can be so expressive and and you can um I think anybody can be a designer, right? Um And I think that as more and more

14:57 Software Is made. More and more products are made. I think uh The

15:04 I do think that the human element of design is gonna really The be start to become more and more important. It's it's always been the case that I think that

15:15 you know, companies with great design You know, can uh of course stand out. I think it's gonna be more and more important. Right.

15:22 I think that products that um t fully understand their users and that makes something delightful. When anybody can make anything, you know, that's gonna become one of the most important kind of uh like sort of dimensions of a product. And that's how people are gonna evaluate it. And so I think designers uh stand like that is that is our core job, right? Um

15:44 You know, and And then on top of that I think the designers are just much more empowered uh so You know Uh at a um

15:54 You know, I was talking to some friends that are thinking about starting a company. And Talking about the uh sort of ratio of design to engineer and how like at a startup, maybe that's totally different. It might it may have been like You have one designer and

16:09 uh I don't know, fifteen engineers or something like that, you know, that maybe a a startup I've I've seen that sort of ratio. Uh, but there was they were talking about well, maybe we'll have like two designers and one engineer. One really good engineer who can make sure that like we're really building something It's rock solid f like from from an engineering standpoint, but then We want two really creative people that are gonna be thinking about how we kind of build this product. And so

16:34 Mm-hmm. Thinking about that, I think that there's just like a huge opportunity for designers. I think that internally we see that more and more We're look we like designers w we are are totally completely empowered to to take an idea, to take a

16:51 early research concept and try to figure out how we can actually like package that up into something that people want to use or that Um that solves some sort of uh unmet need for our customers and Um, that is a designer's job. And so I think that Maybe more and more people start to

17:06 Think of themselves as designers. Um But either way, I think it's like the best I I really do think it's the best time to be a designer. When Mark Andreessen was on the podcast, he had this hilarious way of

17:18 Describing the state of the of the product org right now. Uh he's like basically there's this three way standoff er PMs, engineers, designers, they're all They all think the other roles are gonna go away and they're the ones that are gonna win in the end. And so there's less like Spider Man meme where they're all pointing at each other. And I'm curious'cause I

17:35 I can see a case for each role becoming the dominant role. And I completely agree with you that With all of the tools being shipped. Like there's like a thousand X explosion and products being shipped. There's just like endless

17:49 streams of things to pay attention to. You think design would be such a opportunity to differentiate and stand out. I haven't seen that yet in Just like an acceleration of design hires. And explosion, as you said, like two designers to one engineer.

18:03 Do you think You think that's coming? Why do you think that hasn't happened yet? Do you think it's as you said just early and people will realize, oh wow, we need a lot more designers. What do you think's going on? We might start to see that happen more.

18:15 Um, or if anything, what we might start to see engineers wanting to become a little bit more design focused. I also think that designers are getting more productive. Um It's not necessarily the same direct output of like engineers ten Xing. Um, but we are seeing that that designers um are are able to do a lot more.

18:38 But no, I mean I think that that that is something we're we're sort of always thinking about and e and evolving. Um The other thing I wanted to talk about too is like the difference between PM and engine design and are they all blurring together? And My point of view is that they they definitely are and they've there's always been overlap. As far as I

18:57 Seen it, right? Th I've seen designers that are like Kind of really good. Product. You know, manager type. archetype but can design and I've seen designers that are like

19:08 Really good sort of Polish engineer ty you know, like so that I th I've always found that these like single siloed um role definitions don't really make sense. It's just that at big companies you have to have like a ladder to put people on so you can generally kind of like organize But

19:29 In the reality, you know, when you look at a team, you see that there are people that are have various strengths and people that play different roles and So art I've I've always kind of seen that um I I think those the lines have always been blurry, but they're becoming blurrier for sure. Um, but the other thing is I do still think that and and maybe this is thinking about it from like a slightly larger company perspective, but I think you do still need people that have certain responsibilities, right?

19:56 Because if you have one person that's expected to Design. to rally a team around something, you know, to align a whole company. Uh to do all the work that like a PM does, for example. And also be designing it and also be engineering it. It's just maybe not you know you might it might be hard to find one person that's good at all of those different skills. And so I still find a lot of value, for example, in having like an excellent PM that can help.

20:22 rally multiple teams together that can help Um sharpen kind of the perspective or or the problem space that a team is focused on. Um That can help with like resourcing and all of those things, right? And so I do think there will still be value in these, um, and people focused on different parts of building.

20:42 a project or a product. Um That doesn't mean that um maybe there's more fluidity that people can move between them, but having somebody who is sort of generally responsible for these different things or an engineer who's like really making sure that the output is totally sound and you know, is it actually like um laddering up to something that is gonna work for the broader system.

21:03 I completely agree. So just to make sure I understand what you're saying is just Does it talk about all the roles blurring, there's like maybe we'll all just be builders and we do everything. And you're saying is like no, that's not gonna happen. The r like the Venn diag I'm picturing Venn diagrams of product design engineering. Like

21:19 Converging, but you're saying they're gonna continue to stay their own roles. They're gonna be a PM design engineer. But each can do more of the other roles. I think that's right. I I do think that like for And I again this is not a blanket statement, right? Because I think if you're at a startup, that's like very different. I would I would if I were starting a company right now. I would hire like the best generalist people I could possibly think of, someone who I think could kind of

21:42 But maybe again, that's maybe that's always kinda been true. Um But At a at a bigger company, I do think that I've seen like designers um that are Yeah, maybe

21:55 Incredible at designing. But could really use a product manager who can help them kind of with with like hone um Mm. They're thinking and how and and then how they work and the operations of it all. So

22:07 The point is I do just think that there are there are different It's it's almost like And take taking the people out of it, I think that there are different the sort of hats that you need to wear to build great software. And I think that um those are

22:22 continue to be important functions, I think. So this begs the question, do you think AI will ever be An extremely good product designer. And just uh like it's interesting to ask you this question because on the one hand you you're like oh yeah open a like Jet GPT is gonna become incredible at everything. On the other hand, you It's hard for a head of design to say, Oh no, design's gonna be done by AI.

22:43 I'm curious to get your your take and you know, it's like sounds crazy, but like engineers never thought they would be able to write code the way it is now. Um, so just yeah, thoughts on just how good AI will get. Maybe one way to put it is I think it already is an incredible Um Product designer. Um It it really is actually already great.

23:02 The cool thing about it though is it's accessible to every single person. Um And it's a tool that anybody can use. I do think it's really good. Now that doesn't necessarily mean that it's like the best visual designer or best at you know, uh information h hierarchy or or typography or even you know, user experience and interaction design. It's not necessarily like the best at any of those.

23:26 It's impossible to predict where things are going and like I said earlier, like You know, how much has changed in three years, of course they're gonna continue to get better. Um But the way we think about it and and I and I really do believe this is like we're building tools to enable people to be more creative, to be um to to do more, to build more

23:46 And so it's it it is already a great designer, but you it's at your fingertips to kind of figure out how to use it and how to get The best out of it. Where do you think human brains will continue to be most valuable as AI gets better. at product design specifically, what are kind of like the remaining areas for us to be

24:04 Useful. Truly understanding What People need Um

24:12 You know I mean the human uh feedback loop of watching people use something and and and understanding that Um The

24:23 You know Inventing something new. Um I think Uh and then of course there's just the Sure, like

24:33 human kind of take, right? Like, oh somebody made this, somebody had a point of view about this. Um I just think that w I do think that will stand out more and more. And I think that that's like an important thing for a designer to like really hone is like what is my point of view, what who am I building this for and why. Um

24:50 And I don't know. I think like as as as AI becomes more and more like better and better, for sure, there will be an opportunity to always kinda stand out and push How can you push that even further? Uh a conversation I had with um the PM of codex.

25:06 Ask them just why is AI non-good at design. It's actually gotten better since that conversation, which was just like a month or two ago. And Yeah. And he had a number of reasons for it. One is just like like

25:17 Part of great product design is doing something new. And so if it's trained on all the most interesting websites today. Just like okay, but that's Not what the that's not interesting anymore. And the other point he made is like AI researchers aren't innately great at design and so they may not

25:32 understand exactly what it takes to train a model to be really good at this. Uh thoughts. What do you think what do you think it'll take to get AI to be much, much better at product design. I mean the new thing is interesting, right? Because I think that Everything we're doing is trying to design something that hasn't existed before. Right.

25:50 Um, you know, if you look at If you look at great Great products that have come out in the last, you know Ten, twenty years or whatever, right? It's like All of a sudden, you know, take the iPhone, we're designing for multi touch.

26:03 And that opened up like this whole new interaction. Kurt Iman. There's no training data for that, right? You have to you're kind of really trying to understand this new thing, right? And then you had something like Instagram that was like in really embracing um The sort of like the fact that that everybody had mobile phones.

26:21 And then Snapchat, I think is another good example of great design in that it was kind of a maybe people thought strange Sort of like interaction design, but it completely thought like flipped on its head the way people might want to communicate with each other. And to me that that

26:37 is like great design. It's like truly understanding Like I uh you know The people that Like

26:44 People have this problem or there's this unmet need and and I'm gonna build it with this in this unique way. So yeah, I do think that there's that sort of like fresh new kind of way. And then now with AI, it's like we're designing like how do you talk to something that uh is how do you talk to AI with your voice, you know, or how do you use an agent to like carry out tasks for you? It's like Yeah, there isn't a lot of precedent for this, and so I think that You know, humans are able to kind of do uh a really good job kind of

27:13 Evaluating uh you know what good is and um You know, or at least kind of like trying a bunch of things and and learning along the way with people and so Um I don't know. I but again, like all this stuff changes really quickly, it's hard to say, but uh I think

27:29 Um I think there's a lot of reasons why uh having that human in the loop is gonna be so important. And kinda following that thread of the human in the loop. When you're hiring designers these days. What's kind of trending up?

27:41 in what you look for, what you think is more and more important in the designers that'll be successful today, especially at OpenAI. What's trending down, if anything? This might be a luxury of having a slightly larger team, but if you're, you know, at our scale. Um You know. But even at at a startup or a smaller company, I think I this still be true. I really believe in hiring a well rounded team that has many different strengths.

28:05 So I think it's important to have kinda like your handful of or or the the right ratio of sort of journalists that can kinda do everything. But uh you know, we also hire like incredible visual designers or we have like the like a really amazing sort of brand team that helps us with kind of like Uh

28:26 sort of maybe yeah, e expression of our brand both out and in a in the product. Um or great prototypers or um You know, um And so I think that rounding that out or or great sort of product thinkers that are m a little bit more strategic

28:43 Or people that are like really obsessed over like the very cutting edge of where these things are going. And I haven't found that one designer necessarily checks every single one of those boxes. I think people just naturally are You know drawn to certain things.

28:59 And I think embracing that when you build a team is actually like um if you can if you have the luxury of doing that is like really valuable. Okay, so that's like my a broad statement, but then as far as what we look for We do definitely You know, I always tell candidates.

29:14 We do not expect you to have a background in AI. Because again, this is evolving so quickly, but we definitely expect high curiosity about it. And And and uh high aptitude to jumping in and and learning how

29:28 How you know, how you're gonna use this in your process, how it works. And Not just how you use in your process, but how, especially for us, like how you're gonna create tools to and enable more people to use it. Um

29:41 And so It's more about the curiosity. I think Um is something that like we really push on.

29:48 Uh Or look for and then um definitely prototyping. Um prototyping is something I've always valued in my career. Um, but I just think that you know, it's become more and more accessible.

30:01 And so that's something that uh I think really does stand out usually when we talk to to candidates. And then I do think that yeah, just like having some having a point of view on on where where these things are going, or or just like any of the tools that people have worked on and really thinking That's strategic thinking.

30:20 I guess last last one on this is Like systems thinking, um is becoming more and and more important and Um And especially as you're I like in our world we're it's interesting'cause we're trying to build You know, we're building the superintelligence that has uh

30:40 That has all these different capabilities. And We need To think more about the underlying primitives that we can build that can kind of build on top of each other.

30:51 Right. Um You know, this is something that I think like Notion did really well early on was like, we're gonna build these building blocks, right? And then like everything kinda is composable. I think that's becoming really important too, as you think about like While we don't want to build all these sort of one off siloed experiences, we want to be able to build and ship

31:10 Systems. That can build on top of each other. so that you know, when someone goes and uses our product, it feels like one cohesive simple thing and and the model can reason about how it can pull all of these things together. So that like idea of like really understanding the system and thinking about that is becoming even more important, especially because it's kind of complex of all the things that it could possibly do. This is the fifth podcast in a row I've done where systems thinking has come up as interesting skill that people are more and more looking for. And it's

31:41 It's like so funny. I need a bingo card for systems thinking, but it makes so much sense. And I think it especially makes sense from the designer perspective. If we come back to just why my take on why designers are kind of frustrated and and stressed right now is just there's less time. to do design, the traditional design process. Things are just moving like engineers are shipping five thousand PRs a day. And so to your point, this idea of building blocks and design systemling and

32:05 And just a platform for people to build on feels incredibly important. Totally. It's very hard, but I um I I yeah, I it's like uh it's funny. I We've had these conversations where I'm like Just do less. Like my encouragement has been do less. There are the like don't design it. If you don't have to, maybe there's already a an existing system or component or something that we can build on top of. Or maybe we don't even need this feature. We actually just need to kind of

32:31 A uh Uh Like you know, extend an an existing feature. Um I I think that's an important thing. And and

32:40 Part of that is like Thinking outside of the bounds of what you're working on, right? And thinking across everything, I think is becoming much more important. And the speed for sure, I think is is a reason why that's so important right now. Just to fall that thread,'cause that feels like a pretty big change in the design world. There used to be this we had a podcast with uh she was Natum Design Club Code.

33:02 Jenny Wen and she talked about this and I think it blew a lot of people's minds. Just there's been this traditional design process. Prototype, mock, test, do the research, iterate. Okay, cool. Ready for engineering, build it, iterate, ship it. And now there's just no time for that. And so the role. In her eyes is just move to

33:19 Big picture planning and just like Steering people in a good direction. Does that resonate? How much has that has changed in in the world of a designer? I think that t a hundred percent we we do work that way.

33:32 It it's it depends. It uh I think for us it depends on like what sort of what stage you're at in the in the uh sort of process or Um You know, uh How

33:42 uh maybe how far along the product is. There's certain features for chat GBT. Where we really obsess and we really spend a lot of time. We try a million things and we throw out You know, uh Yeah, we try a hundred things and we throw out ninety nine and we finally ship one. Um

33:59 you know, uh the like uh the b or like the composer is like changing every single day and and we try many things we throw them out. But or like and you can take that for many different things within Chat BT. Um And then there are other things like codecs where um You know, I don't know, I mean that super app is a good example where

34:20 We definitely are just like trying stuff really quick. I think that we really embrace building in public, which is a different way of working, but I think that like w when you get comfortable with it is actually really gratifying or satisfying because You can try stuff and get instant feedback. Both internally and externally. Um

34:40 But yeah, I mean it is uh moving really fast. And I think it just depends, right? Like some like I said, certain things we really sweat the details and we try um You know, and and we do tests, we A B test, we'll do user research, um And we kind of iterate and evolve a lot. And then other things we uh we take big swings and then we learn quickly. Um

35:03 But yeah, I don't know. I think you have to Like I think the biggest thing is like Embracing that The technology might change in like a a month or

35:14 You know, and maybe Uh certain interaction or t or setting or or whatever that you needed doesn't need to exist, or now a new one does need to exist, or a new capability is there, or the latency profile has changed such that you can like

35:30 Rethink this or Whatever, all these capabilities are changing, or the the intelligence has changed or And so You have to be just like really quick on your feet and and maybe not be so precious about it until it's at the point where, okay, this is kinda hardened. Like we don't think that this is necessarily gonna

35:47 change tomorrow because of the technology. So let's make this the best it can possibly be. You know, like we're w we're we're thinking a lot about how we should evolve Sort of. really think about chat GT becoming like deeply embedded in a

36:01 And how How should the how should the app feel? That's something that we're not gonna necessarily design and ship overnight and just like put it out there. We're spending we're really thinking about that. And we're trying a bunch of different ideas or putting it up on

36:17 You know, uh w you know, a whiteboard or you know We we're doing some design in Figma, we're prototyping it, we're probably gonna dog food a bunch of different ideas. long before we ever ship something. Um That but that's a bigger project, right? And then there's other things where like idea To ship in like

36:35 You know Four hours. This all makes sense. Essentially what I'm hearing is you pick your battles. And you focus the design effort on the things that will be durable. And not.

36:46 Change. Exactly, yeah, yeah. And it's hard to know what that is. Yeah. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Mercury, radically different banking loved by over 300,000 entrepreneurs, and now with command.

37:02 I've been a customer of Mercury's for over six years. I have never once thought about leaving. Mercury is basically what happens when banking is built by product people, not by bankers. They make it so easy. Dare I say fun? To send invoices, move money around, set up virtual cards for folks on my team. Does your bank have an API, a terminal native CLI, or an AI ready MCP server? I don't think so.

37:27 And just recently they launched Command, a conversational interface built directly into Mercury, which acts as your financial operator. I've been using command to transfer money around to figure out what categories I've been spending the most money in, analyze my cash flows. And just today I used it to find out how much I've made from a specific sponsor over the past year. I just ask, how much have I made from X over the past year? Ten seconds later, I have an answer. It is so freaking cool. Visit Mercury.com to learn more and apply online in minutes. Mercury is a fintech company, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA, members FDIC.

38:06 So I asked uh a bunch of people that know you well what to talk to you about and Uh Joel uh Loenstein, who happens to be the head of design at Anthropic, is a good friend of yours. Which I love. And he said what he imagines the hardest part of your job is is balancing

38:22 the needs of the existing billion monthly active users of chat GPT. with the need to innovate and push and iterate and invent. And so I'm just curious how you just think about that. How do you find that balance knowing you have to Cater to both sides. That's a great question and it's a really fun part of

38:41 The way we work. Um I think that We have We have vastly different audiences. Like really, really different I've never worked in this kind of

38:52 Right. Quite a spread. You know, I at Instagram uh I I I spent eight years working at Instagram. We had a billion user or billions of users maybe. I don't actually know what's right now, but it was a lot of people.

39:05 Um But the product was pretty simple and it's sort of You know, a couple of ways you could use it. We did think about like creators and, you know, larger accounts that had special needs, but this is like vastly different where you have Someone who's

39:19 You know, using this to Help them come up with a recipe to eat tonight. Um Or, you know, brainstorm their next haircut or something like that. And then there's uh somebody who's like transforming the way they're doing farming for their, you know.

39:34 Um They're like You know, a helping to automate their farm in Japan or something, right? And Uh

39:42 It's just like the Broadest spectrum error. Um Generally what we've seen is that um Yeah.

39:52 We we believe in this idea of this sort of capability overhang, where The the product Um You know, like m vast majority of the people are getting a sliver of the the true value that they could out of the bottom. Um, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Many you know, they're still getting tons of value. Um

40:09 But we found that like We You know Make sure to focus on creating a cr extremely simple streamlined Experience.

40:18 For for many, many people. Um And then we put like uh all of the you know cutting edge stuff, we also make sure make sure to give that and and make sure that's like really accessible for the people that care. The challenge of course is like not necessarily over indexing and and sort of like putting that

40:36 Put in Uh something that um people might not understand in front of a billion users. So but generally what we've seen is we can experiment early with the the people that really care. And that's where we have like our desktop app and we have codecs. And now ChatGPT work is kind of stepping into a much broader audience, which we're really excited about. And eventually what we want what we what we know and we think about this a lot in design is like

41:00 It will true like Things will truly become like for the billions of users when they don't have to like think about a switch or a mode or anything like that. And so we know that like eventually it has to kinda get distilled into that main experience. Um But it is like a really fun thing to balance and

41:17 Um We have to think about like people that are using this for free every day to people that are paying us hundreds of dollars and lots of different needs. It's just a matter of sort of balancing and As a designer, it does add a lot of complexity for sure to think to You really have to

41:33 have empathy for every sort of different type of user. Um But this it it makes it fun, for sure. That is such a mind blowing point you're making about the spectrum of usage. of chat GPT and codecs. I I didn't think about it that way. Like is there has there been a product that has such a wide spectrum? From this like

41:51 With this rash on my finger to Building uh Salesforce you know. Yeah, and it and it makes it really hard to, you know,'cause I a lot of uh it's so funny, like One of the big challenges we're always thinking about is this like playing And

42:06 People talk about this all the time. It's like is chat really the final frontier? It's a terminal ba it's a you know, a glorified terminal. It's like some critique that That I I think these chatbots get And then it's like okay. So how do you design something that

42:22 Can kind of shape shift into anything. Um i you know, it's like maybe someone is coming here for image generation for fun, or you know, they're trying to generate a Power, or you know, so having this adaptable interface is like a really interesting uh design challenge. And um it's like sort of uncharted territory because it can really sh like shape shift into many different tools. Um and it's this like

42:50 Um Incredible at so many different things. And trying to figure out how to present that and then thinking about You know We think a lot about like a novice user, someone who is sort of brand new to this experience that

43:04 We want to help them understand how this can add value. uh to their lives or to their Sort of. professional uh work or what whatever the whatever capacity they're using this in. And then we also want to like get out of the way of people that, you know

43:19 use this every single day and they use this as like a real workhorse tool. And so Designing for that spectrum is something we have to think about a lot. Um But yeah, it's All a world of spectrums, I guess. There's a comment that Kevin Wheel, your former chief product officer, made on the podcast that has really stuck with me.

43:37 Which is uh to your point, people always diss this idea of just like it's just like a chat box. Why hasn't it ever changed? From that, even though it has, but still it's kinda this chat bot chat bot. And he made this really good point that What is an interface that is very good at s uh spanning a wide spectrum of intelligence? Uh it's actually just talking. If you think about humans. We talk to people uh low IQ to very high IQ, we can all just talk.

44:00 to each other. And it's actually a really good interface for Uh packaging something that is increasingly smarter and smarter and smarter. Yeah, and and I think we're seeing what's what's been really fun design space for us is You know

44:15 There's two things we think about. One is like how do we how can we help you Express your intent better. Right, like Uh, we don't want you have to think about being a perfect prompt engineer, but like how do we even one teach you that oh, this is something that the model can help me with, and then how do we make sure that we get We we sort of

44:33 Best understand what you want. And so like You know, we recently shipped some features where if you ask sort of an open ended question, it can follow up with. you know, some follow up questions that you can like just tap through. um an answer versus having to type everything out, right? Um or another good example is

44:50 You know, so then w then once you actually ask it to do something, there's The chat transcript doesn't need to be purely text, right? We've seen these now evolve so far from what it was with Chetch Beach just launched. You know, it's no longer just a pure chatbot. It actually has many features within that, right? So a good example is what we call writing blocks. You ask it to Um

45:12 You know, write you a letter. Or uh an email. Uh And it now contains that um that email in sort of a block that you can directly manipulate and you can type with it and you can brainstorm and you can edit little bits and parts of it. You can copy just that. And

45:27 That has made that interaction much better. And we're seeing the same thing with like image generation and creating special tools for that kind of mode. And I think that's where the UI is gonna start to k uh really continue to evolve is How do we make if you're If you come at this and you're a designer, maybe chat should actually really look differently. Uh look different. Or have

45:47 different affordances. Um, or you're, you know, a a data scientist, or you know, you're using this for to run your home you know, like your your personal life. Maybe it should really kinda work or look differently. So like understanding the context and giving you different affordances based on that is something that, you know, we're thinking a lot about. In terms of the vision and future of where all this goes, I know this is always evolving.

46:13 But is there kind of a sense of what the future of Chat GPT codex is? I know there's this idea of a super app. You talked about voice, this personal assistant idea. What's like a way you think about where this goes long term? I think that it will start to become more and more adaptive to

46:34 You know, all of the context. Of your life. Um I think proactivity is a B

46:42 untapped kind of part of the experience that we're Really excited to think about Um You know, we're starting to see this with Ch P D work now where It actually has pretty good suggestions based on, you know, your calendar or your Slack or

46:56 These different sort of inputs and um external kind of context. I think that's gonna become More and more important. Um Or kinda shift the way you know you use it. I think voice

47:09 as you know, we we we just have a step change in the model. That just feels much more natural. And again, like You know, I can only imagine how that's gonna feel and Two, three years as just get better and better.

47:22 I think people I I do love interacting with ChatGPT, especially voice in. Like just I wanna just kind of like really quickly say something. And and then I think like its ability to kind of go sort of like not just from asking questions, but actually doing things for you. Um That's all gonna change. And hopefully.

47:41 All of this gets simpler as we do it too, right? You know, when we think of the super app I think eventually we really think of the idea of Especially for our broad consumer base. We do think that there should be sort of this one universal input that you can ask that

47:58 knows when it needs to answer like really quickly or it should be chatty or whether it should go and like go off and do work for you. And so that's a big like uh excitement that we can get to is how can we just continue to simplify the experience such that you shouldn't have to think about how this works. You shouldn't have to think about what model you're on or what sort of speed you're using, you know, that like Uh that's like g goes back to the balancing the different kind of, you know, personas and user needs, like the right of course we wanna expose that for the right people, but then we wanna make sure that we can get a default experience that works great for for most people. Um but yeah, I think it's gonna be really proactive. I do think that we're gonna like

48:37 Get much uh richer sort of input through voice and like richer visual outputs that are more interactive. I think that you'll start to Build more durable

48:49 kind of workflows with Chat GBT that you can kinda use over and over. Right now, you know, it a lot of times it feels like you're coming and starting from scratch each time. And we wanna really make this kind of the tool that you can use to to help you uh with whatever sort of task you have. This all sounds wonderful. I can't wait. Yeah.

49:07 Uh just kinda zooming out a little bit and then I wanna talk a little bit to designers again. But You're in this uh epic role right now. I imagine there's a lot of surprises as you entered open AI. And took on this role. What's something you wish you'd known? What's something you wish you could whisper into Ian of of day one and to give you some advice? I mean so many things.

49:29 I think You know, the first one is like recognizing that we're really early and instead like I actually was pretty intimidated coming to open AI if I'm being honest. Um You know

49:40 Uh, I remember like, okay, interviewing oh no, I gotta like Uh you know. G GPT four had kinda recently come out and what GPT like I you know, I was like, What is all this stuff? Like I I was using it and and I was using the t the stuff, but I d I didn't feel like I had a true understanding of of it and To be honest, I uh you know, I there's I saw so much to learn.

50:03 So That idea of like you are early. We're we're figuring this out. Like that I think I would W I would want to hear And the other thing like that I found uh you know, and for me this is more of like a personal thing. It's less about AI or anything, but

50:19 I stepped into a really different role. Um, you know, most of my career I I've managed Uh I definitely managed before, but never like a a scale that's growing so fast and And then at a company that is like

50:32 So different, you know? That It the role was just every day was something new. Uh and For a long time I felt like I'm kind of like

50:42 bad at this or I'm uh you know, uh I don't know what I'm doing. Um And then I went and like talked to friends that had led like really large design teams or um or or were in a similar transition as me and They all felt exactly the same. Or the problems that I had

50:59 were not unique. Um And so You know, this is m I guess, yeah, more personal advice that it's like I think at any stage of your career there's that feeling of like imposter syndr syndrome and like What am I doing? I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Finding people you can talk to that are going through similar things, you'll find that there's usually a lot of shared kind of

51:18 uh challenges and struggles and having that like sort of whether it's a mentor or just like a a buddy that is like impartial and out of it as Was really helpful. To me. Um And you know, finding that community I think has been has been helpful. Um so yeah. So like that and then understanding that this is all so new and and evolving really quickly.

51:37 That is extremely helpful to hear. Elena Ferna had this really great post. I don't know if you know her. She's had a growth lovable right now. Uh she had this great post called Stop the AI Confidence Theater. Where she Just kinda like all these people just keep posting all these things they've done with AI and all the ways it's changed their life and it's just they're killing it, figure it all out.

51:56 And really it's like very few people, like very few of these things are actually that great and working and And it's just like stop, stop pretending like this is actually You figured it all out. I think it's much better to be humble about it and be like, Wow, yeah, I don't know. This is like changing quickly and like I'm just gonna embrace it and s and see where it goes. Yeah, and that connects to what you said was

52:15 a core component of people that are doing well right now. People that are curious and just kinda poking around and trying to Try these things and try them again because maybe it didn't work now. It didn't work before it networks now. A hundred percent.

52:26 Yeah, it's like Been Kind of like yeah, every every model. Every new Every new feature, it's like The people that are poking around at those edges I I found are are just having such a blast doing it, you know.

52:39 And this connects to something else Kevin Weel, former CPO at OpenAI, said on the podcast, which has always stuck with me. Which is the model we have today is the worst the model will ever be. Exactly. I mean that that goes back to like When you know. Uh we we

52:54 Yeah, I mean a new model comes out. Whatever. Week every day. I don't know, every day. Like Uh, f if you count all the labs and and everything, it's like it's changing so quickly and and e everyone gets better. Um

53:09 And Uh I don't know. It's like yeah, I w I always try to remind myself. It's like You know, you You know, it must be like what like I don't know, d building or designing in like early days of computers when like componentry was like really evolving really quickly and there were these

53:26 Drastic step changes and Um You know, like you would hit these limitations and all of a sudden those limitations were gone. You know, I I think it's the same, right? It's like These things just change and they're what It was totally broken yesterday. Now actually just kinda works.

53:41 So maybe to start to close out the conversation. Say designer. is listening to this and they're in that bucket of Overwhelmed, anxious, struggling, stressed, uh, feeling uncertain about their future. What's one suggestion you have for them to help them move out of that state and into a better place?

53:59 Just recognizing that It's it's a t it's a totally rational feeling. And It's a great time to just try to explore and see. What if I tried working what if I tried, you know, think rethinking about the the tooling or what if I just embraced like, oh maybe I should prototype more, or let me try you know, um

54:22 Try using these tools. But again, like recognizing that I uh uh maybe it helps to hear that I think that We're all still so early and it's and it's still changing and and just kind of embracing that like Just have fun with it and and see where it goes. And And I think f uh maybe a another thing I would say is

54:39 really try to focus on the output. The outcome. Right. At the end of the day, we're not Here to Yeah. tool like processes. We're not here to like

54:51 Build uh Or Token Max or something like that. We're here to make great th software that people love or great products or whatever it is you do. Um But That's the thing that really matters and

55:04 If you focus on that You know, I think that You'll hopefully find that you know, these tools can help you do that, but you still have a huge role in that as as the person that's kind of steering and directing it. So along those lines I'm gonna take us to a couple of recurring corners of the podcast.

55:20 The first corner is AI corner. The the question is just what's one way that you have found AI to be really useful in your job that maybe Might inspire someone to You say. Uh JGPT or codex.

55:34 I was like a designer, designer. I mean, nowadays I spend less time in the pixels. Um, but I really do use it to kinda help me Think through broader ideas, um or Maybe

55:48 You know, I'll have an idea at night or something and then I'll just like quickly Yeah, type it in and have it like prototype something and it'll give me like an idea that I can go and talk to the team about and it'll help visualize something. And so there that's like a part of the design process. It's like early ideas or we're riffing through something and and I can I found that chat GT. whether Shechy Work or Codex can like really kinda help me visualize that. That's been something that's been really fun. And then like uh there's there's more of the operation side, you know, it's like I have it now, I like

56:20 Checking and making sure that like important Slack uh messages that I need to follow up with are summarized and giving me context before um Sort of like uh, you know, important meetings or for recruiting or for all like every pro every part of my process, I I I use this to kind of augment uh uh the work that I do. Makes sense on the prototyping piece, just to give someone a tip on how to do this.

56:43 Are you opening up on your phone and firing off just like a codex thread? What's like the mechanic of doing this at night? Catch PT work has been incredible because Um It now runs fully in the cloud, right? And so the idea is You can kinda just be anywhere and sort of t like Talk to chat and

57:02 Have it Like really spend the time and and come back with like a really great artifact. So I found that it's been really fun to just be like, Hey You know, we're working on

57:13 You know, whatever um This thing is like Ma whether it's helped me think through it or um, you know, uh yeah, sometimes I will just have like some ideas that I would love to see like quickly visualize before I even like take it further and it will just like kinda help me like play with it and try it and stuff. And so That's been really fun. The fact that it's so accessible, right? Um like I might not even

57:35 be near a computer or can You know, um Uh. I don't know, just kind of like have that flexibility. I think it's really fun. Awesome.

57:44 Okay, I'm gonna take us to another corner, uh corner. Yeah. So the reason I do this a lot of people Awesome. awesome people like yourself come on the podcast and

57:54 All people hear is all the amazing things they've done, all the ways they've been really successful, and they don't hear all the Times things didn't work out. And I feel like that's very important for people to hear. It's not always up until the right in success. What's uh story of a time you failed in your career and

58:11 And what did you learn from that? I mien there are so many times um I think that I mean, even at OpenAI, it's like I I think that I've found that I've had to learn every step of the way, right? Um

58:26 You know, when I first uh joined I remember, you know Not really even like fully understanding like how I wanted to build a design team and You know, um, not understanding how to hire whatever. Um I mean

58:41 Just I f I sort of felt like I was kind of Failing every day, but just kind of like Quickly trying to adjust and learn. Um I think that that uh

58:54 I d I don't know. I mean that's like maybe kind of a cop out answer, but like really just feeling like Every day I'm kind of like learning on the go. I I feel that my whole career has sort of been that way and that I have never really kind of like planned like Any any one step and I've in in sort of like quickly learning from your mistakes a shift Plenty of things that

59:15 Did not work out. Um And uh I've also shipped things that you know in you know have worked out, but like the most many times I I've ships or or you know, you try something and it's kind of a failure.

59:28 And uh you know, at Instagram we had flops and then we you know, we'd like quickly move on. I mean, I I worked on IG TV, which was like a huge flop, and then we shipped reels. Uh and Reels was like we and and look I mean, that's a good example'cause like we had We just like kind of baked in some wrong assumptions and we held on to a few constraints. But then we learned from that quickly and we were like okay, actually let's change that and then We sort of redid it and then it became a really successful product. Um

59:58 And uh You know, I I've seen that many cases many cases of like and that that's helped I think that's helped harden me to the sort of critique and feedback of things because

1:00:10 You know, uh sometimes you get it wrong. Sometimes you try something, and sometimes it is just about having to like put it out in the world and work through it and Um and get the feedback and and iterate. And I think that that's like the mo more importantly is not sort of what you shipped one time, but how you react and how you Um

1:00:29 You know, how you kind of like fix forward and how you continue to iterate and listen to listen to your users. This is a very common theme in this corner is just People's careers are like it's mostly failure along the way. Definitely. And so I think that's helpful for people to hear. Yeah.

1:00:44 Uh, okay, before we get to our very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven't covered? I if I could distill it, it's like I hope that this is just like a really fun time to build stuff. Build stuff. And I hope that We

1:01:00 you know, as designers can be really adaptive and focus on making really fun making really great stuff. And I and I and that I think that designers are just like Hopeful you know, I think gr I think great companies are are seeking designers and seeking great great design and I found that to be really true.

1:01:20 There probably are gonna be a bunch of companies that will be left behind because they haven't shifted. But I think that that there's plenty of room for amazing great design and uh that's gonna be more true than ever. I completely agree. I'm very bullish on design. Yes. Well, Ian, with that we reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready? Okay.

1:01:39 Yes. All right, here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other people? I'm not like you know it's funny, I'm not like a big, big book recommender Um I think like when people ask me uh I do get asked about like books for design and I've not haven't found that many that really have stuck with me.

1:02:00 like purely design. Although I will say I have I do love The design of everyday things. I think that's like such a classic. That's the one that's the one that's. Yeah, it's not a unique recommendation. Um But it it is just kind of a classic of thinking about how you how we think you have to how we think about design. Yeah. You have to read it if you're in tech or not in tech. Yeah.

1:02:24 Awesome. Uh anything else there or should we keep moving? We can keep moving, yeah. Let's do it. Favorite recent movie? Or TV show that you've really enjoyed. Okay, so I have one that actually is not a movie or T V show, but it's a I I'm in New York. I just saw Broadway

1:02:40 Show. Um Called Maybe Happy Ending. Yeah. Seen it. Love it. Yes. Oh, you saw it. Okay. Yeah.

1:02:49 It was so unique, right? Um And of course it kind of hit home a little bit'cause it's about these like super intelligent humanoid uh robots and like You know, um but um

1:03:03 But the the production was incredible, the set uh design, uh everything about it I thought was like so unique. Um Which was um I thought But yeah. So if you have the chance to see it, I thought it was really, really good.

1:03:17 Um I also just saw the invite, which was I thought have you seen it? Yes, also love it. It's so simple, but so good. It that's what I loved about it is it's like so simple. It's like it actually is uh um uh like a play, you know, and it's just four people in one kind of Beautiful apartment and the set design's amazing. Um

1:03:41 Uh but like the writing, act everything about it was like incredible and it's Just kinda A wild ride and I wouldn't have knowing nothing about it. I thought it was incredible. Excellent, sir. I love both those so much. Uh and the invite just came out. It's in theaters right now.

1:03:57 Yeah. Next question. Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love? I I feel kinda like a typical Silicon Valley person re recommending this one or something, but um I did finally switch to an EV after having uh

1:04:13 many cars for a long time. I got a Rivian and Um I don't know, they just d I do respect the design a lot of just kind of how they've really made it just

1:04:26 All of the all the like I think if you know t probably test was similar, but like there's a lot of assumptions that how Get operating a car should work or I've got gone away. You should walk up to it and unlock. You know, it's like You just Like You don't have to like

1:04:41 Turn on and off the car and It's cool to see like that evolving. Of course I love you know, at Waymo's are probably if if I could like own a Waymo right now that That is The most magical experience in the world.

1:04:54 Um And uh I um I'm waiting on bated breath for that to to be broadly accessible for everybody. Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life? Not necessarily other than I think it like kinda trying to sum up like how I felt about all of this is like

1:05:13 Have fun with it and like just try stuff. Um and You know I think don't feel like I I've never felt like uh you have to fit into a specific box.

1:05:25 Um and know that it's Perfectly all right to Be very fluid about the way you work or the way you think about things and um I don't know, be flexible and adaptable. But yeah, that's not quite a life motto. More of a

1:05:38 vibe of just trying to like Have fun with it and and build great stuff. I I I should shift this question to what's just like the vibe. It's been helpful to you,'cause I love that. It's very a Sam Altman in terms of just you can just build stuff.

1:05:50 Exactly. Yeah. Okay, last question. Something I love about your career history, if you look at your LinkedIn, you were a designer Groupon. I love that you're a group on and now you're heading design for essentially superintelligenced. What's something you learned a group on that is is being is maybe helpful these days building Super intelligent AI. I love that.

1:06:11 Group One was a f really fun company. Um Andrew Mason was Like A really

1:06:22 Incredible CEO and just that he brought such Character? Uh to the product. You know, it was like Kind of a brand

1:06:31 Led product. Um And Um You know, like

1:06:38 We had we had a there was like a A comedy team. Uh there were like a writer team. Uh Uh But they were like all Comedians basically. And

1:06:48 product really did not take itself seriously, at least in its early early couple of years. It was like It was it didn't take itself seriously and I think that the brand really stuck out, right? You weren't Signing up for Group One because ness I mean, of course the daily deal was great. You were getting like fifty percent off something. But People loved that email.

1:07:07 Because it was like really well written and it was funny and it was and it had character. And I thought that like the early on the company did a really good job with with brand and sort of embracing uh that side of things. Um And and I think the other thing, if I were to carry that forward is I found that every company that I've worked for has such unique d DNA.

1:07:30 And the way you have to work kind of maybe changes a little bit based on that, right? So I you know, group on w was run one way. You know, then I went to Instagram, which was like this very design and and creativity focused. And Kevin's you know, Kevin Sistram was, you know, really like an incredible designer Uh and he he sort of Saw himself or like

1:07:51 worked in that way with us, which was really cool. And it just created a different way of working. And then you have like Sam Altman who's like a completely different way of operating and he's like uh you know I think Yeah, and then an opening I've been a research lab and

1:08:07 So Learning that companies have these really different DNAs and understanding how to sort of embrace them and kind of leverage that to your uh like or help kind of like empower that or like I guess lean into that. Um uh has been something that I've learned a lot um from moving around and getting the opportunity to work at very

1:08:25 Very different companies. And also just to add to that, it's also important to realise you're not gonna change that. You're not gonna like come in and change that culture'cause that's just That's very hard. Especially if it's very Top founder more in I think it's about finding like oh wow like

1:08:39 I'm opening eye. You know, yeah, sure. Like we spent more time at at Instagram we definitely moved slower, and I would say that we Um We change the product less. And that actually worked really well.

1:08:52 For most stages uh of of Instagram. Uh But I don't think that that would work in in the current stage of where we're at with open AI and that way of working. Of course, I'd bring a lot to that and I think like

1:09:04 You know, uh Uh um At Instagram we have this motto, like do the simple thing first and we always use that and we really embrace that. I've tried to carry that through to the way I think about building product that

1:09:17 Uh Okay I Um But that's not the only way I think of working, you know? Sometimes it's actually not necessarily the right way to think about. Sometimes we actually do throw some things out that we're still experimenting with. And so just being really f I I found that having to yeah, be flexible and

1:09:33 Yeah, not necessarily trying to change it, but try Trying to kinda like help round it out, maybe. Ian, what a what an incredible uh place you have in the world right now. Just Being on the inside of such a cool technology, such cutting edge stuff that's happening.

1:09:47 Mm. And I feel very fortunate that you Found time to chat with us and share what you're seeing, where things are heading. Two final questions. Where do you want to point people? If you want to plug anything. And how can listeners be useful to you?

1:10:00 Where do I wanna point people? I mean, I think that um please You know, I guess use you know, have fun with with the stuff we're making with Chad GPT and Codecs and Fireway feedback and thoughts. I'm on Twitter. Uh I love to talk with designers uh about all sort of stages. Um, or not just designers, engineers, PMs, whatever. Um

1:10:24 That's probably where I'm most uh sort of reachable and accessible. Um And you know How can you Yeah. To be useful again, it's like

1:10:34 I love when when people do show off the way they're kind of working and how that's kind of shifting and that's like a great way for us to learn how we can we can build better products. both like internally at OpenAI, but just as a as a design community, like Maybe showcasing a little bit more of our process because it is Can becoming a little bit more opaque. Like well, how is it working? Just

1:10:55 Um I think Sharing that is is like such a Yeah. To the community. So Doing more of that. Also point people to your website, which I have here now and I think my face is probably changing colors'cause the site has all these crazy colors.

1:11:08 Yeah. So if you go to IanSilber.com, you could see this uh insane website. Yeah, that's uh deep dive into all of my past work, you can see there. Yeah. And the trick is you Yeah, you'll have to discover the Easter egg where there's a game in in involved. That's right. Uh yeah. See if you can set the high score. Yeah, the high scores are out of control. I don't know what's happening. Someone's found a cheat code. Uh Yeah, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for doing this.

1:11:36 But anyway this was awesome. Super fun. Same. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

1:11:55 You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show. at Lenny's podcast dot com. See you in the next episode.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 10 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.