0:00Speaker A:I've been doing this sentiment survey of the tech workforce. Surprisingly, designers are just the most unhappy on every dimension.
0:08Speaker B:We're unclear right now what is expected of a designer. Someone who might be classically trained in.
0:13Speaker C:A certain way of working, now feeling like, oh my gosh, I need to really change everything.
0:17Speaker A:You believe this is the best time in history to be a designer.
0:20Speaker C:We're all extremely early in this process. There's just a huge opportunity for designers.
0:25Speaker B:Nobody should feel behind right now. I think that if you literally started today, you're going to have a leg up on pretty much most people. There's just so much opportunity to change the way we work, to make great things.
0:36Speaker A: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.
0:43Speaker B:Engineers have 10 or sometimes like 100x their productivity, but our design team hasn't because the design process still takes time. It's still sometimes you have to try.
0:53Speaker C:A bunch of things and throw them out. Still very messy and fluid.
0:56Speaker A:We had a podcast with the head of Design Cloud code, Jenny Wan. She talked about there's been this traditional design process, prototype, mock test, do use, research, iterate, and now there's just no time for that.
1:05Speaker B:There are certain features for ChatGPT where we really obsess and we really spend.
1:10Speaker C:A lot of time.
1:11Speaker B:We try 100 things, we throw out.
1:12Speaker C:99, We finally ship one and other.
1:14Speaker B:Things we really embrace building in public.
1:17Speaker C:We take big swings and then we learn quickly.
1:19Speaker A:Do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer?
1:22Speaker B:I think it already is an incredible product designer.
1:26Speaker A: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. Before that, he spent eight years at Instagram.
1:43Speaker A: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 Soleio and Joel Lowenstein for suggesting topics for this conversation. Before we get into it, don't forget to check out lennysproductpass.com for a year, free of the hottest and most beautifully crafted AI products in the world. Available exclusively to Lenny's newsletter subscribers.
2:12Speaker A:With that, I bring you Ian Silber. Ian, thank you so much for being here.
2:20Speaker C:I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
2:22Speaker A: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 sentiment survey of the tech workforce over the past couple years. 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.
2:46Speaker A:And kind of surprisingly, designers and user researchers are just the most unhappy on every dimension, like every actual dimension. They're the most overwhelmed, the most anxious, the most. The least optimistic, the most worried, the most tired. Also the least likely to recommend their role to people entering the workforce.
3:11Speaker A:I'm curious if you are seeing this yourself in the design community, and if you are, what do you think is going on?
3:18Speaker B:First of all, it's an incredible survey.
3:20Speaker C:And it's such great, I think, information to have as an industry.
3:24Speaker B:And I think it's something we need to unpack. And I see a mix for sure. I think I can speak most to design. And I mean, I talk to a lot of designers that are very optimistic and very excited.
3:41Speaker B:And so I see, in my world, I see. Luckily, I see a lot of that. But I can totally understand why people.
3:51Speaker C:Might be feeling very uncertain, right?
3:54Speaker B:Because there's so much discussion about, well, is the role changing?
3:59Speaker C:Should my expectations be different?
4:02Speaker B:And, well, do I need to do.
4:07Speaker C:X, Y and Z? Do I need to be shipping code every day?
4:10Speaker B:And someone who might be sort of.
4:13Speaker C:Classically trained in a certain way of working now feeling like, oh, my gosh, I need to really change everything.
4:18Speaker B:And I think it's. To me right now, it feels like.
4:21Speaker C:The uncertainty of that I can totally understand, right?
4:24Speaker B:Because as an engineer, I think people, they've already sort of gone through that shift. Like, we see that engineers are working totally different and we also. One thing I do here, and this.
4:35Speaker C:Came up a lot in my own team, when we do similar surveys internally,.
4:40Speaker B:One of the big things that came up was we see that engineers have 10 or sometimes 100x their productivity, but our design team hasn't, because the design.
4:54Speaker C:Process still takes time.
4:57Speaker B:Sometimes you have to try a bunch.
4:58Speaker C:Of things and throw them out, versus.
5:00Speaker B:Maybe working with a coding agent. You ask it to do something.
5:03Speaker C:It's pretty binary now. At this point, it usually gets it.
5:06Speaker B:Pretty well, but the design process is.
5:10Speaker C:Really still very messy and fluid.
5:13Speaker B:And you think you Have a great.
5:14Speaker C:Idea and you try it and it sucks. And then you try it again and it sucks. And you give it to users or internal. You get internal feedback and it's wrong.
5:23Speaker B:And you still have to go through.
5:24Speaker C:That arduous and kind of messy but really fun process.
5:30Speaker B:And that hasn't really. It's compressed in that you can get.
5:33Speaker C:Much more ideas out fast, but you still need that whole sort of feedback loop.
5:38Speaker B:There's the alignment of getting many people, you know, especially in a bigger company like that still 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 that lack of clarity I can see totally lead to, you know, some.
5:58Speaker B:Some fears or some unease, I guess. But on the other hand, I've seen that. I mean, our designers, what's great, I think about at OpenAI is like, we're such an experimental company, we are driven by research and we treat our company.
6:16Speaker C:As a research lab and we totally embrace that. And that's a new thing that I really kind of learned and have really.
6:22Speaker B:Come to love about OpenAI is that started as a research lab.
6:26Speaker C:That DNA is deeply embedded in everything we do.
6:30Speaker B:And as designers, I think that you come here, we look for people that are.
6:35Speaker C:Have a background in AI, but are like really curious about the tools and how it can work.
6:40Speaker B:And we found that just by sort of supporting that excitement to explore that people feel less pressure.
6:49Speaker C:It's not like you need to change.
6:51Speaker B:The way you work, but it's more about encouraging exploration. And when we've done that, when I go and talk to both very senior designers and early career designers at our.
7:02Speaker C:Company, they're so excited because they.
7:05Speaker B:I literally was just asking some people before this.
7:07Speaker C:Cause I wanted to get some different takes.
7:08Speaker B:And I think the feeling is that they have so much more ability to be creative, to express themselves, to try bad ideas and throw them out. You can just really move through lots.
7:22Speaker C:Of different ideas and it becomes this incredible way to create.
7:26Speaker B:And the things that I'm seeing from.
7:27Speaker C:My team, the bar is raising. I think the thinking is getting stronger the more that they're using these tools.
7:36Speaker B:So I think for the people that.
7:38Speaker C:Are starting to embrace this, they're starting to feel really excited and realizing that they have just so much agency as designers and.
7:47Speaker B:So much more ability to.
7:48Speaker C:Have really high impact as a designer.
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9:02Speaker A:What I'd love to do in this conversation is help folks that are in that bucket of this sucks and things aren't going well because as you said, and this is exactly what 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 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 by AI. It's actually making them better.
9:32Speaker A:And that's the way you described engineers. They're seeing that now, they're like holy shit, I can do so much more. And so just to kind of reinforce the points you're making thing attributes of people that are doing well 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.
9:59Speaker B:What I see in the folks that.
10:02Speaker C:I think are really embracing this, right?
10:04Speaker B:They are using it every step of.
10:06Speaker C:The process to kind of help them. Right.
10:08Speaker B:And I think it helps. We have a community of course of.
10:12Speaker C:Designers that are all trying this together. So if there's any way to kind of find that and that's something that.
10:17Speaker B:We should think about more as a broader community, how we kind of help each other. But like I Think that learning kind.
10:24Speaker C:Of different ways of working, right?
10:25Speaker B: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 Codex or Cloud or whatever tool you use, like, throw it into.
10:36Speaker C:Into an agent to help you think about it, to help you prototype it.
10:39Speaker B:Just try a different way of working. It doesn't necessarily mean that that has.
10:43Speaker C:To be the exact right way, but.
10:45Speaker B:I don't know, I think we found that just people that are embracing this, that are adaptable. I think adaptability is like another term.
10:52Speaker C:That I think we all hear a lot now.
10:54Speaker B:But it's, like, so true. It's like knowing that this stuff changes very quickly. What didn't work yesterday might work today. I mean, literally, like within, you know,.
11:08Speaker C:Six months, this entire industry has shifted.
11:10Speaker B:I remember I was actually out on paternity leave towards the end of last year, and I was working on some side projects. I was trying some coding agents, and it just, like, it worked, but it just kept kind of running into these hiccups. And then like a month later, like, Codex drops.
11:29Speaker C:And I tried again and it's like, oh, my gosh, it just works.
11:33Speaker B:And that, I think, changes a lot.
11:34Speaker C:Of the design process because now all of a sudden, if you do have an idea, you can, like, plop it in there and just try it.
11:39Speaker B:And so anyways, I think it's just really about, like, not being scared. I think another thing to think about.
11:46Speaker C:Is that we're so early. We're like, so in early innings of this entire evolution, right?
11:54Speaker B:It feels like things have changed a lot. And it feels like maybe we're pretty.
11:59Speaker C:Far into this shift.
12:00Speaker B:But the good news for anybody who is trying to design or get into design, whether again, like, if you're early career, late career, or you've never even actually designed anything but you've been thinking about it is like we're all figuring this out as we go. Nobody has some perfect answer about how.
12:22Speaker C:The design process should work.
12:25Speaker B:And 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 going to have a leg up on pretty much most people and just really thinking about how you can.
12:45Speaker C:Just make great stuff.
12:46Speaker B:And there's just so much opportunity to change the way we work or just to make great things. And what we think is really cutting.
12:56Speaker C:Edge today will look so archaic and, you know, a year, let alone a month, right?
13:03Speaker B:And that's something I've learned.
13:04Speaker C:You know, I've been at OpenAI for.
13:06Speaker B:Three years and I think about the.
13:08Speaker C:Stuff that they, you know, we were.
13:10Speaker B:Working on when we. When I first joined.
13:13Speaker C:I mean, I remember getting a demo of like our early voice mode that we hadn't shipped or computer use that.
13:21Speaker B:Like, you know, barely worked. And now it's like become. It literally has become part of the.
13:27Speaker C:Process of how we design. We use both of those tools to build software.
13:32Speaker B:And so anyways, the point is it's.
13:34Speaker C:Like changing very quickly. We're all extremely early in this process and nobody really has it figured out.
13:41Speaker A: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.
13:48Speaker B:Yeah, I mean, I truly believe this. I can't even imagine. So when I. Okay, history lesson.
13:54Speaker B:When I was getting into design, I.
13:56Speaker C:Mean, I was like.
13:59Speaker B:In my teenage years, right?
14:00Speaker C:And I was like, you know, to.
14:04Speaker B:Learn things, it was like, you know, I was kind of like learning just design and code and you could like.
14:11Speaker C:View source on a HTML webpage and kind of see how things were built. And that was like kind of how you had to learn. And you know, you could, I don't know, it's like Dreamweaver and you know,.
14:25Speaker B:Like there were these really tools that actually were really cool. But to compare those to today, if I were just getting into design, the.
14:34Speaker C:Fact that you can like learn so.
14:35Speaker B:Quickly, you can kind of like have.
14:37Speaker C:An idea to working version of it in like a matter of minutes,.
14:46Speaker C:Just you can be so expressive and you can.
14:50Speaker B:I think anybody can be a designer, right?
14:53Speaker C:And I think that as more and more software is made, more and more products are made.
15:01Speaker B:I think that the. I do think that the human element.
15:06Speaker C:Of design is going to really be start to become more and more important.
15:13Speaker B:It's always been the case that I.
15:14Speaker C:Think that, you know, companies with great.
15:16Speaker B:Design, you know, can of course stand out. I think that's going to be more.
15:21Speaker C:And more important, right.
15:22Speaker B:I think that products that fully understand.
15:26Speaker C:Their users and that make something delightful,.
15:29Speaker B:When anybody can make anything, you know, that's going to become one of the.
15:33Speaker C:Most important kind of like sort of dimensions of a product and that's how people are going to evaluate it.
15:39Speaker B:And so I think designers stand like, that is our core job, right? And then on top of that, I think that designers are just much more empowered. So I was talking to some friends.
15:55Speaker C:That are thinking about starting A company.
15:57Speaker B:And talking about the sort of ratio of design to engineer and how at a startup maybe that's totally different. It may have been like you have one designer and I don't know, 15.
16:10Speaker C:Engineers or something like that, you know, that maybe a startup, I've seen that sort of ratio.
16:15Speaker B: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.
16:24Speaker C:Really building something that's rock solid, like from, from an engineering standpoint.
16:28Speaker B:But then we want two really creative.
16:30Speaker C:People that are going to be thinking about how we kind of build this product.
16:34Speaker B:And so thinking about that, I think.
16:36Speaker C:That there's just like a huge opportunity for designers. I think that internally we see that.
16:41Speaker B:More and more designers, we are totally,.
16:47Speaker C:Completely empowered to take an idea, to.
16:50Speaker B:Take a early research concept and try to figure out how we can actually.
16:54Speaker C:Package that up into something that people.
16:55Speaker B:Want to use or that solves some.
16:58Speaker C:Sort of unmet need for our customers. And that is a designer's job.
17:03Speaker B:And so I think that maybe more and more people start to think of.
17:07Speaker C:Themselves as designers, but either way, I think it's like the best, I really do think it's the best time to be a designer.
17:13Speaker A:So along those lines, when Marc Andreessen was on the podcast, he had this hilarious way of describing the state of the, of the product org right now. He's like, Basically there's this three way standoff. PMs, engineers, designers, they're all, they all think the other roles are going to go away and they're the ones that are going to win in the end. And so there's like Spider man meme where they're all pointing at each other.
17:33Speaker A:And I'm curious because I, 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 streams of things to pay attention to. You think design would be such an opportunity to differentiate and stand out? I haven't seen that yet.
17:57Speaker A:In just like an acceleration of design hires and explosion. As you said, like two designers to an engineer. Do you think, do you think that's coming? Why do you think that hasn't happened yet?
18:07Speaker A: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?
18:12Speaker B:We might start to see that happen more or if anything we might start to see engineers wanting to become a.
18:19Speaker C:Little bit more design focused.
18:22Speaker B:I also think that designers are getting more productive. It's not necessarily the same direct output.
18:30Speaker C:Of engineers 10xing, but we are seeing that designers are able to do a lot more.
18:38Speaker B:But no, I mean, I think that.
18:40Speaker C:Is something we're sort of always thinking about and evolving.
18:44Speaker B:The other thing I wanted to talk about too is the difference between PM.
18:47Speaker C:And engine design and are they all blurring together?
18:50Speaker B:And my point of view is that they definitely are.
18:54Speaker C:And there's always been overlap as far.
18:56Speaker B:As I've seen it.
18:58Speaker B:I've seen designers that are like kind of really good product manager type archetype, but can design. And I've seen designers that are like really good sort of polish engineer type, you know, like. So that I think I've always found that these like single siloed role definitions.
19:19Speaker C:Don't really make sense.
19:20Speaker B:It's just that at big companies you.
19:22Speaker C:Have to have a ladder to put.
19:23Speaker B:People on so you can generally kind of organize. But in the reality, when you look at a team, you see that there.
19:33Speaker C:Are people that have various strengths and people that play different roles.
19:38Speaker B:I've always kind of seen that. I think those lines have always been.
19:42Speaker C:Blurry, but they are becoming blurrier for sure.
19:45Speaker B:But the other thing is, I do still think that, 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? Because if you have one person that's expected to design, to rally a team around something, you know, to align a whole company 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. It might be hard to find one.
20:14Speaker C:Person that's good at all of those different skills.
20:17Speaker B:And so I still find a lot of value, for example, in having an excellent PM that can help rally multiple teams together, that can help sharpen the.
20:27Speaker C:Perspective or the problem space that a team is focused on, that can help.
20:33Speaker B:With resourcing all of those things. And so I do think there will.
20:37Speaker C:Still be value in these and people.
20:40Speaker B:Focused on different parts of building a project or a product, that doesn't mean that maybe there's more fluidity that people.
20:47Speaker C:Can move between them.
20:48Speaker B:But having somebody who is sort of.
20:50Speaker C:Generally responsible for these different things, or.
20:52Speaker B:An engineer who's like really making sure that the output is totally sound and you know, is actually like laddering up.
21:00Speaker C:To something that is going to work for the Broader system.
21:03Speaker A:I completely agree. So just to make sure I understand, what you're saying is just, let's just 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 going to happen.
21:14Speaker A:Like the Venn diagram, I'm picturing Venn diagrams of product design, engineering, like converging. But you're saying they're going to continue to stay their own roles. They're gonna be a PM design engineer, but each can do more of the other roles.
21:26Speaker B:I think that's right. I do think that like for. And 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.
21:38Speaker C:The best generalist people I could possibly think of. Someone who I think could kind of fluidly move between that.
21:43Speaker B:But maybe again, that's, maybe that's always.
21:44Speaker C:Kind of been true.
21:47Speaker B:But at a bigger company, I do think that I've seen like designers that are, you know, maybe incredible at designing, but could really use a product manager.
21:58Speaker C:Who can help them kind of with, with like hone both their thinking and how, and then how they work and the operations of it all.
22:06Speaker B:So the point is, I do just think that there are, there are different. It's almost like taking the people out of it. I think that there are different sort of hats that you need to wear.
22:17Speaker C:To build great software.
22:19Speaker B:And I think that those are.
22:22Speaker C:Continue to be important functions, I think.
22:24Speaker A:So. This begs the question, do you think AI will ever be an extremely good product designer? And just like, it's interesting to ask you this question because on the one hand you're like, oh yeah, open A. Like ChatGPT is going to become incredible at everything.
22:38Speaker A:On the other hand, it's hard for a head of design to say, oh no, design is going to be done by AI. I'm curious to get your, your take. And you know, it's like, sounds crazy, but like engineers never thought it would be able to write code the way it is now. So just.
22:51Speaker A:Yeah. Thoughts on just how good AI will get?
22:53Speaker B:Maybe one way to put it is, I think it already is an incredible product designer.
23:00Speaker C:It really is actually already great.
23:02Speaker B:The cool thing about it though is it's accessible to every single person 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 information hierarchy or typography, or even user experience and interaction design. It's not necessarily the best at any of those.
23:26Speaker B:It's impossible to predict where things are going and like I said earlier, how.
23:32Speaker C:Much has changed in three years. Of course they're going to continue to get better.
23:36Speaker B:But the way we think about it, and I really do believe this, is.
23:40Speaker C:Like, we're building tools to enable people to be more creative, to do more, to build more.
23:46Speaker B:And so it is already a great.
23:49Speaker C:Designer, but it's at your fingertips to kind of figure out how to use it and how to get the best out of it.
23:55Speaker A: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 useful?
24:05Speaker B:Truly understanding what people need, you know, I mean, the human feedback loop of.
24:17Speaker C:Watching people use something and understanding that.
24:22Speaker B:The, you know, inventing something new, I think. And then, of course, there's just the pure, like, human kind of take, right? Like, oh, somebody made this.
24:37Speaker C:Somebody had a point of view about this.
24:40Speaker B:I just think that, I do think that will stand out more and more. And I think that that's like an.
24:44Speaker C:Important thing for a designer to like,.
24:45Speaker B:Really hone is like, what is my point of view?
24:47Speaker C:Who am I building this for and why?
24:50Speaker B: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 kind of.
24:59Speaker C:Stand out and push. How can you push that even further?
25:01Speaker A:Yeah. That touches on a conversation I had with the PM of Codex. I asked him just, why is AI not good at design? It's actually gotten better since that conversation, which was just like a month or two ago.
25:13Speaker A:And, and he had a number of reasons for it. One is just like, like part of great product design is doing something new. And so if it's trained on all the most interesting websites today, it's just like, okay, but that's not what. That's not interesting anymore.
25:26Speaker A:And the other point he made is like, AI researchers aren't innately great at design, and so they may not understand exactly what it takes to train a model to be really good at this. Dots, what do you think? What do you think it'll take to get AI to be much, much better at product design?
25:40Speaker B:I mean, the new thing is interesting, right?
25:42Speaker C:Because I think that.
25:45Speaker B:Everything we're doing.
25:46Speaker C:Is trying to design something that hasn't existed before. Right?
25:52Speaker B:If you look at great products that.
25:54Speaker C:Have come out in the last 10, 20 years or whatever, right?
25:58Speaker B:It's like all of a sudden, take.
26:01Speaker C:The iPhone, we're designing for multi touch.
26:03Speaker B:And that opened up this whole new interaction paradigm and there's no training data for that, right?
26:09Speaker C:You're kind of really trying to understand this new thing, right?
26:12Speaker B:And then you had something like Instagram.
26:14Speaker C:That was like really embracing the sort of like the fact that everybody had.
26:19Speaker B:Mobile phones 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 flipped on.
26:33Speaker C:Its head the way people might want to communicate with each other.
26:36Speaker B:And to me that is like great design.
26:38Speaker C:It's like truly understanding.
26:40Speaker B:Like I, you know, the people that like people have this problem or there's this unmet need and I'm going to build it with this in this unique way. So yeah, I do think that there's.
26:51Speaker C:That sort of like fresh, new kind of way.
26:53Speaker B:And then now with AI, it's like we're designing like how do you talk.
26:56Speaker C:To something that 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?
27:05Speaker B:It's like, yeah, there isn't a lot.
27:06Speaker C:Of precedent for this. And so I think that humans are.
27:10Speaker B:Able to kind of do a really good job kind of evaluating what good.
27:16Speaker C:Is or at least kind of like.
27:19Speaker B:Trying a bunch of things and learning.
27:21Speaker C:Along the way with people. And so I don't know.
27:24Speaker B:But again, all this stuff changes really quickly.
27:27Speaker C:It's hard to say, but.
27:30Speaker C:There's a lot of reasons why having that human in the loop is going to be so important.
27:34Speaker A:And kind of following that thread of the human in the loop when you're hiring designers these days, what's kind of trending up in what you look for, what you think is more and more important in the designers that will be successful today, especially at OpenAI and what's trending down, if anything, this might be.
27:50Speaker B:A luxury of having a slightly larger team. But if you're at our scale, but even at a startup or a smaller.
27:59Speaker C:Company, I think this still be true. I really believe in hiring a well rounded team that has many different strengths.
28:05Speaker B:So I think it's important to have kind of like your handful of, or the right ratio of sort of generalists.
28:12Speaker C:That can kind of do everything. But you know, we also hire like incredible visual designers or we have like, like really amazing sort of brand team that helps us with Kind of like the sort of maybe expression of our brand both out and in, in the.
28:30Speaker B:Product or great prototypers or you know, and so I think that rounding that out or great sort of product thinkers.
28:41Speaker C:That are a little bit more strategic.
28:43Speaker B:Or people that are like really obsessed.
28:45Speaker C:Over like the very cutting edge of where these things are going.
28:49Speaker B:And I haven't found that one designer.
28:51Speaker C:Necessarily checks every single one of those boxes.
28:54Speaker B:I think people just naturally are, you.
28:56Speaker C:Know, drawn to certain things.
28:59Speaker B:And I think embracing that when you.
29:01Speaker C:Build a team is actually like if.
29:03Speaker B:You can't, 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 we do not expect you to have a background in AI because again this is evolving so quickly.
29:19Speaker B:But we definitely expect high curiosity about it and high aptitude to jumping in.
29:27Speaker C:And learning.
29:29Speaker B:How you're going to use.
29:30Speaker C:This in your process, how it works.
29:32Speaker B:And not just how you use it.
29:33Speaker C:In your process, but how, especially for.
29:35Speaker B:Us, how you're going to create tools.
29:37Speaker C:To enable more people to use it.
29:41Speaker B:And so it's more about the curiosity.
29:44Speaker C:I think is something that we really.
29:47Speaker B:Push on or look for. And then definitely prototyping.
29:53Speaker C:Prototyping is something I've always valued in.
29:56Speaker B:My career, but I just think that.
29:59Speaker C:It's become more and more accessible.
30:01Speaker B:And so that's something that I think.
30:04Speaker C:Really does stand out usually when we talk to candidates.
30:08Speaker B:And then I do think that, yeah, just like having a point of view.
30:12Speaker C:On where these things are going or just any of the tools that people have worked on and really thinking that.
30:19Speaker B:Strategic thinking, I guess last, last one on this is like systems thinking is becoming more and more important. And you know, especially as you're like in our world, it's interesting because we're.
30:34Speaker C:Trying to build,.
30:36Speaker B:You know, we're building.
30:37Speaker C:The super intelligence that has, that has.
30:41Speaker B:All these different capabilities and we need to think more about the underlying primitives.
30:48Speaker C:That we can build that can kind of build on top of each other. Right.
30:52Speaker B:You know, this is something that I think like notion did really well early.
30:56Speaker C:On was like we're going to build these building blocks, right? And then like everything kind of is composable.
31:00Speaker B:I think that's becoming really important too as you think about like, well, we don't want to build all these sort.
31:06Speaker C:Of one off siloed experiences.
31:08Speaker B:We want to be able to build and ship systems that can build on top of each other. So that when someone goes and uses.
31:16Speaker C:Our product, it feels like one cohesive, simple thing.
31:18Speaker B:And the model can reason about how.
31:20Speaker C:It can pull all of these things together.
31:21Speaker B:So that idea of really understanding the.
31:24Speaker C: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.
31:31Speaker A: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, 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.
31:50Speaker A:My take on why designers are kind of frustrated 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 5,000 PRs a day. And so to your point, this idea of building blocks and design system language and just a platform for people to build on feels incredibly important.
32:09Speaker B:It's very hard.
32:12Speaker B:Yeah, it's funny, we've had these conversations where I'm like, just do less. My encouragement has been do less. Don't design it if you don't have to. Maybe there's already an existing system or.
32:25Speaker C:Component or something that we can build.
32:27Speaker B:On top of, or maybe we don't.
32:29Speaker C:Even need this feature. We actually just need to like, you know, extend an existing feature.
32:38Speaker B:I think that's an important thing. And part of that is like thinking.
32:43Speaker C:Outside of the bounds of what you're working on. Right. And thinking across everything, I think is becoming much more important.
32:49Speaker B:And the speed for sure, I think.
32:51Speaker C:Is a reason why that's so important right now.
32:53Speaker A:Just to follow that thread because that feels like a pretty big change in the design world. There used to be this. We had a podcast with, she was heading head of design club code 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, user, research, iterate.
33:11Speaker A: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 big picture planning and just like steering people in a good direction.
33:24Speaker A:Does that resonate? How much is that has changed in the world of a designer?
33:28Speaker B:I think that 100% we do work that way. It depends, I think for us, it.
33:34Speaker C:Depends on what stage you're at in.
33:36Speaker B:The sort of process or.
33:43Speaker C:Maybe how far along the product is.
33:44Speaker B:There are certain features for ChatGPT where we really obsess and we really spend.
33:50Speaker C:A lot of time. We try a million things and we.
33:52Speaker B:Throw out, you know, we try 100.
33:55Speaker C:Things and we throw out 99 and we finally ship one. You know,.
34:03Speaker B:The composer is like changing.
34:05Speaker C:Every single day and we try many.
34:07Speaker B:Things, we throw them out and you.
34:09Speaker C:Can take that for many different things within ChatGPT.
34:12Speaker B:And then there are other things like codecs where, I don't know, I mean, the super app is a good example where 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 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. But yeah, I mean, it is moving really fast and I think it just depends, right?
34:46Speaker B:Like I said, certain things we really sweat the details and we try, you know, and we do tests, we A, B test, we'll do user research and we kind of iterate and evolve a lot. And then other things we, we take.
35:00Speaker C:Big swings and then we learn quickly. But yeah, I don't know, I think.
35:04Speaker B:You have to like, I think the biggest thing is like embracing that the.
35:10Speaker C:Technology might change in like a month.
35:13Speaker B:Or, and maybe certain interaction or setting.
35:19Speaker C: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 rethink.
35:30Speaker B:This or whatever all these capabilities are.
35:33Speaker C:Changing or the intelligence has changed.
35:36Speaker B:And so you have to be just really quick on your feet and maybe not be so precious about it until it's at the point where, okay, this is kind of hardened. Like, we don't think that this is necessarily going to change tomorrow because of the technology.
35:49Speaker C:So let's make this the best it can possibly be.
35:52Speaker B:You know, like, we're, we're thinking a lot about how we should evolve. Sort of really think about ChatGPT becoming.
35:59Speaker C:Like deeply embedded in like your personal.
36:02Speaker B:Life and how, how should the, how.
36:05Speaker C:Should the app feel?
36:07Speaker B:That's something that we're not going to necessarily design and ship overnight and just.
36:10Speaker C:Put it out there. We're really thinking about that and we're trying a bunch of different ideas and.
36:16Speaker B:We're putting it up on a whiteboard.
36:20Speaker C:Or we're doing some design in figma, we're prototyping it. We're probably going to dog food a bunch of different ideas long before we ever ship something.
36:30Speaker B:But that's a bigger project. And then there's other things where we're like, idea to ship in like, you know, four hours.
36:38Speaker A: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 change.
36:47Speaker C:Exactly. Yeah.
36:49Speaker C:And it's hard to know what that is. Yeah, yeah.
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38:06Speaker A:So I asked a bunch of people that know you well what to talk to you about. And Joel Lowenstein, 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 the needs of the existing billion monthly active users of ChatGPT with the need to innovate and push and iterate and invent. And so I'm just curious how you just think about that.
38:33Speaker A:How do you find that balance, knowing you have to cater to both sides?
38:37Speaker B:That's a great question and it's a really fun part of the way we work. I think that we have vastly different.
38:47Speaker C:Audiences, like really, really different.
38:50Speaker B:I've never worked in this kind of quite a spread, you know, at Instagram. I spent eight years working at Instagram.
39:00Speaker C:We had a billion user or billions of users. Maybe I don't actually know what they're at now. But it was a lot of people,.
39:06Speaker B:But the product was pretty simple and it's sort of, you know, a couple.
39:09Speaker C:Ways you could use it.
39:10Speaker B:We did think about like creators and.
39:12Speaker C:You know, larger accounts that have special needs.
39:14Speaker B:But this is like vastly different where you have someone who's, you know, using.
39:19Speaker C:This to help them come up with.
39:21Speaker B:A recipe to eat tonight or you know, brainstorm their next haircut or something like that. And then there's somebody who's like transforming.
39:31Speaker C:The way they're doing farming for their, you know, they're like helping to automate their farm in Japan or something. Right.
39:41Speaker B:And it's just like the broadest spectrum ever. Generally what we've seen is that.
39:52Speaker B:Believe in this idea of this sort.
39:53Speaker C:Of capability overhang where the product,.
39:59Speaker B:Vast majority of the people are getting a.
40:01Speaker C:Sliver of the true value that they could out of the bottle.
40:04Speaker B:That's not necessarily a bad thing. They're still getting tons of value. But we found that we make sure to focus on creating extremely simple, streamlined.
40:17Speaker C:Experience for many, many people.
40:21Speaker B:And then we put all of the cutting edge stuff.
40:25Speaker C:We also make sure to give that and make sure that's really accessible for the people that care.
40:31Speaker B:The challenge of course is like not necessarily over indexing and sort of like putting something that people might not understand.
40:40Speaker C:In front of a billion users.
40:41Speaker B:But generally what we've seen is we can experiment early with the people that really care. And that's where we have like our.
40:47Speaker C:Desktop app and we have Codex and.
40:49Speaker B:Now chatgpt work is kind of stepping.
40:52Speaker C:Into a much broader audience which we're really excited about.
40:55Speaker B:And eventually what we want, what we know, and we think about this a lot in design is like, it will true, like things will truly become like for the billions of users when they don't have to like think about a.
41:06Speaker C:Switch or a mode or anything like that.
41:08Speaker B:And so we know that like eventually it has to kind of get distilled.
41:11Speaker C:Into that main experience.
41:14Speaker B:But it is like a really fun.
41:15Speaker C:Thing to balance and we have to.
41:18Speaker B:Think about like people that are using.
41:20Speaker C:This for free every day to people that are paying us hundreds of dollars and lots of different needs.
41:25Speaker B: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 have empathy for.
41:34Speaker C:Every sort of different type of user. But it makes it fun for sure.
41:39Speaker A:That is such a mind blowing point you're making about the spectrum of usage of chatgpt and Codex. I didn't think about it that way. Like, has there been a product that has such a wide spectrum from just like, what's this rash on my finger? To building Salesforce, you know?
41:56Speaker B:Yeah. And it makes it really hard to, you know, because a lot of it's so funny. Like, one of the big challenges we're.
42:02Speaker C:Always thinking about is this, like, blank box problem. Right. And people talk about this all the time. It's like, is chat really the final frontier?
42:10Speaker B:It's a terminal. It's, you know, glorified terminal is like, some critique that. That I think these chatbots it. And then it's like, okay, so how do you design something that can kind.
42:23Speaker C:Of shapeshift into anything?
42:26Speaker B:You know, it's like, maybe someone is.
42:27Speaker C:Coming here for image generation for fun, or they're trying to generate a PowerPoint.
42:35Speaker B:Or, you know, so having this adaptable.
42:38Speaker C:Interface is, like, a really interesting design challenge.
42:41Speaker B:And it's like, sort of uncharted territory.
42:44Speaker C:Because it can really, like, shapeshift into many different tools.
42:48Speaker B:And it's this, like, 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.
43:01Speaker C:Who's sort of brand new to this.
43:03Speaker B:Experience, that we want to help them.
43:05Speaker C:Understand how this can add value to their lives or to their sort of.
43:10Speaker B:Professional work or whatever capacity they're using this in. And then we also want to get.
43:17Speaker C:Out of the way of people that use this every single day, and they use this as a real workhorse tool.
43:23Speaker B:And so designing for that spectrum is.
43:25Speaker C:Something we have to think about a lot. But, yeah, it's all a world of spectrums, I guess.
43:31Speaker A:There's a comment that Kevin Wheel, your former chief product officer, made on the podcast that has really stuck with me, which is 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 kind of this chatbot. And he made this really good point that what is an interface that is very good at spanning a wide spectrum of intelligence?
43:53Speaker A:It's actually just talking. If you think about humans, we talk to people low IQ to very high Q. We can all just talk to each other. And it's actually a really good interface for packaging something that is increasingly smarter and smarter.
44:07Speaker C:And smarter.
44:08Speaker B:Yeah. And I think we're seeing what's been really fun design space for us is there's two things we think about one is like, how can we help you express your intent better? Right. We don't want you to have to.
44:24Speaker C:Think about being a perfect prompt engineer,.
44:26Speaker B:But how do we even one teach you that, oh, this is something that.
44:29Speaker C:The model can help me with.
44:30Speaker B:And then how do we make sure that we sort of best understand what you want? And so like, you know, we recently.
44:36Speaker C:Shipped some features where if you ask.
44:38Speaker B:Sort of an open ended question, it.
44:40Speaker C:Can follow up with, you know, some follow up questions that you can like just tap through an answer versus having to type everything out. Right?
44:48Speaker B:Or another good example is, you know, so then, then once you actually ask it to do something, there's the chat.
44:55Speaker C:Transcript doesn't need to be purely text, right? We've seen these now evolve so far from what it was with when ChatGPT just launched.
45:03Speaker B:It's no longer just a pure chatbot, it actually has many features within that.
45:07Speaker B:So a good example is what we call writing blocks.
45:09Speaker C:You ask it to.
45:12Speaker B:Write you a letter or an email and it now contains 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 that has made that interaction much better.
45:29Speaker C:And we're seeing the same thing with image generation and creating special tools for that kind of mode.
45:34Speaker B:And I think that's where the UI is going to start to really continue to evolve is how do we make. If you come at this and you're a designer, maybe ChatGPT should actually really.
45:46Speaker C:Look different or have different affordances, or you're a data scientist or you're using this to run your home, you know, like your personal life, maybe it should.
45:59Speaker B:Really kind of work or look differently.
46:01Speaker C:So like, understanding the context and giving you different affordances based on that is something that, you know, we're thinking a.
46:07Speaker A:Lot about in terms of the vision and future of where all this goes. I know this is always evolving, but is there kind of a sense of what the future of ChatGPT 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?
46:25Speaker C:I think that it will start to become.
46:30Speaker B:More and more adaptive to, you.
46:34Speaker C:Know, all of the context of your life.
46:39Speaker B:I think proactivity is a big untapped.
46:42Speaker C:Kind of part of the experience that we're really excited to think about.
46:47Speaker B:You know, we're starting to see this with ChatGPT work now where it actually has pretty good suggestions based on your.
46:54Speaker C:Calendar or your Slack or these different sort of inputs and external kind of.
47:00Speaker B:Context, I think that's going to become more and more important or kind of shift the way you use it. I think voice as we just had.
47:11Speaker C:A step change in the model that.
47:13Speaker B:Just feels much more natural. And again, you know, I can only imagine how that's going to feel in.
47:19Speaker C:Two, three years as it just gets better and better.
47:22Speaker B:I think people, I do love interacting.
47:24Speaker C:With ChatGPT, especially voice in like, just. I want to just kind of like really quickly say something.
47:30Speaker B:And then I think, like, its ability to kind of go sort of like not just from asking questions, but actually.
47:36Speaker C:Doing things for you, that's all going to change.
47:40Speaker B:And hopefully all of this gets simpler.
47:43Speaker C:As we do it too. Right. You know, when we think of the.
47:45Speaker B: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 knows when it needs to answer, like really quickly or it should be chatty, or whether it should go and,.
48:03Speaker C:Like, go off and do work for you.
48:05Speaker B:And so that's a big, like, excitement.
48:07Speaker C:That we can get to is how can we continue to simplify the experience.
48:11Speaker B:Such that you shouldn't have to think.
48:12Speaker C:About how this works. You shouldn't have to think about what.
48:15Speaker B:Model you're on or what sort of speed you're using. That goes back to the balancing the.
48:22Speaker C:Different kind of Personas and user needs.
48:26Speaker B:Of course, we want to expose that.
48:27Speaker C:For the right people, but then we want to make sure that we can get a default experience that works great for most people.
48:33Speaker B:But yeah, I think it's going to be really proactive.
48:35Speaker C:I do think that we're going to.
48:37Speaker B:Get much richer sort of input through voice and like, richer visual outputs that are more interactive. I think that you'll start to build.
48:48Speaker C:More durable kind of workflows with ChatGPT that you can kind of use over and over right now, a lot of times it feels like you're coming and starting from scratch each time.
48:57Speaker B:And we want to really make this.
48:59Speaker C:Kind of the tool that you can use to help you with whatever sort of task you have.
49:04Speaker A:This all sounds wonderful. I can't wait. Just kind of zooming out a little bit and then I want to talk a little bit to designers again. But you're in this epic role right now.
49:15Speaker A:I imagine there's a lot of surprises as you entered OpenAI and took on this role. What's something you wish you'd known? What's something you wish you could whisper into Ian of day one? And to give you some advice.
49:26Speaker B:I mean, so many things. I think, you know, the first one is, like, recognizing that we're really early. And instead, like, I actually was pretty.
49:36Speaker C:Intimidated coming to OpenAI, if I'm being honest.
49:39Speaker B:You know, I remember, like, okay.
49:42Speaker C:Interviewing. Oh, no, I gotta, like, you know,.
49:46Speaker B:GPT4 had kind of recently come out and GPT, like, I, you know, I was like, what is all this stuff? Like, I was using it and I was using the stuff, but I didn't.
49:57Speaker C:Feel like I had a true understanding of it.
49:59Speaker B:And to be honest, I still have.
50:02Speaker C:So much to learn.
50:04Speaker B:So that idea of you are early, we're figuring this out that I think.
50:10Speaker C:I would want to hear.
50:11Speaker B:And the other thing that I found, and for me, this is more of a personal thing. It's less about AI or anything, but I stepped into a really different role. You know, most of my career I've managed. I definitely managed before, but never, like,.
50:27Speaker C:At a scale that's growing so fast. And then at a company that is,.
50:31Speaker B:Like, so different, you know, that the role was just. Every day was something new. And for a long time I felt like I'm kind of, like, bad at this or, you know, I don't know what I'm doing. And then I went and, like, talked to friends that had led, like, really.
50:49Speaker C:Large design teams or, Or. Or were in a similar transition as.
50:54Speaker B:Me, and they all felt exactly the same, or the problems that I had were not unique. And so, you know, this is, I guess, yeah, more personal advice that it's like, I think at any stage of.
51:06Speaker C:Your career, there's that feeling of, like, imposter syndrome and, like, what am I doing?
51:11Speaker B:I don't. I don't know how to do this feel. Finding people you can talk to that are going through the similar things, you'll.
51:16Speaker C:Find that there's usually a lot of.
51:17Speaker B:Shared kind of challenges and struggles and having that sort of, whether it's a mentor or just like a buddy that is impartial and out of it was really helpful to me.
51:28Speaker C:And finding that community, I think, has been helpful.
51:31Speaker B:So, yeah, so, like, that and then.
51:33Speaker C:Understanding that this is all so new.
51:35Speaker A:And evolving really quickly, that is extremely helpful to hear. Elena Verna had this really great post. I don't know if you know her, she's head of Growth at Lovable right now. She had this great post called Stop The AI Confidence Theater, where she just kind of 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.
51:55Speaker A:They're killing. It figured all out. And really, it's like very few people, like, very few of these things are actually that great and working. And.
52:01Speaker A:And it's just like, stop. Stop pretending like this is actually. You figured it all out.
52:05Speaker C:I think it's much better to be.
52:07Speaker B:Humble about it and be like, wow, Yeah.
52:08Speaker C:I don't know. This is like, changing quickly and, like, I'm just gonna embrace it and see where it goes.
52:13Speaker A:Yeah. And that connects to what you said was a core component of people that are doing well right now, people that are curious and just kind of poking around and trying to try these things and try them again. Because maybe it didn't work now. It didn't work before now.
52:24Speaker C:It works now a hundred percent.
52:26Speaker B:Yeah. It's like being kind of like, yeah, every. Every model, every new.
52:32Speaker C:Every new feature, it's like the people.
52:34Speaker B:That are poking around at those edges,.
52:35Speaker C:I found, are just having such a blast doing it.
52:39Speaker A:And this connects to something else. Kevin Wheel, 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.
52:48Speaker B:Exactly. I mean, that goes back to, like,.
52:51Speaker C:When, you know, I mean, a new model comes out, what, every week?
52:59Speaker B:I don't know, every day. Like, if you count all the labs.
53:03Speaker C:And everything, it's like it's changing so quickly and everyone gets better.
53:09Speaker B:And I don't know, it's like.
53:12Speaker B:I always try to remind myself, it's like, you know, it must be like, what, Like, I don't know, building or designing.
53:20Speaker C:And like, early days of computers when,.
53:21Speaker B:Like, componentry was, like, really evolving really.
53:24Speaker C:Quickly, and there were these drastic step.
53:27Speaker B:Changes and, you know, like, you would.
53:30Speaker C:Hit these limitations, and all of a sudden those limitations were gone. You know, I think it's the same. Right. It's like these things just change, and they're.
53:37Speaker C:What was totally broken yesterday now actually just kind of works.
53:41Speaker A:So maybe to start to close out the conversation, say a designer is listening to this and they're in that bucket of overwhelmed, anxious, struggling, stressed, 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?
53:59Speaker B:Just recognizing that it's a totally rational feeling, and it's a great time to.
54:09Speaker C:Just try to explore and See, what.
54:11Speaker B:If I tried working, what if I.
54:13Speaker C:Tried rethinking about the tooling?
54:16Speaker B:Or what if I just embraced, oh,.
54:18Speaker C:Maybe I should prototype more, Let me try, try using these tools.
54:23Speaker B:But again, like, recognizing that maybe it helps to hear that, I think that.
54:28Speaker C:We're all still so early and it's still changing and just kind of embracing that, like, just have fun with it and see where it goes.
54:36Speaker B:And I think maybe another thing I would say is really try to focus.
54:40Speaker C:On the output, the outcome, right at.
54:43Speaker B:The end of the day, we're not.
54:45Speaker C:Here to build tool like processes.
54:50Speaker B:We're not here to build or token max or something like that.
54:55Speaker C:We're here to make great software that.
54:57Speaker B:People love or great products or whatever.
54:59Speaker C:It is you do.
55:01Speaker B:But that's the thing that really matters. And if you focus on that, I think that you'll hopefully find that these.
55:10Speaker C: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.
55:17Speaker A:So along those lines, I'm going to take us to a couple recurring corners of the podcast. The first corner is AI Corner. 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 use, say, ChatGPT.
55:33Speaker B:Or Codex as like a designer designer? I mean, nowadays I spend less time in the pixels, but I really do use it to kind of help me.
55:43Speaker C:Think through broader ideas.
55:46Speaker B:Or I'll have an idea at night or something and then I'll just quickly type it in and have it prototype.
55:54Speaker C:Something and it'll give me an idea.
55:56Speaker B:That I can go and talk to.
55:57Speaker C:The team about and help visualize something.
55:59Speaker B:And so that's like a part of.
56:01Speaker C:The design process that's like early ideas or we're riffing through something and I found that ChatGPT, whether it's ChatGPT work or Codex, can like really kind of help me visualize that that's been something that's been really fun.
56:15Speaker B:And then like there's, there's more of the operation side. You know, it's like I have it now, like checking and making sure that.
56:21Speaker C:Like important Slack messages that I need to follow up with are summarized and.
56:26Speaker B:Giving me context before sort of like,.
56:30Speaker C:You know, important meetings or for recruiting.
56:32Speaker B:Or for all, like every, every part of my process.
56:35Speaker C:I use this to kind of augment the work that I do.
56:39Speaker A:It makes sense on the prototyping piece just to give someone a tip on how to do this. Are you opening up on your phone and firing off just like a codex thread. What's like the mechanic of doing this.
56:48Speaker B:ChatGPT work has been incredible because it now runs fully in the cloud. Right.
56:54Speaker C:And so the idea is you can.
56:56Speaker B:Kind of just be anywhere and sort of like talk to, chat and have.
57:02Speaker C:It like really spend the time and come back with like a really great artifact.
57:08Speaker B:So I found that it's been really fun to just be like, hey, you know, we're working on, you know, whatever this thing is, like, whether it's helped.
57:17Speaker C:Me think through it or, you know. Yeah, sometimes I will just have like some ideas that I would love to.
57:22Speaker B:See, like quickly visualize before I even.
57:25Speaker C:Like take it further. And it will just like kind of help me like play with it and try it and stuff.
57:29Speaker B:And so that's been really fun. The fact that it's so accessible.
57:33Speaker B:Like I might not even be near.
57:35Speaker C:A computer or I can, you know, I don't know, just kind of like have that flexibility. I think it's really fun.
57:43Speaker A:Awesome. Okay, I'm going to take us to another corner.
57:48Speaker A:So the reason I do this, a lot of people, awesome, awesome. People like yourself come on the podcast and all people hear is all the amazing things they've done, all the ways they've been really successful, 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.
58:04Speaker A:It's not always up until the right and success. What's a story of a time you failed in your career and, and what did you learn from that?
58:12Speaker B:I mean, there are so many times I think that, I mean, even at OpenAI, it's like I, I think that I found that I've had to learn.
58:24Speaker C:Every step of the way. Right.
58:26Speaker B:When I first joined, I remember not really even fully understanding how I wanted to build a design team and not understanding how to hire or whatever. I sort of felt like I was kind of failing every day, but just kind of quickly trying to adjust and learn.
58:50Speaker C:Um, I think that, that, I don't know, I mean, that's like maybe kind.
58:56Speaker B:Of a cop out answer, but like really just feeling like every day I'm kind of like learning on the go. 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.
59:09Speaker C:I've in sort of like quickly learning from your mistakes.
59:12Speaker B:I've shipped plenty of things that did not work out. Um, and I've also Shipped things that, you know, you know, have worked out,.
59:22Speaker C:But, like, the most.
59:23Speaker B:Many times I've shipped or, you know,.
59:26Speaker C:You try something and it's kind of a failure.
59:28Speaker B:And, you know, at Instagram, we had flops, and then we, you know, we'd like, quickly move on. I mean, I worked on igtv, which was like a huge flop, and then we shipped reels, and reels was like. And I mean, that's a good example because, like, we had. We just kind of baked in some.
59:46Speaker C:Wrong assumptions and we held onto a.
59:47Speaker B: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. And I've seen that many cases, many cases of like. And that's helped.
1:00:04Speaker B:I think that's helped harden me to the sort of critique and feedback of things. Because, you know, sometimes you get it wrong, sometimes you try something, and sometimes it is just about having to, like,.
1:00:15Speaker C:Put it out in the world and.
1:00:16Speaker B:Work through it and get the feedback and iterate. And I think that that's like, the more importantly is not sort of what.
1:00:25Speaker C:You shipped one time, but how you react and how you, you know, how you kind of, like, fix forward and how you continue to iterate and listen to. Listen to your users.
1:00:34Speaker A:It's a very common theme in this corner is just people's careers are like. It's mostly failure along the way.
1:00:39Speaker B:Yeah, definitely.
1:00:40Speaker A:And so I think that's helpful for people to hear.
1:00:44Speaker A:Okay. Before we get to a very exciting lightning round, is there anything else you wanted to share that we haven't covered?
1:00:50Speaker B:If I could distill it, it's like, I hope that this is just, like, a really fun time to build stuff, and I hope that we, you know, as designers can be really adaptive and focus on making really fun, making really great stuff. I think that designers are just like. I think great companies are seeking designers.
1:01:16Speaker C:And seeking great design, and I've found that to be really true.
1:01:20Speaker B:There probably going to be a bunch of companies that will be left behind because they haven't shifted, but I think.
1:01:25Speaker C:That there's plenty of room for amazing, great design, and that's going to be more true than ever.
1:01:31Speaker A:I completely agree. I'm very bullish on design.
1:01:34Speaker A:Well, Ian, with that, we've reached our very exciting lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Are you ready?
1:01:38Speaker B:Okay. Yes.
1:01:40Speaker A:All right, here we go. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most to other People.
1:01:46Speaker B:I'm not like, you know, it's funny. I'm not like a big, big book recommender. I think, like, when people ask me, I do get asked about, like, books.
1:01:55Speaker C:For design, and I'm not. I haven't found that many that really.
1:01:58Speaker B:Have stuck with me, 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.
1:02:07Speaker A:That's the one that still has.
1:02:09Speaker B:You know, it's not like. Yeah, it's not a unique recommendation, but.
1:02:15Speaker C:It is just kind of a classic of thinking about how you.
1:02:17Speaker A:How we think.
1:02:18Speaker C:How I think about design. Yeah, you have to read it if.
1:02:20Speaker A:You're in tech or not even in tech.
1:02:24Speaker D:Awesome.
1:02:25Speaker A:Anything else there or should we keep moving?
1:02:27Speaker C:We can keep moving. Yeah.
1:02:28Speaker A:Let's do it. Favorite recent movie or TV show that you have really enjoyed?
1:02:33Speaker B:Okay, so I have one that actually.
1:02:34Speaker C:Is not a movie or TV show,.
1:02:36Speaker B:But it's a. I'm in New York.
1:02:38Speaker C:I just saw a Broadway show called maybe Happy Ending.
1:02:44Speaker A:Yes, I've seen it.
1:02:45Speaker B:Love it so much.
1:02:46Speaker D:You saw it?
1:02:47Speaker C:Oh, you saw it. Okay. Yeah. It was so unique, right?
1:02:52Speaker B:And of course, it kind of hit home a little bit because it's about these, like, super intelligent humanoid robots and like, you know, but. But the production was incredible.
1:03:05Speaker C:The set design, everything about it, I thought was, like, so unique, which was. I thought, yeah.
1:03:14Speaker B:So if you have the chance to.
1:03:15Speaker C:See it, I thought it was really, really good.
1:03:17Speaker B:I also just saw the invite, which was. I thought, have you seen it?
1:03:23Speaker A:Yes. Also love it. So simple, but so good.
1:03:26Speaker B:That's what I loved about it is it's, like, so simple. It's like. It actually is like a play, you.
1:03:33Speaker C:Know, and it's just four people in.
1:03:35Speaker B:One kind of beautiful apartment. And the set design's amazing, but, like, the writing, everything about it was, like, incredible. And it's just kind of a wild ride. And I wouldn't have knowing nothing about it.
1:03:50Speaker C:I thought it was incredible.
1:03:52Speaker A:Excellent taste, sir. I love both those so much. And the invite just came out. It's in theaters right now.
1:03:58Speaker A:Next question. Favorite product you've recently discovered that you really love.
1:04:02Speaker B:I feel kind of like a typical.
1:04:04Speaker C:Silicon Valley person recommending this one or something.
1:04:07Speaker B:But I did finally switch to an.
1:04:11Speaker C:EV after having many cars for a long time, and I got a Rivian.
1:04:16Speaker B:And I don't know, they just. I do respect the design a lot of. Just kind of how they've really made it. Just all of the, like, I think if, you know, probably Tesla's similar but like there's a lot of assumptions that.
1:04:32Speaker C:How operating a car should work or have gone away.
1:04:35Speaker B:You just walk up to it, it unlocks, you know, it's like you just like, you don't have to like turn.
1:04:42Speaker C:On and off the car and it's.
1:04:44Speaker B:Cool to see like that evolving. And of course I love, you know, at Waymos or probably if I could like own a Waymo right now that is the most magical experience in the world.
1:04:55Speaker C:And I'm waiting on bated breath for that to be broadly accessible for everybody.
1:05:02Speaker A:Do you have a favorite life motto that you find yourself coming back to in work or in life?
1:05:07Speaker B:Not necessarily. Other than I think like kind of.
1:05:10Speaker C:Trying to sum up like how I felt about all of this is like have fun with it and like just try stuff. And you know, I think don't feel like. I've never felt like you have to fit into a specific box and know.
1:05:26Speaker B:That it's perfectly all right to be very fluid about the way you work.
1:05:30Speaker C:Or the way you think about things and I don't know, be flexible and adaptable. But yeah, it's not quite a life motto. More of a vibe of just trying to like have fun with it and build great stuff.
1:05:42Speaker A:I should shift this question to what's just like the vibe that's been helpful to you because I love that it's very Sam Altman in terms of just. You can just build stuff.
1:05:50Speaker B:Exactly.
1:05:52Speaker A:Okay, last question. Something I love about your career history. If you look at your LinkedIn, you are a designer at Groupon. I love that you are Groupon and now you're heading design for centrally super intelligence.
1:06:03Speaker A:What's something you learned at Groupon that has. Is being. Is maybe helpful these days building super intelligent AI?
1:06:10Speaker B:I love that Groupon was a really fun company. Andrew Mason was like a really incredible CEO in just that he brought such character to the product. It was like kind of a brand led product. And you know like there was like a comedy team, there was like a writer team, but they were like all comedians basically.
1:06:47Speaker B:And the product really did not take itself seriously at least in its early, early couple years. It was like, it was, it didn't take itself seriously. And I think that the brand really stuck out.
1:06:57Speaker B:You weren't signing up for Groupon because ne. I mean of course the daily deal was great.
1:07:02Speaker C:You were getting like 50% off something.
1:07:05Speaker B:But people loved that email because it was really well written and it was funny and I had character and I thought that early on the company did a really good job with brand and.
1:07:17Speaker C:Sort of embracing that side of things.
1:07:21Speaker B:I think the other thing, if I were to carry that forward, is I found that every company that I've worked.
1:07:27Speaker C:For has such unique DNA.
1:07:30Speaker B:And the way you have to work.
1:07:31Speaker C:Kind of maybe changes a little bit based on that. Right. So Groupon was run one way.
1:07:37Speaker B:Then I went to Instagram, which was this very design and creativity focused. And Kevin Systrom was really an incredible designer and he sort of saw himself or worked in that way with us,.
1:07:52Speaker C:Which was really cool. And it just created a different way of working.
1:07:56Speaker B:And then you have like, Sam Altman, who's like a completely different way of operating and he's like, you know, I think. And then an OpenAI being a research lab. And so learning that companies have these.
1:08:10Speaker C:Really different DNAs and understanding how to sort of embrace them and kind of leverage that to your or help kind.
1:08:16Speaker B:Of like empower that or like, I guess, lean into that.
1:08:20Speaker C:Has been something that I've learned a lot from moving around and getting the opportunity to work at very, very different companies.
1:08:26Speaker A:And also, just to add to that, it's also important to realize you're not going to change that. You're not going to come in and change that culture, because that's just, that's very hard, especially if it's very founder oriented.
1:08:36Speaker B:I think it's about finding like, oh, wow, like at OpenAI, you know, yeah, sure. Like, we spent more time at Instagram, we definitely moved slower and I would say that we changed the product less and that actually worked really well for most stages of Instagram. But I don't think that that would.
1:08:58Speaker C:Work in the current stage of where we're at with OpenAI and that way.
1:09:01Speaker B:Of working, of course, I bring a lot to that. And I think, like, you know, at Instagram we had this motto, like, do.
1:09:09Speaker C:The simple thing first, and we always.
1:09:11Speaker B:Use that and we really embrace that. I've tried to carry that through to the way I think about building product that OpenAI, 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.
1:09:29Speaker B:And so just being really. I found that having to be flexible and, yeah, not necessarily trying to change it, but trying to kind of like.
1:09:35Speaker C:Help round it out, maybe.
1:09:36Speaker A:Ian, what an incredible place you have in the world right now. Just being on the inside of such cool technology, such cutting edge Stuff that's happening. 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.
1:09:54Speaker A:Where do you want to point people if you want to plug anything? And how can listeners be useful to you?
1:10:00Speaker B:Where do I want to point people? I mean, I think that Please, you know, I guess use, you know, have fun with the stuff we're making with ChatGPT and Codex and fire away feedback and thoughts. I'm on Twitter. I love to talk with designers at all sort of stages, or not just.
1:10:21Speaker C:Designers, engineers, PMs, whatever.
1:10:24Speaker B:That's probably where I'm most sort of reachable and accessible. And, you know, how can you. Yeah, I think to be useful again, it's like I love when people do show off the way they are kind.
1:10:37Speaker C:Of working and how that's kind of shifting and that's like a great way for us to learn how we can build better products, both like internally at OpenAI, but just as a design community, like maybe showcasing a little bit more of our process because it is becoming a little bit more opaque. Like, well, how is it working?
1:10:54Speaker B:Just, I think sharing that is like such a gift to the community.
1:11:00Speaker C:So doing more of that.
1:11:01Speaker A:Also pointing people to your website, which I have here now. And I think my face is probably changing colors because the site has all these crazy colors.
1:11:09Speaker A:So if you go to Ian silber.com, you could see this insane website. Personal website.
1:11:15Speaker B:Yeah. That's a deep dive into all of my past work.
1:11:18Speaker C:You can see there. Yeah. And.
1:11:21Speaker A:And the trick is you. Yeah. You'll have to discover the Easter egg where there's a game involved.
1:11:25Speaker C:That's right.
1:11:26Speaker B:See if you can set the high score.
1:11:27Speaker A:Yeah, this high scores are out of control. I don't know what's happening. Someone's found a cheat code. Ian, thank you so much for being here.
1:11:34Speaker A:Thank you so much for doing this, Benny.
1:11:36Speaker B:This was awesome.
1:11:37Speaker C:Super fun.
1:11:38Speaker A:Same. Bye, everyone.
1:11:41Speaker D: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.
1:11:51Speaker A:Or leaving a review as that really.
1:11:53Speaker D:Helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at lennyspodcast.
1:12:00Speaker D:See you in the next episode.
