Derek Briggs - Scaling craft at Shopify

This week's episode is with Tom Johnson (https://x.com/tomjohndesign) (staff designer at Vercel) who just released one of the coolest personal sites (https://www.tomjohn.design/) I've ever seen.So he's going to give us a behind the scenes of his portfolio journey that led him to create a fully simulated world generator for his camper travels. It might be the most robust set of tooling I’ve ever seen a designer create on this show. And that sparks a lot of questions about what it really means to be a designer these days.Some highlights:- How Tom’s workflow has evolved as a builder- How Tom accidentally turned his portfolio into a game- Why Tom built a skill to show his prompts in case studies- How experimenting with 3D unlocked new possibilities as a designer- + a lot more- Tom's portfolio (https://www.tomjohn.design/)- White Knuckle case study (https://www.tomjohn.design/content/whiteknuckle)Dive is where the best designers never stop learning 🤿🌐 dive.club🐦 twitter.com/joindiveclubNow you can join advanced courses taught by the top designers to help you take a huge leap forward in your career 💪Chapters0:00 Intro4:28 How it started: case study9:13 What the models were good (and bad) at16:03 How working in 3D levels Tom up as a designer17:08 White Knuckle20:11 How Tom build White Knuckle25:16 How this is shaping his ientity as a designer26:10 Lost breadcrumbs / Gretel26:54 Adding prompts to your case studies30:41 Building a custom video tool for shorts33:14 Noticing what's wrong36:09 How our design workflows are changing43:32 Identity when AI makes50:02 Prompts in public

This week's episode is with Derek Briggs and we're doing a deep dive into how he's raising the bar for craft as a principal designer at Shopify.Some highlights:- Scaling impact as a principal IC at Shopify- Creating systems for greatness to happen- Sweating the details on the shop.com carousel- The custom easing system Derek built for Shopify- Building custom data pipelines to uncover opportunities- Why Derek thinks design engineer is the most important role today- + a lot more

James McDonald is one of my favorite visual designers on the planet… but recently he took on his first ever contract where he’s responsible for both designing AND building his ideas from scratch.So I used it as an excuse to get him back on the show to learn his tactics for creating stunning web designs with Claude. It’s a ton of screen-sharing and a heck of a behind-the-scenes into his process.Some highlights:- When James reaches for Figma vs. Claude- How James builds custom mini design tools- How James finds visual motifs to build around- James's strategies for animating designs with AI- How James explored the visual language for Onlook- + a lot more

This week's episode is a behind-the-scenes of the Inflight design journey. So I invited my co-founder Kyle Barber (designer at Tinder, Facebook, and Airchat) to share what it's actually like designing a startup today.Inflight Pitch Episode (the SPC pitch we mention in the fundraising section)

I’ve seen a lot of custom AI tools on this show…But this week’s episode with Myles Palmer (Design Director at Metalab) might take the cake.Myles is the perfect archetype for what it looks like to be curious as a builder today and in this episode he gives us the ultimate behind-the-scenes look at the internal tooling system he built at Metalab.

This week's episode is with Rhiannon Bell (VP of UX for Google Search) and we're doing a deep dive into what it takes to design for AI at the scale of Google.Some highlights:- The design decisions that unlocked AI Mode- What it takes to design at the scale of Google- Designing dynamic component systems for AI- How AI is shaping the practice of design at Google- What we can learn from the top designers at Google- What skills are becoming more valuable for designers- + a lot more

This week's episode is with Danny Martinez and we're doing the ultimate deep dive into design hiring and what's happening in today's job market. Danny has the perfect vantage point as the CEO of Decimals—the platform that powers everything I do with the Dive Talent Network. So this episodes is about as practical as it gets.- What companies want in a “design engineer”- The biggest green and red flags from hiring managers- How the best teams are iterating on the hiring process- Examples of portfolios getting hired in the talent network- Why brand design is the most difficult design role to hire for- How to attract the most in-demand designers as a hiring manager- The interaction design example hiring managers keep highlighting- + a lot more

This week's episode is with Geoff Teehan—co-founder of the legendary design agency Teehan+Lax, longtime design leader at Facebook, and now Chief Design Officer at Lightspark.Some highlights:How Geoff has navigated multiple cycles of changeWhat the “parking spot” phase of software looks likeWhy Geoff plans to only hire 4 designers at LightsparkThe design backstory behind Geoff’s viral Dialed gameHow Geoff brings consumer principles into enterprise design＋ a lot more

This week's episode is with Nev Flynn and we're doing a deep dive into how he's bringing artful expression into enterprise design as the Head of Design at ElevenLabs.Some highlights:Inside look at ElevenLabs internal brand toolsWhy Nev is prioritizing specialists over generalistsWhat Nev looks for when evaluating a design portfolioHow they built a shader orb system for 40 million voicesWhat happens when non-designers are designing with AIHow the team is making their design system agent-nativea lot more

This week's episode is with Ed Bayes and we're doing a deep dive into how designers at OpenAI prototype the future of Codex/ChatGPT Work.Some highlights:- How prototyping at OpenAI has shifted recently- The design challenges of bringing Codex into ChatGPT- How Ed thinks about the spectrum of dynamic interfaces- How Codex thought about their information architecture bets- Why Ed structures design teams around personas not features- The traits of the designers making the biggest impact at OpenAI- + a lot moreThe Bitter Lesson (http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html) — ML essay he referenced on scaffolding and model releases