
Lenny's Podcast · 2026-03-01
Design Process Evolution & AI at Anthropic with Jenny Wen
Hosts: Lenny
Guests: Jenny Wen
Why it matters
The traditional design process focused on research, mocking, and prototyping is becoming obsolete due to rapid AI-driven engineering cycles.
Key claims
- The traditional design process focused on research, mocking, and prototyping is becoming obsolete due to rapid AI-driven engineering cycles.
- Design work is now split between supporting fast execution by engineers and setting short-term (3-6 months) product vision with lightweight prototypes.
- Designers at Anthropic use AI tools like Claude chat, Claude co-work, and Claude code extensively to prototype, implement, and collaborate with engineers.
- The role of design managers is evolving to combine people management with deep engagement in design work and team direction.
Episode summary
Summary
Jenny Wen, Head of Design at Anthropic, discusses the rapid transformation of the design process driven by advances in AI and engineering. Traditional design workflows centered on extensive mocking and prototyping are giving way to faster, more iterative approaches where designers focus on enabling engineers and guiding product vision within shorter time horizons. AI tools like Claude and Claude co-work are deeply integrated into their workflows, allowing designers to prototype in code and collaborate closely with engineers.
Jenny highlights the stratification of design work into execution support and vision-setting, emphasizing the need for adaptability and resilience in designers. She shares insights into working at the cutting edge within Anthropic, where keeping up with fast-moving research and internal projects is a core part of the role. The conversation also covers the evolving role of design managers, the importance of psychological safety and high standards in teams, and the potential future of AI in design decision-making and taste.
The episode provides a rare inside look at how a leading AI lab is reshaping design practices in response to AI-driven engineering acceleration, and what skills and mindsets are becoming critical for designers today. Jenny also shares practical advice for designers and managers navigating this new landscape, and reflects on the enduring value of human judgment amid increasing AI capabilities.
- The traditional design process focused on research, mocking, and prototyping is becoming obsolete due to rapid AI-driven engineering cycles.
- Design work is now split between supporting fast execution by engineers and setting short-term (3-6 months) product vision with lightweight prototypes.
- Designers at Anthropic use AI tools like Claude chat, Claude co-work, and Claude code extensively to prototype, implement, and collaborate with engineers.
- The role of design managers is evolving to combine people management with deep engagement in design work and team direction.
- Psychological safety combined with high standards and direct feedback fosters high-performing, resilient design teams.
- AI is improving in taste and judgment but human accountability and decision-making remain essential, especially for product direction and prioritization.
- Chat-based interfaces remain central for AI interaction, complemented by evolving UI widgets generated dynamically by models.
- Hiring priorities include strong generalists with multiple deep skills, deep specialists, and eager early-career designers who can quickly adapt to changing tools and processes.
Source material
Transcript
This design process that designers have been taught we sort of treat it as gospel.
That's basically dead.
You as a designer actually do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore.
A big part of the design role now is helping engineers and teams execute, not just telling them here's the design few years ago.
60 to 70 percent of it was mocking and prototyping.
But now I feel the mocking up part of it is 30 to 40 percent.
You're better off not blocking that, letting them cook.
It's not just designers who are feeling like, oh, yeah, we have to keep up with engineers.
I think even engineers are like, how do we keep up with ourselves?
How to keep up with all our agents.
There are seven agents who are constantly running.
The results of engineering changing a budget is that design is sort of forced to change.
We used to go off and make this two year, five year, 10 year vision even now.
It becomes a vision that's three to six months out.
And isn't necessarily creating this beautiful depth.
Sometimes just creating a prototype.
That points people in the right direction.
Boris on the podcast recently was saying cloud code is now helping him come up with ideas.
We'll get better at taste and judgment and design.
We might be holding on to that a little bit too much.
Where will human brains continue to be valuable?
At the end of the day, someone has to decide what is actually going to get built and what actually matters.
Someone still needs to be accountable for the decision.
What do you now look for when you're hiring designers?
There's probably three archetypes of folks that are really interesting to me right now.
Today's guest is Jenny Wen.
Jenny was head of design for cloud.
Is now leading design for cloud co-work?
Prior to that, she was director of design at Figma, where she led the design teams behind Fig Jam and Slides.
She was also a designer at Dropbox and Square and Shopify.
And what I love about this conversation is that Jenny is living in the future.
Of where design as a profession is heading, and she's here to give us a glimpse into what that looks like, and how much things are going to be changing for designers.
It is pretty wild and extremely interesting.
A huge thank you to Noel 11 and Emily Lin Hasham for suggesting topics and questions for this conversation.
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Jenny, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.
Yeah, excited to be here.
I've been looking forward to this conversation because I spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the future of software engineering, how much that role is changing, the role of product management, how much that role is changing.
I've been spent a lot of time on how design is changing.
Clearly, it is also changing in a really big way.
And you have such a front row seat to where things are heading.
I also know you have a lot of very strong opinions about where things are heading.
So there's a lot of stuff I want to talk about.
I want to just start with this broad question.
How is the design process changing with the rise of AI?
It's changing a lot.
I think it's still also got a lot a long way to go in terms of the way it's changing.
Like I think we've actually seen engineering of the change a lot more in the past little while than design actually has.
But I think the result of engineering change is that design is forced to change.
And so I think some context around this is I did a talk at a conference in Berlin a few months ago in September and I called it like don't trust the design process where I basically just said, like hey, you know this is design process that designers have been taught where you go and you go off and you do a bunch of research and discovery and then you like diverge, you converge, diverge, converge.
And it's like this process that we sort of treated as gospel and tried so hard to preserve and we were like trust the process that is that's basically dead.
I think it was sort of dying before the age of AI but given now that you know engineers can go off and spin off their like seven clouds I think as designers we really have to let go of that process and I think that's the big thing that's changing but I think even in the past three to four months since I did that talk that talk actually starts to feel pretty kind of feels outdated to me which is a little embarrassing but especially with the big shift of like open four six and a bunch of folks just like really discovering and using cloud code over the holiday break.
I think we're seeing this like force to change our process happen even more the way I sort of see it now is like there are basically two types of design work and design work is kind of like becoming really stratified in this new world in this new world.
So there's like the first one which is really just like supporting the implementation and execution so this is the one where you know engineers are using their seven clouds to decorate all these features and anybody can like put an idea out there and you can just like talk about an idea and somebody use actually an engineer because they're still better at implementing this stuff than we are they will just make us happy version of it and you can try it out and you as a designer actually like do not have the time to make these beautiful mocks anymore or to like kind of lead in this way and then I think there's that the second kind of work that feels also really important which is like creating the sort of vision or direction for things.
This one feels like the hardest to make time for and it's one that like we still did before but I think the shape of it's very much changing because I think we used to go off and say you know we're going to do this design vision we're going to go off and make this like two year five year whatever ten year vision even and we're going to like point us towards something but the way that the technology is changing now like we actually don't know we don't know what's going to happen in two years there's too much changing and it usually becomes a vision that's like three to six months out and isn't necessarily something that is like creating this like beautiful depth that's like beautifully story told it sometimes just like creating a prototype that points people in the right direction and I think this kind of work is like still really important in this world because in a world where people can spin off their seven clouds make whatever features they want and any direct at any kind of like direction or or in implementation you need to point them towards something and in order to make sure that we're all making something that makes sense together and is also done in a way where it's like efficient right like if we're all working towards something but has one greater cause it's like much more efficient to do that than just random things and so that's like the big shift that I'm seeing and I think I've opinions about it now but ask me in like three months and it might actually change even more.
So what you're saying here is it's not like you or the design field is like we need to change it's engineering and the fact that you can build so quickly just forces the role of a designer to change because as you said engineers can just ship ship ship ship ship ship ship ship and what you're finding here is like you're better off not blocking that letting them cook as they say and and then there's kind of this mode of helping them along as they ship bring it together make sure it all kind of connects guide them a little bit.
Yeah I think so yeah I don't think there is like one unified voice it's like designers we need to change right now but they're yeah there is sort of like the the follow on effects of engineering tooling really changing I think we'll probably see design tooling change in this next year or so as well but it a lot of it right now is trailing that and I think it's also really empowering for us too because as designers we also now have access to a lot of these coding tools and we can be a part of the process in a way where we're implementing stuff like it's like I'm I'm doing a lot of last my own stuff where I'm implementing all the colors and like and and sort of like working with engineers really closely to get the feature across the line and also prototype stuff in actual code as opposed to relying on engineers to do that again.
How true do you think this this is at all companies at say AI companies on AI companies you know someone may be hearing this okay anthropic cloud like okay it's like they're the bleeding edge for one to it's like develop very a little bit but I think people might be feeling okay this is not gonna happen at Salesforce this is not gonna happen at I don't know service now wherever so I guess do you feel like this is where all teams are heading is it mostly AI bleeding edge companies how white spread do you think the design process shift is gonna be so the top that I did last year has really been like the most resident talk that I've done and I so I think it's something that people are starting to feel across the industry where they're like oh yeah we can't do the old design process anymore you know we are using tools like cloud code and and B0 what not to to start to spin up prototypes and PMs are starting to spin up prototypes and stuff like that as well so I think there's something they're emerging but the other interesting observation with that talk too was there was actually also a decent amount of like backlash like people were people clearly haven't invested their entire careers in learning teaching using this like really stable design process and they were I think there was a lot of like discrediting like oh yeah like we can't do without discovery we can't do without these pieces of process so I think there is still a piece of the industry that is not quite dairy yet in terms of this way of working if that makes sense yeah yeah and a big part of this is like you could argue like the question is what leads to the best most successful products in companies and you could argue it's spending time doing discoveries research, mock, iterating, data testing or it could be just engineer ship stuff that's okay not amazing good enough we learn iterating build iterating is your sense that that second path is not only is that just like whatever it's doing but that actually leads to the better product at this point I think you sort of to choose and use your discussion as like when to actually ship something but I think the the ability to execute try something out and try it with like real data and and a real user like kind of mindset in the product I think that does lead to a better product especially as we're all working with these like new developing AI models that are non-deterministic you can't you just can't we can't mock up all the states you know and you can't theorize and you can't even make like a clickable prototype whether you sort of have to use yeah from models in any of the new half to sort of see people try it out with their use cases because with these models like you discover you can design them for different use cases but you don't you have to discover use cases as you see could be using them so yes the other thing I always hear and building on which you just said is just you don't know what people will do with AI you don't know how good it'll be a certain things non-deterministic piece of it so you can create these amazing mocks of what it might be and then people use it in completely different way which is where coer came from and probably even caught code at the beginning and so so what's it what's it just like to be a designer at Anthropoc just like give us a day in the life of working at Anthropoc in the at the center of the storm a good amount of time at Anthropoc is actually just like catching up on what people what's happening at the company I think this is the company where I've worked out a few other companies around the size where I think there's just a lot of like information and a lot of things going on but I feel really compelled to keep up with it you know like there's there's stuff that is like model developments on the research side and then at any given time there are just so many different teams prototyping and trying different ideas out and there's a bunch of different like code names and stuff like that and a lot of time I'm just trying to navigate and figure out what those what those projects are because I think I'm just trying to spot and see like hey what's coming up ahead for me because there's stuff from both the research team but also some of our like labs teams that are closer to research and trying out and prototyping stuff and then there's just like stuff I want to try out you know like we have a bunch of like we have a bunch of like we have a bunch of prototypes and products internally that we can use and I am just curious and I want to try those things out and then I think there's also a lot of folks who internally have a lot of insights and opinions on where the industries going and some of those are just like really interesting to read because a lot of these are like philosophical debates or directions of the company and stuff like that and yeah I feel like I just want to keep up with these things whereas I think in a normal company I'm like it's fine this is stuff that's happening outside of my reach I don't I don't really care as much where here I think it's both the volume and the kinds of things that are happening that I'm like really interested in keeping up with and then aside from that sort of keep up but that's not a huge part of my job but I do think it's a really interesting part of it.
Well it connects to the point you made earlier or a big part of the design role now is helping engineers and teams execute not just telling them here's the mark here's the design it's helping them stay on track helping them connect ideas create a cohesive experience as it's happening so that makes sense.
Yeah yeah and I think part of it is just curiosity you know like it feels like I have this front row seat to so much happening in the industry and so a lot of it is like yeah our slack is a gold nine you know like I'm just excited to to read through the things that people are working on I never thought about how like there's already so much AI news to keep track of as a regular person and then actually seeing what's actually happening inside a lab is a whole new set of it's feeds to watch.
Yeah yeah that is the the best AI news is probably internally if you're ever at one of these companies in this lock.
Damn yeah.
Yes.
It's just problem keeps getting harder just keeping track was going okay so okay so that's part of the job well.
There is still some of the traditional like let me think about what's happening in the future and let me like make some designs for that that's something that for example this week I've a lot of some time to where I'm like oh my cool like we have been in a lot of like execution mode for co-work and now I want to set aside some time to think about hey what is the next like three months looks like and and where does that actual worker that actually go given where the market's at where the models are at and what could that be because I think it's still really helps to visualize that and show that to the team and point everyone in the same direction and then I also spend a bunch of my day just jamming on stuff with engineers like a lot of it is just a conversation or like white boarding or going through something that they built and giving them feedback on it and being a designer in that kind of way were really consulting and then I spend a part of my day in code you know like polishing, implementing stuff sometimes what happens is an engineer and I have worked through something and they've implemented the first version of it and I just go in and polish it with them and that's a really fun part of my job that I think didn't exist as much a few months ago.
Are you still doing elements of the traditional design process prototyping user research panels up and I would just like going out and you know like the whole thing you described.
Yeah we're still doing all of that to some extent like we we have a user researcher on the team who is putting together both like traditional studies as well as surveys and the whole team is reading that that the those studies and that feedback we are still we are still prototyping stuff we are still I'm still mocking stuff up I think it's just I have a wider set of tools now and I think the proportion of time I spend doing each thing just has changed.
Got it okay so that's a really interesting takeaway.
It used to be that was a huge like I guess what would be the pie chart of what your life was before where it's like traditional thinking planning prototyping mocking research and then just like feedback and execution in out today.
Yeah I think it's a designer a few years ago I would say like maybe 60 to 70 percent of it was like mocking and prototyping stuff up and then spending you know the last 20 or some of the last 20 or so like doing the sort of like jamming with engineers consulting with them and the last like 10 percent maybe doing you know coordination meetings etc but now I feel like the the mocking up part of it is like 30 to 40 percent and then there's that other 30 to 40 percent there that is now jamming and pairing directly with engineers and then there's like a slice I don't know how much I have left but like there's a slice of it that is now like implementation as well.
Yeah like actually building and shipping yeah amazing so kind of falling that thread what's in your AI stack what do you as a design I know your manager and I want to talk about how you actually or I see also what's in your AI stack what tools are using in your role this is my AI stack um well we if we're going to throw a fake so of course we're going deep on the Claude stack yeah um I I'm using obviously like chats uh Claude chat and then but increasingly more and more Claude co-work I've basically shifted all of my chat use cases over to co-work because I've been finding that yeah well it sort of is better at these longer running tasks and most of the things I was asking Claude for are these these longer running tasks and then there's Claude code of course I use it mostly in the with with the S code and the IDE because I'm usually tweaking front and stuff and it helps to just like be able to see the code and then talk to Claude as well I've been trying to actually use Claude code more remotely like through both mobile and through Slack as well it's really fun for somebody to say like oh yeah this this one icons offer something and you just at mentioned Claude and Claude does it and then you pick up the PR and it's done that's been really really fun too and yeah I think that's like I think we're a fully Claude house here so yes that's basically my stock are you still using Figma as it's I am still using Figma yes yes okay I was waiting to hear okay so Figma is still part of your your life being a former Figma is that we all recall yeah Figma okay yeah okay so I know there's this big debate on Twitter just like it's code the future of design do we need to make many more do we need to design what's your what's your sense Figma still important I mean as a Figma is a former Figma I I'm maybe in bias in that way but I I think there is still like when I use Figma I'm like yes this is what I should be using and it still fills a very good gap for me I think a lot of that is actually just like one is exploring a lot of different options I think that's a really important part of the design process to be able to just think about like eight to ten different ways to do something I think the best design happens when you're able this is like throw a bunch of ideas up the wall and curate and just like and push yourself to to come up with a bunch of these different directions right now coding or right now working with some of these coding tools doesn't lend itself super well to that because it's super linear you'd super invest in one direction and you just iterate with a lot on them for example so I think Figma has been really great at just like exploring all these different options and I think it's still gonna exist that way to some extent and then I think there's like really fine sort of visual and interaction details that are also really great to be able to just try out in Figma again it's a lot of different directions but it's micro directions it's being able to think about like different typography or styles having those in a canvas where you can just explore that specifically is still so so helpful and is not something that I always want to like go directly to code in it's interesting you still use an IDE because in engineering it's clearly shifting to command lines agents ideas are kind of moving to not be cool anymore so and it makes a lot of sense you just want to edit some CSS to think some like color stuff and so I could see why not just telling the agent hey just come on change this one hex value just change to get so much easier yeah it's really going to be like can you change this to this class when you can just go in and change it to a different class so it's interesting I wonder if IDE is now become the useful for designers and pms and engineers have moved on yeah maybe yeah okay so a lot of your time you spend working with engineers giving feedback kind of nudging them in the right direction there's a sense I feel of just like like your advice is like let go don't feel like you need to be this gatekeeper but there's this piece of okay help them move in its direction that is cohesive and is creating products we're product a lot of designers I think are in this but right now I'm just like oh my god I can't keep up with all these engineers shipping stuff all day what's something you learn about just either how to help your engineers get better at design so that it just ends up being better or just kind of keeping on top of this and not going crazy whenever I do work with engineers on products and it's more on the consulting basis I do just try to explain you know why I'm thinking away that I'm thinking to help them like extract principles as opposed to me just being like no I don't think this would go here it's like no I think we should have a button here because not everybody realizes you can prompt this and here's an example where it comes from research and whatnot so I also just like try to point engineers to our design system and stuff like that in code because right now cloud is like writing a lot of the code and it's like not always it's not always like picking up stuff in the design system and whatnot so as much as I can sort of equip them with stuff that they can use in the future without me that's helpful and then on your point of trying not to go crazy I think it's hard you know I think it's really hard right now and I see this a lot from actually both engineers and designers where it's like now that we're sort of capable of doing so much we want to do more and and so I think it's not just designers who are feeling like oh yeah we have to keep up with engineers I think even engineers are like how do we how do we keep up with ourselves right now so that's something I'm hearing a lot so true yeah how to keep up with all our agents are seven agents for constantly running yeah okay so then as a designer where in this profession craft and great experience and quality and trust are such a core part of the job to help instill that in the products because that in theory leads to really successful products in companies how do you just think about maintaining craft quality trust as your products or just shipping a thousand times a day and you're not able to stand top of them and there's no designer involved it's not that there's no designer involved it's more just like there's it's almost so there's too much for one designer to handle but I think with this I think about where the features or products are that like where they are sort of in the cycle of adoption versus like kind of early preview so for example like we sometimes will launch things and we will say hey this is a research preview it's it's early it's gonna have a bunch of these laws and when we caveat that a bunch I think quadco work is actually a good example of this where we labeled it a research preview and we put it out there knowing that hey this is like similar to our models you know this is the worst it's ever gonna be but we're gonna put it out there because we believe you know internally we've tried it a bunch and there's something really powerful here that some people will benefit from it might not yet be the easiest to work with it might not be the highest quality it might have some issues with it but we're gonna put it out there because we believe the benefits outweigh the cons I think that is like okay to do especially when there is something really valuable with the product already and it's worth putting it out there but I think the promise you sort of have to make your users is is like hey we're gonna put it out there but we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna iterate we're gonna take your feedback and we're gonna iterate and we're gonna make it better and you have to sort of commit that you have to show that to the world you have to respond to people's feedback and you have to show that you are continuously shipping and improving it because I think the way that you really lose trust around quality and really since something early is if you're released early and then nothing ever happens that that is what something that degrades a brand but whenever you put something out early like it's it's possible to do that and like maintain the brand of your company and I think I think that's something that we've been doing pretty well and I think if there's anything anyone's listening to anyone's listening can take away from it is like yeah we're continuing to do that and I think that is actually really fun for me as a designer because you put something out there and you actually learn and you get feedback about it immediately and you know what to do next.
The way I've heard you describe this is building trust through speed.
Yeah for sure it's yeah it's building trust through speed but also just like making people feel like they've been heard and that we're fixing things based on what they're trying to use it for and their feedback is actually appreciated and used.
Yeah it's clear when when the lab's launched stuff and y'all are very good at this everyone on team is tweeting and just like responding to tweets and comments and and then shipping hey we fix this yesterday and this is happening so there's a clear sense of this is just today and we know this is broken and we will fix it and and then because cloud code can code very quickly the fixes come very fast okay so another big question that people are asking that I ask a lot of this podcast is around just like what skills become valuable and like another way I've been thinking about it like put it this way recently is where will human brains continue to be valuable as AI gets smarter.
So we've gone through this progression of tap completing Ella segments of code to 100% of code is written by AI now like it's crazy to now AI's reviewing its own code Boris on the podcast recently was saying cloud code is now helping him come up with ideas and decide what to build which is like okay wow look at that look at it go the whole product workflows the product domain process slowly get eaten up by AI so the question is just like where will human brains still be useful at least until we have super intelligence do you think like do you think AI is going to get very very good at taste judgment design.
I think it will get better at taste and judgment and design yeah like I think we we might be holding on to that a little bit too much and saying like oh yeah like you know a designer or somebody will always know the the best thing to ship or the best version of this and I but I do think AI like AI's sense of taste will get better.
I think it is someone has to decide like what is actually going to get built and what actually matters and what I think about people saying like oh you know like AI is just going to build this software for us a lot of the hard parts of building software actually like not building it you know if you think about the hardest times that you've had at work plenty is probably things like oh you and some other person like disagreeing about like what should go into this feature or what shouldn't go into this feature and those things still feel like yes AI can weigh in but it can't necessarily solve this dispute between you and somebody else and so there is something about like deciding what actually goes into the things we build which I guess is taste in some way but maybe not taste in like the way we think about like a static taste or or whatnot there's some sort of like it's like judgment around what to do next.
Just watching how quickly AI had took over coding which I think a year ago definitely two years ago most people are like I don't think so I don't think AI will get this good and that the best engineers in the world trusted so much they're not even looking at that code anymore like that's where we're gonna it just made me reevaluate all these assumptions I've had about okay AI will never be as good as really good PM's designers at judging what is great and deciding what to build but I'm just like starting to think I think it will get there like even an example you shared like it could give these two people trying to make a decision here's all of the data you need to make a decision and here's why this is the right answer and just press yes press one and I'll go ahead and build it.
So I think we're just yeah to your point I think we undervalue just how good it'll get it this stuff okay so your sense is it'll get better but your sense is we'll still need awesome designers to be involved as some PM's to help make these decisions engineers of course yeah yeah I think someone will still have to decide like oh we want to build this kind of product or like given what the AI is presenting us like someone still needs to be accountable for the decision you know the same way that like even though clock can write all this code for you today it is still an engineer who's accountable for like does that code actually work does this actually make sense in the product so I think there's that decision making such judgment layer which feels like maybe one day we won't have to do that but it's it still falls on us yeah it doesn't make sense it makes me think about the radiology example where there's always the sense that AI is going to take over that field of radiology and tell you what is going on but like the human is mostly useful for signing off on the decision just so it needs to be liable if they're on which isn't the best job in the world but but that's a different game is helpful yeah yeah okay another ongoing question in AI in design is just like if it's like chat bots and terminals are just like like I don't think anyone expected this to be the lasting user interface to AI like chat bots okay no no this is just like a temporary stop along the journey but how it's like I even further and just terminal do you have thoughts on just I don't know where like you think there will be a next step of how we interface with AI or do you think chat bots and terminals are mostly where we end up there will likely be a combination of both like both UIs and interfaces that you are interacting with clicking with and and that feel like more tactile we are already seeing this and playing with this within cloud like the chat but um so we recently really still a bunch of these widgets that let cloud sort of elicit and ask you questions and also show you you know things like the weather and stocks and whatnot in interactive ways and I think those have had a really good reception because people still like to see UIs and touch them and click them and they are much more efficient than you know typing something to to cloud but at the same time when we really leaned into this like chat bot paradigm like I think that just gave us this whole world of flexibility that we didn't get with these sort of like baked in UIs so my read here is like I don't think chat is ever going away because this opened up this like new way of like infinite ways to work with the model and to sort of like talk to the computer that we just didn't have before but I think that it will still be most direct for very specific things to exist in this UIs and I think what will probably happen here is that a lot of those UIs will be generated more and more often by the models as opposed to something that we're like hand coding each instance but I think we yeah we're in this space where I don't I don't think chat and and and and maybe even like talking to the terminals is going to go away.
It's interesting that like with open claw, claw, claw, claw, claw all the names the innovation one of the big innovations is like another way to chat with it through WhatsApp and tell like reminiscing us just like another format chat bud but that just like that was a big unlock oh I could just chat with it through WhatsApp.
Yeah and it's like you like chatting and talking to someone is still like you know we as humans are doing it and so and it's a way for us to interact in a really rich way and now we just have this other medium to like interact with the computer basically.
Yeah so Kevin Wheel who works at another AI lab I won't mention he had this great point on the podcast that talking is such a beautiful way to handle every level of intelligence we can talk to people that are very very smart and not so smart and it's talking and this scale so well across the spectrum we can talk to people at 200 IQ 300 like it's talking still works so that's why it's been this beautiful way to deal with the growing intelligence of models that you continue to work.
Yeah that's totally nice that's yeah.
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And so you were previously a director of design I think my right yeah because you're seeing like how large was your work can just take your people off reference.
At the max I probably had I think 12 15 designers or so and and I had a few managers as well so.
And then it was actually yeah okay so you've had the sense that middle management might not last what's your current feeling do you think management design management is a thing that persists long-term or do you think everyone turns into icy.
I think as long as there is a team of people it helps to have somebody who is managing a team like I think there is others like real value in managers it depends kind of like what the shape of the manager is and what to actually do but the way I think about like what a helpful manager is these days is somebody who is not just like I think pure people management like oh like just somebody to sort of set you up help you in your career have one-on-ones make sure you're feeling like good at work I think that that is kind of not a thing as much anymore but I think somebody who can really function as like giving the team direction as well as doing some of the people management stuff like that type together I think is the future of what managing looks like at least for now like somebody who can really engage with the team in terms of like the work and giving direction there as well as like creating the environment for them to do their best work and do you see yourself going back into management long-term I thought I probably will like I think I really just love helping a team like build the best product possible and my motto there is like whatever it takes you know if it's somebody that's if the team needs somebody to give the team direction and like set up the team and whatnot that could be me if the team just like needs somebody to execute on it that could be me as well So the advice I'm hearing for people in design that are especially managers is you almost need to move back into I see in order to truly understand what is happening and how much it's changing so that you can be a better manager I think so and I think traditionally at least what I've seen a lot of like the engineering disciplines like when they hire EMs or even sometimes like directors there they actually make the EMs like take a rotation for a few months and pick up a few tasks and really understand how the technology works before they become a full-time manager and I think design probably needs to do something similar to where I think in the past design has been much more like people management oriented what did you find yourself most rusty and when you went back to I see designer actually like doing crits you know and just getting criticized yeah getting criticized you're like oh yeah like it is hard to get it is hard to get critical feedback and to hear it and to hear on such a regular basis because that's the thing you have to do as a designer it's like it's a pretty vulnerable exercise to share work and present it with your team and then also just get a lot of critical feedback and take that all the time now so currently you're you're leading design slash I see designing on co-work is all right yeah awesome so Boris he was on the pot recently talked about how there's like a lot of debate about what co-work should be and there's all these big ideas and he's like in the end let's just make it like a terminal basically in the product and just kind of fancy terminal is there anything you could share about just the process of landing on where he landed for that experience of co-work I have it here on my monitor by the way looking at it with co-work specifically we have had a bunch of different prototypes internally of what that could look like and it's one of those things where we try to a lot of things and then I think we weren't really sure like when it was actually going to be ready to ship and then it was sort of like everything all once like we were like okay we're gonna we're gonna ship it soon yeah it was it was definitely longer than that like overall it was like 10 days to get it from what we had internally to something that we were ready to ship externally so we'd been building it for a while but we weren't really sure about like the actual form I was gonna take and so the way I got there is actually there was a lot of different other explorations that we had internally on top of different agent harnesses and what nods and we just had prototypes types little parts of the different interactions that ended up in co-work so things like when Clyde gives you to do this we'd try to a bunch of different form factors for that we tried a bunch of different form factors for the way it presents you different like multiple choice questions we tried a bunch of different ways to teach people with the use cases are and whatnot and I don't know if we like landed on the best form factor ever but essentially it was like stuff that was sort of already working internally that people liked that we just thought we were gonna get some more signal on by by releasing it so I think forcing ourselves to release it within that 10 days that we did it was just sort of like whatever we had let's put it out there and then let's go out there and iterate from that which is what we're doing and it blew up the internet when you launched it so yeah is there a feature of co-work today that you're either most proud of or just like can't wait to fix and improve I'm just saying I think we're I'm just most proud of us actually just like shipping it to be honest then putting it out there and yeah I don't know if there's like one specific thing because like I think when you work on something and you work out so long especially as a designer you're like I don't know if I you know I all can do see flaws in it but I think there's a lot of stuff that I'm excited about like we have been iterating especially on the homepage and to make that something where it feels more like hey these are like tasks you can you've clawed and the tasks that clawed are working on and so that actually should be rolling out it might already be rolled out by the time this this I said you like this little randomizer thing where you click it and give you all these different ideas yeah yeah and then so when you actually start to work with clawed on stuff it feels more like it to do list like it feels more like these are things clawed working on these are things that clawed these are tension on and I think there's just so there's an opportunity here to make it feel much more like this I shared to do list between you and clawed so instead of to iterate on that and then I'm also excited to think more about yeah like what is the actual true form factor of this like is it stuck in the screen always or how does this sort of like reach out to the different surfaces that it's working with?
I love that you shared that it wasn't just 10 days to do this thing there's like these numbers that people throw out there we build it in 10 days and your point is like there was time spent thinking about what direction it should go and prototyping, mocking, trying stuff and then it's like okay now we know what we want it to be let's build it and ship it.
Yeah I think for some reason that became like the viral thing that got taken away from all of the the sort of co-work announcements is that it only took 10 days but I think there there have just been so many different explorations and people that have worked on different pieces of co-work that yeah it was it was not just 10 days and there was a lot of different people evolves it's it's one of those things where it's like the the idea kept coming back and it's like never the right moment or there's like different variations of it and then all of a sudden it's the right moment and it feels like oh so obvious all along but there's a long long journey to get there.
And by the way for people that don't know much about co-work is like the way I think about it's like clawed with hands or could do stuff on your computer is that is what's well how would you describe it just like in a sense or two?
That's a good description actually I haven't heard that but I like that and my using more often is clawed with hands I also think about it as like it's like clawed but clawed is really good at taking all your garbage and then turning it into something nice like I think one of my favorite and like any sort of use case that I really like out of co-work is just like giving it a folder of my stuff and it doesn't really matter what's in that folder but I'm able to extract something good out of it if done that many times okay coming back to managing and being a manager and the role of a designer I'm going to talk about hiring for a little bit so seeing how much just change it in the role of a designer what do you look for that's maybe new like what do you now look for when you're hiring designers that you think is really important for them to be successful in this new world.
I will I do think working specifically in the kind of environment that I do there there's just like a sense of like resilience and like role with it and kind of thing that I think is really important because yeah so much is changing around us and you have to be really willing to adapt to try out new methods to try out new tools and learn stuff as opposed to just like be stuck in the old processes in the old ways but then I think about also there's probably three archetypes of folks that are really interesting to me right now and I think these folks were already interesting to me before but I feel like is in this era feels especially important so the first one I would call is like strong generalists so not just like regular generalists where they're like kind of good at a lot of things but like people that are like almost like block-shaped you know in that T-shaped framework where it's like they're really good at like a few core skills like 80th percent how good I think this is like pretty rare and hard to hire for it to be honest but I like this because the design role we've already seen is kind of like stretching and spanning right like we're all becoming more PM shape or be all becoming engineering shaped and so if you already have strong skills and a few different buckets it's really easy free to sort of like flex around and expand your expand your role so that's really exciting to me it's just somebody who is really good at a bunch of things again a huge ask and then the other person that's really exciting to me is in that T-shaped framework like a deep specialist like someone who is T-shaped but like the tip of the T you probably is like goes down farther than most other people so folks that are maybe like the top you know like 10% of the industry and whatnot again super hard to find and I feel very lucky that like you know working at some of these places folks like these you you can sort of afford to hire them and actually bring them on board and then my last one is probably the one that I think we're all overlooking which is what I call the craft new grad it's just somebody who is like early career and feels kind of like why is an experience beyond their years but is also just like very humble and and and very eager to burn I think this person is really interesting right now because I think most companies are just hiring like senior talent like folks that have done things before at our super experience but given how much the roles are changing and what we're expected to do is changing I think having somebody who almost has a blank slate and it's just a really quick learner and it's really eager to learn new tactics and stuff like that and doesn't have like all these baked in processes and rituals in their mind that's super valuable so I think those are the folks that I think a lot of us are just like overlooking but I'm like really excited about this is awesome on the deep tea shape what's an example of someone in design that has it like what's what's the skill that they're really good at sometimes there's designers who are just like really technical in a way that could be like 50% of soft they're they're based on their software engineer like that's really interesting especially because right now like a lot of it is at least for us is like you know you're working with directly with the model so it helps when you have just like deep engineering expertise but another like deep kind of like specialist he is just you know maybe they're just really good at like visual design or just like designing icons or something where things like that given that everybody can anybody can make anything you know having that deep specialist land feels like oh yeah they can really help differentiate the things that we're building awesome okay and then there's block shape I had Mark Andrew said in the podcast we kind of called it the FF shape or E shape or there's like multiple T things sideways F sideways E I guess is that what you're describing where there's like many things you're really really good at yeah yeah and like basically like I don't know if you almost had their skillset it would it would look like a block you know like in so many skills yeah yeah yeah okay and the cracking you grit so this is just like someone that is eager like open-minded gritty very smart imagine as a big part of it yeah awesome yeah yeah if someone's like a new design like a young designer trying to break in trying to be successful what would your advice be to them to help them have a shot and and so joining in the topic for example I read to say there's like build a bunch of stuff like try a bunch of stuff out build actual things I think that is that can feel I don't really know what the state of like design education or education is these days but at least from like back when I was in school like everything was very like theoretical and like here we're gonna teach you some approaches and whatnot but like the best the best kind of like cracked new grad folks I know or just like people who just like use the technology build actual things don't feel like limited by you know how little experience they might have I think this sometimes they're actually unburdened by that because like we have expectations of ourselves after being industry for so long but they actually don't and they sort of feel like anything is possible and so just like building a bunch of stuff and sharing it with people and finding a community folks that that also do that um yeah I think my my one call here too is like I went to a school that started something called Socrataica like much about a few years after actually a while after I graduated and basically their whole thing is like building stuff and showcasing it almost like a science project and I think there's just been a really cool movement there of folks who just like build things and do things like for example somebody builds this like cloud robot project this was like a few years ago too where they were just assembling robots that were running on cloud and then somebody else did something where she just wanted to put Googleey eyes on a bus and boss and there's something and there's just like a sense of above like agency in terms of like yeah we can just do stuff but then also this community where people were just trying and building things and sharing things with each other so whatever that looks like given you know the school that someone's from or graduating from yeah doing that kind of stuff is is the stuff that will make people stand out for current designers that are an make career awesomely senior do you think do you need to get technical and learn to code at least build or do you think you could be really successful and just not lean into that and get better other stuff I think it definitely helps to maybe how like learn how to code so much that that you know you're building something from scratch but I it does feel like more and more of the designers will have to work out there right now is implementing some stuff I wonder though as you know the models but the models and the products get better if like well I mean we probably will continue to like move up the abstraction layer and layers and you won't have to actually know how you know each single line of code will work but I think what I would say is like start to bring that into your like toolkit the coding tools whether or not it's like you're actually becoming technical I think any designer should just be really aware and like know how to use the tools that are at hand as opposed to maybe like learning and like going off and you know learning reactor or etc etc.
how good of a designer is is Claude would you say or Claude would have everyone just hear like would you hire Claude is a designer is like not there yet I don't think Claude is there yet and her is a designer you hire I think it is it is not yet the strong generalist or the deep specialist or the crack new grad I think it's it's pretty good at a first pass and presenting a bunch of different ideas to you but nothing there quite feels like yeah special and hireable yet which is good news for designers for example it sucks at this for now and I'm so curious to see how good it get at this that's like such a big open question is can it pump out amazing novel unique creative experiences or is this it's just never going to be that good as a human designer I mean it's gotten a lot better in the last year or so even so yeah there's a couple management I don't know rituals or takes you have that I've heard from folks that work with that I want to touch on one is that you have this hot take that low leverage time for managers is just not a thing that there's a lot of benefit you can get out of things that people consider low leverage talking about that yeah yeah yeah I remember like first becoming a manager and I think one of the pieces like of advice that I either got from a course or a book or something is like yeah now that you're a manager you have to like really prioritize your time and categorize your work and there's like this two by two of like I don't remember what it was in it but you essentially say like oh these really things that only I can do these are things anybody else can do and everything else you know like it's low leverage and you shouldn't do that anymore and a lot of the low leverage things were just like you know like things that are really nitpicky in the weeds or just like literally yes probably somebody else could do those tasks but what I think about like leaders and managers that I have respect the most I actually think some of the their best traits is that they choose like low leverage tasks that they take on themselves and that actually ends up being actually a very high leverage thing because it's them who's doing it so one example is whenever you have like senior leaders who just like test the shadow of the product and they're just like so in tune with it then a dog put it every pro the bugs I spend a bunch of time with like engineers like sharing the logs and like nitpicking and stuff like that and I think that ends up being like super actually high leverage even though it's a lot of time of like nitty-gritty time because it creates this familiarity with the product which I think is really good it also creates this vibe where it's like oh yeah the this senior leader really cares deeply and they actually know the incident of the product and they're rolling up their sleeves and they're giving this feedback and working with the team on it and I think similarly to what I've seen is like when a senior leader is able to like fix a bug now you know even like I think I've actually seen like my career before like put it put in himself and it's it's really nice because it's like okay cool like we're all in this team together and nothing is like below this person and I think similar another thing that I love that's a little bit more cultural is when somebody like goes out of the way to like make somebody's like anniversary card or something and like vibe code them super nice something super nice or make them something a super nice card because I think it just shows that yeah it's like an EA or somebody can put together the card but this later is just somebody who cares so much about their team that they put in the effort so that's something I try to embody is like choosing the like the seemingly low leverage tasks that are like worth my time yeah that is so interesting like what you're saying there is in a sense like the low leverage stuff is the one is the stuff that often has the most impact because your reports wouldn't expect you to spend time in this thing and there's like the low leverage ends up being high leverage yeah and I think it's what makes like your solid leadership stand out or feel special to a certain person amazing another I don't know ritual and kind of way of running teams that I heard about you is you encourage team members roasting each other which on the surface doesn't sound like a wonderful environment but on the other hand I hear a concede that the teams that you've built are just the happiest the highest performing teams talk about I guess this idea of roasting and encouraging that and just what you've learned about building awesome teams yeah I think it's not that I'm like yo you should roast each other you know like I'm not like forcing it in that way or anything but when I think about the sort of circulate watch will safety and teams and like people that just get along with each other like when you think about your friends you know you're you're always sort of willing to like push the boundaries a little bit and like roast them like you're roasting your friends a lot but you actually might not be roasting your coworkers a lot because you it's it's all it's about like comfort and safety right so it's not that I'm like oh I want my teams to roast each other but I think it can be a really good sign when the people on your team kind of feel comfortable just like kind of poking fun in each other a little bit and I think that also can be a good sign when folks also feel the same way about like you as a leader where it's like there's just an element of like they don't they don't fear you as much but they and they feel like there's a sense of safety where they if they say something they're not going to fire um so an example of this is like with my last team I feel like they would make fun of things that I would say at Christmas sometimes like certain phrases I would say what's the example of that I don't know like oh I would always be like okay like what are next steps and like how do we follow up on this and then leave you like okay like what are next steps um and there's sort of channel me in that way yeah I just think it shows the level of like okay these people are like not necessarily afraid of me they know that they can they can trust me um and it's it's and then they sort of like know enough about each other and me like personally and our personal lives to be able to like know sort of where those boundaries are but at the same time I think the the the thing that you sort of air into and that territory is like are you as your man as a manager are you friends with your reports which is like I think the thing people tell you like not to do and so the way I think about balancing this out is like this creates like the you have to create the sort of like uh baseline of psychological safety and people feel comfortable both with each other and with you but you also to make sure that you they know that you have really high standards um and I think these two things can feel like they're at tension but I think they're actually they work really well together because it's like once you have that psychological safety you have people trusting each other and you applying the high standards actually I think becomes potentially easier because you can do it without fear I think um and I sort of think about this from the approach of like kind of like being a tough parent a little bit you know it's like oh yeah like they my team I work with them in a way where they know I'm always gonna be there um and I'm not just gonna fire them on a whim or something but at the same time they also know that I won't the best for them you know and that I have high standards and that you know I'm working with them to make the best work possible and so yeah that's the balance that you just write because like can you create this environment of one where your team feels comfortable like roasting you but the same time like they know they have to be doing great work and they and that it will do great work with you that is awesome advice it's interesting how often this this uh just like management style comes back or management uh good management it comes back reminds me of what was a candid reddit radical candor just this combination of caring deeply and challenging directly yeah and that's kind of what I hear here is just make sure people know that you care deeply about them but also be very direct and have high standards yeah yeah because that's interesting okay maybe a final question I'm always looking for interesting frameworks and methods and processes that people have found useful in their work and I hear your big fan of something called the legibility framework mm-hmm talk about this talk about I use it white survival yeah this framework I think I saw on Twitter of maybe last year or something and it was Evan Tana who was a partner at SPC uh he's a BC so it basically is this like two by two I don't think it like got so much attention but I once I started seeing it I like actually couldn't stop thinking about it so um on the two by two he basically has like founders like founders can be either illegible or legible and then ideas can either be illegible or legible and basically he was saying that like okay if both the founder and idea is like super legible the idea is probably not that novel and somebody's already like they're already gonna implement it or or do it and you're actually not finding something new but then where it gets really interesting is where like the idea itself is illegible and by illegible he means like oh it's sort of like really you know on the frontier people might not get it yet or like the way it's being told it just doesn't it's not being told in the in the way that makes this the most sense to people and I think this is obviously a good way for a BC to operate because you're trying to look for the opportunity that people don't see and put them out there in the world but I also think that like part of the role of the designer at least at at a frontier lab at anthropic is kind of spotting the ideas that are illegible and trying to understand what's there and how to take that and like transform it whether it's their storytelling or whether it's through like the actual UX and the form factor and and and put it out there and and I think there's like like when I mentioned you know going through slot and like looking at all the stuff that people are making like that's kind of what I'm doing and trying to see like oh yeah what are the ideas that are really that like there's like some energy there around but like might not make sense yet that that are worse me like thinking about more in my work there's there's one good example actually that like ties to co-work where there was this internal prototype that we called like cloud studio that I think somebody builds like a part ways through last year and it essentially was this this like really kind of like dense powerful interface that was built on top of some agent like harness that I it might have been cloud code at that point in time too and it had all these like just displays were showing you like all this knowledge and all these skills and and things cloud was doing and like previewing its outputs and I think two a designer I looked at it and it was like this is like I don't know what's going on I don't really get it but then I sort of saw the folks in research to folks building it and and just folks internally there's just a lot of energy around it and I was like cool I think there's like something here but I just don't understand it yet I think that really was an example of an in it and it illegible idea and ultimately what came from it was like the skills framework and and like the sort of like markdown files that sort of that instruct cloud on how to do something so that came out of that specific prototype that was something I was directly involved in and that was more of like you know the folks working this prototype extracted that out of it but when it did come to work on cloud co-work and I was thinking about like oh yeah what is the form factor for this thing seeing that prototype and seeing the kinds of information that people found really helpful like seeing clouds plan and to do seeing clouds like context and the files that it was it was going through like those kinds of things are things that I ended up pulling out of that prototype into cloud co-work so yeah I think about like how can designers almost be more like VCs in this way internally when we're looking at prototypes.
This is super interesting.
I did a research project recently where with this guy Terrence Rohan and VC actually we looked at what are patterns across people that have joined companies very early that ended up being massive successes like Palantir and Stripe and linear and notion all these companies like people that have joined many of these companies early what were they looking for and one of the factors was the ideas so it's like so crazy that everyone's laughing at this this is this is impossible you're never going to do this this is the craziest thing I why would you even think like Palantir like like Albany I actually was one of them just like it's a research lab doing some stuff so so it's interesting that and it's not like every time this will work and it's not like every crazy idea that sounds makes no sense will be good but I think what you're saying is it's an attention to stuff that's like interesting to you and isn't totally clear maybe you can be the person that helps pull it together.
Yeah yeah that but also like if there is some energy around it but I don't quite under always understand what the energy is it's like dive deeper and try to understand what that is.
Yeah yeah because I think people who often gravitate towards these early ideas they can't always articulate why and it's sort of up to you to like dive deeper and understand that.
That's one of the best the so there's three patterns we found one of the other ones was there's just pay attention to people getting very excited about this thing even if you don't get it.
And it's like sounds crazy that's so interesting okay and then what's the other one oh the founders are just like top one percent it was the other piece there which everyone had an anthropic aridious so you got that one oh man Jenny what a crazy time we're living through what a little how it so much change okay before we get there very exciting lightning round is there anything else that I should have asked you that you want to leave listeners with you want to double down on.
I think I just want to call out the anthropic design team and show them out just because it's a team of folks that are just really humble and they're not as a lot as on social but they're doing a lot of really great work and especially through this time our jobs are changing so much the team is so resilient and they sort of span this whole spectrum of people who are really technical and prototypy to all the all the way to folks that are really high craft and and delivering stuff that's that's what we out the door and is fabulous and we are hiring throughout the year so I just wanted to call that out if I didn't scare you with the way that we work internally and drop it if that sounds more exciting than terrifying would love to connect.
What sounds exciting is getting access to these slacks or you ever hold the features being built let's talk to super intelligence right now and tell me or I should invest I'm just joking and then in terms of hiring is there anything specific that people should think about to if they want to play.
I think a little bit about the the archetypes that I mentioned especially the strong journalist and the deep specialist those folks were really excited about but general folks who are the block in the deep tea.
The block the deep tea what could we be talking about yeah folks who feel like they you know they those archetypes resonate with them but also folks that are just really excited about the technology have been building a lot and and sort of want to be on the frontier.
You're amazing well with that we reached our very exciting lightning round if we got five questions for you Jenny I'm ready.
Here we go.
What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most the first one is the power broker by Robert Carrow which is an incredibly aggressive recommendation given that it's like 1100 pages but I think in this era when our our when our attention spans are so short I think this is actually worth reading and to end because there I think there are very few like collections or memoirs where it spans or someone's entire life and you sort of see how somebody changes throughout those decades and it's also somebody who's really controversial too and it's it's nice to sort of like read a really nuanced view of somebody Robert Moses and I think we just lose out on some of this like long arc thinking because we're so much we're thinking so much about right now so it's just a important reminder that careers along and is also really good for kind of understanding how somebody just gets things done really well so power broker.
The second one that I recommend to a lot of people is a book called Insomnia City which is written by Bill Hayes who is was the partner of the scientist Oliver Sox around the time that Oliver Sox died and it's just like really beautiful kind of like ethereal memoir of Oliver Sox last days and they're sort of love story.
I think this has like very little to do with the seven-year podcast study but it's just like this is a book that I really love and just like makes you think about mortality but also like love and life and stuff like that so that's one of my favorite books.
My goal here is and you know I'm trying to create we're trying to create renaissance humans and all of this other stuff is excellent.
Cool.
Interestingly I saw Julie Zoo a famed design leader was reading the power broker recently and what's going on over here springing in design land.
Okay.
Do you have a favorite recent movie or TV show?
They you really enjoyed.
I watched a sentimental value recently.
I watched it on a plane which is you know how how directors want you to watch to their films but it's a it's an Norwegian film by the same director who did the worst person in the world.
I think just the the pacing, the writing, the relationship between the characters is just really subtle and beautiful.
It's basically about this family sort of a family drama but also about this house that they lived in their entire lives.
It's beautiful because like the house is sort of a character so I don't know what else to say about that but that was a really good movie and then I would also recommend obviously the pit season two.
I don't know who we're on that.
We're on that.
I think everybody just likes to watch people who are really competent of their jobs do something um so yeah.
I mentioned being an actor on that show just like how much you have to learn and memorize all these terms.
Yeah yeah it just also seems really fast-paced too like they do so much stuff and like one shot and there's just so much like movement and stuff like that seems really really hard to be an actor on.
And only recently realized no a while he was in ER as like a younger person and then he's like the head of the thing.
Yeah yeah.
Oh man okay favorite product you recently discovered that you really love cannot be co-work.
Not that I'd actually discovered recently but a retro I've been using it for basically two years now since it came out and I think I think I discovered new benefits of it recently.
So for folks who don't know about retro it's sort of like this small community photo sharing app in which you can only share um photos from each week, a form of given week as opposed to like up all time and it basically has like none of the social media stuff like you can't really see like counts it's not there's no ads etc but one really nice thing is now that I've been using for two years I can now look back at each year and see like oh yeah this week two years ago I was doing this and it's become this really special way to like live through each week of my life basically.
Wow and it's also beautifully crafted app if you're looking for building your own taste in design.
Yeah designers love retro.
I could see I could see that okay the favorite life motto that you often come back to in work or in life.
Yeah um not sure if my it's my favorite life motto but one thing I do catch myself saying a lot is just uh it is what it is.
My dad says that all the time my love oh yeah yeah it sounds super defeatist but I promise it's not I think just given how much stuff is going on in the world right now and especially with the industry and whatnot you can't control everything and so sometimes it is what it is just like brings the levity you need to move forward.
I went to I did a 10-day meditation treat a while ago and I came back from it and it's like dad you've been right all along.
This is the whole the answer to it all.
It is what it is you can't don't cling don't try to change just it is what it is.
It is what it is.
There's so much depth to them.
It has like okay smarter than I even thought okay final question coming back to cowork is there uh I don't know mind blowing use case something just like wow that's so cool that cowork can do that either something you use it for if you heard somebody using it for.
One thing I really like is just like introspection and so I have this this folder basically of like local notes that I have from that I use like IA right or four and I basically just like write whatever and over the years have collected it with a bunch of different notes and they span like all different things like one-on-one notes like random thoughts like kind of like tiny memos, interview notes etc and my favorite like it makes it's it's cool to me it's just like using co-work to like analyze that and have insights out of it and actually create things out of it.
Um so like anything I anytime I can like learn something we knew about myself like I love that but I think a very practical thing I did with it the other day was like along the lines of hiring I was like oh yeah I want to sort of articulate like what it is that I look for when I look for a design craft because I think actually a lot of people struggle to articulate that and I just had it read through all of my notes both like interview notes and other things that I cared about and memos and stuff like that I have written in the past and then it made me this rubric for evaluating that so that kind of interest-faction where it's like oh I don't even I wouldn't have realized even these things about myself that I've been putting out there implicitly that's been really cool for me.
That is so cool so just to make this very clear for people you have a folder with all these things you've written one-on-one meetings like you could do and enough y'all are allowed to use granola something like that like meeting transcripts and ask it and it's like I was going to ask what prompt you but it's just like read all these things ever and help me probably just like understand how I feel about what is design craft.
Yeah basically I think it was like hey I have a bunch of interview notes and a bunch of notes related to design craft in this folder read it and then help me craft a like a memo thought rubric for how I assess craft in interviews.
So cool.
Jenny this was awesome.
What a what a time to be alive.
What a fun.
Two final questions working folks finding online if they want to reach out and how can listeners be useful to you.
Yeah I'm on Twitter slash x is what we're calling it these days.
It's at Jenny under square one that's probably the best place not really on LinkedIn as much so that's that's the best place and how can folks be helpful to me send us your product feedback you know like we're working on co-work for anything cloud related really just send us our your feedback we'd love to make it better for you.
Jenny thank you so much for being here.
Yeah of course it was great chatting Jenny.
It was wonderful Jenny thank you bye everyone.
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