Product Design

“I think that as more and more software is made, more and more products are made, I think that the, I do think that the human element of design is going to really Be, start to become more and more important. It's always been the case that I think that, you know…”

“But there's like the, like, what should this be? Like, if we can build anything, like what's, what's the goal here and how do we get there? That I think is like actually the real taste question here.”

“No, never give users choice. You have to tell them what to do.”

“I think they're merging in a way where they're not separate, you know, fiefdoms anymore.”

“Product is not a thing. Product is an abstraction. Product is a name, like a handle that you put on some totality of a body of work. From the perspective of the people creating product, product doesn't exist. It's what other people call your work. A product is…”

“I think if one thing happened this year, I think more and more folks coming over to team products that models aren't going to solve everything.”

“When people say taste, they oftentimes just think about only the visuals. It's like, what is, like, the visual output? I oftentimes, you know, the analogy I have more is, you know, if you think about, like, a restaurant you go into a restaurant, you know, the …”

“If you're gonna make something, it doesn't take any more energy, and rarely does it take more money to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time and a willingness to do so. A willingness to persevere until it's really great.”

“So there is truth to that, but simplicity is a perception. So it's not necessarily a reality. You know, if you take simple is always better to an extreme, you might not add new features. You might not add new capabilities. And I don't think that's always the r…”

“All too often people end up kind of having to walk people through, okay, this tutorial of like, let me just explain to you why this product is better. And to me, that's not just a story. It's also kind of a constraint in the design. Like you're maybe not pushi…”

“I think design of the products that we use, the quality of the products that we use is going to go way up because if you look at bad design or bad experiences that you encounter in your life, I think a lot of it comes from interfaces between people or between …”

“It turns out that the geographies that do the manufacturing get awfully good at the designing of things. There are network effects, as you all well understand. The firms that design products work with firms that manufacture. They share intellectual property, t…”

“The product is just as important as well, right? Because how the user interacts with the system where models are leveraged and you have the right sort of handoff from human being to the model where you've got the ability, you know, think of it from a user inte…”

“I transitioned to product design, which is a rare transition, I think. But it actually, like, really helped me in my path to starting this company. Because think about it, product design plus machine learning, like, hard to beat as a combination.”

“As you're thinking about designing around a streak, don't get too bought up, you know, or caught up into like, what is this, you know, like the beautiful story that you're trying to tell at the expense of it being a really comprehensible feature.”

“When people need to, like, record long videos telling other people how to use your product, you've probably done something wrong.”

“If they are only thinking about it in terms of, well, it's going to move the numbers, then they're only going to do it when it moves the numbers. And there are plenty of times when you're making a design decision where it, you're not going to be able to prove …”

“If you make it too quiet, we genuinely won't believe it's working. Yeah, actually it's the crackly noise that when you rub it over your face and it's the buzz of the thing, And the vibration of the thing that actually convinces us it's doing a job. And you kno…”

“If you're gonna make something, it doesn't take any more energy, and rarely does it take more money to make it really great. All it takes is a little more time and a willingness to do so. A willingness to persevere until it's really great.”

“Software engineers were in such high demand. Product design was that differentiator.”

“Rather than starting with the question of like, how can I make this thing better? Most of my work starts with like, why does this suck so bad? And like, how could I make it suck more? And it sounds like a pointless exercise, but I actually think by exacerbatin…”

“When you are creating a novel product, something that's truly innovative and new, simplicity is paramount towards making it easy to use and easy to grok.”

“We're in a world where AI will suggest alternative scenarios. You can try variations and just look and, you know, with the mistake of the eye, find a better solution. That, or at least something you want to A-B test. And so I think that the product development…”

“But I think to say it's always better is a mistake. I think of simplicity as a means to an end, and you have to be clear about what that end is. Maybe it's usability, maybe it's broad appeal, but I think that it's possible. There are instances where a more com…”

“What makes you a good designer is being able to kind of dip your toes into a lot of different areas and then bring them together and synthesize them into something different, something new.”

“Because it isn't successful to try and, you know, do things by consensus. You're never going to get a group of people, a smart people to agree about what is absolutely the best design.”

“And sometimes we'll like go, it's a third. I'm like, well, then we're going to try to please everyone and please no one. So pick one. There's always got to be a one priority path. If not, you probably not structured your product right. So you pick that primary…”

“Too many people stay so inward about this step, that step, this step, that step. They don't step back and they go, well, what's a different way of doing it? Where can we remove steps? Where do we actually add one step, but we can remove 10 steps down the line?…”

“There's always got to be a one priority path. If not, you probably not structured your product right.”

“You have to reach for the emotional factor that makes people want the car without really needing the car. And that emotional factor in design is, is vital. It's extremely important that you create a product that somebody necessarily doesn't need it, but wants …”

“A secondary benefit that I think isn't as obvious is that when you're actually doing your job, like, the best work gets done not when you're, like, sitting next to someone and, like, collaborating all day. There's Like, you have to get into deep work. Even for…”

“I think that the bar for product design, whether it's consumer or enterprise, has risen to such a degree that it has essentially become game design. Game design is one of the hardest types of product to create, and I would strongly suggest that any product des…”

“And if a product is designed such that the consumer has to employ meticulous, complicated strategies to stop using it, that's an extraordinary sign that something was done right to a certain extent.”

“So having, having introduced two very strange-looking, very different new technology, you can make a success of it if it genuinely works better.”

“I think in an enterprise, ah, organization where you have a different buyer and a different end user, you might have like four, you know, three, four percentage you work with. I think it's okay for design to be nested within product because you really have the…”