Design Meets Business

Christian: Cap, it's an honor to have you on the show. Thank you for joining. I've been following your writing and your podcast appearances for a while, and I know our listeners are going to get a lot out of your perspective. You have led design teams at exciting companies, and I'm using the word exciting on purpose because we're going to talk about boring in a moment.

So we're talking about some household names like Amazon, Etsy, buzz fleet primary.com, and now at Lattice. Before we go into that, can you tell us your story? Who is. Cap.

Cap: Yeah. So, Uh, I'm Kap. I am, uh, currently the VP of Product Design at Lattice. So are you naming all the companies? Almost made me say the wrong company. So I've been running product design teams for a while. Started out as a big experiment. I had a bad manager and decided I wanted to try managing, just to understand why it was so bad and so hard to do a good job at.

turns out it's not that hard, y'all, it's, uh, pretty easy to not be a horrible manager. And I found out that that was like my passion, um, was managing design teams and so. I've been doing that ever since, been doing that at Etsy. And then I was the first, VP of product design or VP of design at Buzzfeed.

And then, chief Experience Officer Primary, I ran a bunch of weird stuff. I ran EPD and then it, and I was the HR person. It was like, it was a very startup experience. and then, yeah, now doing product design stuff at Lattice with folks.

Christian: Lovely. Uh, you've given me something to play with there. You had a bad manager. We've all had bad managers. You said it's not that hard to do. Right? I am so curious about that statement. Let's talk about what's a bad manager and how do you not, how do you not become one, I guess.

Cap: yeah, so I had been at Amazon for a couple of years and I'd had a couple bad manager experiences like. Folks who wouldn't show up for my one-on-ones or like, I didn't even know I should be having one-on-ones. Like, you know, it was a, uh, it was very political. it was kind of a mess.

It was not very great. and I wound up leaving because of that manager, very directly. so I got to Etsy and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna do this for one year. I'm gonna empathize with what it's like to be a manager, and then I'll go back to being a designer so that I can have more, like, I can work with that part of my like.

Organization better. Right. And I started out doing, I call it the stanza method for folks who've watched Seinfeld. There's a whole episode where George Costanza, who's like a total disaster area, most episodes, like does the opposite of what he's normally going to do for an entire day. And it all works out for him.

And I decided to do that. So I was like, I'm gonna do the opposite of everything I've ever hated from managers that I've had. And so I was like, I'm gonna show up on time. To every one-on-one. I'm going to support people. I'm gonna be transparent with them. I'm gonna treat them like adults, tell 'em what's going on, but also help 'em through it.

And it's super worked. It's like, just as a baseline of management, I think that's like something people kind of miss. They think you have to be like super professional and like not talk about things with your employees. You know, it's like try to like protect them from stuff. It turns out we're all over 21.

You can just tell people stuff for the most part, and like they can handle it because they trust you more because you're telling them. So yeah, built a really good team out of that and started building management skills and went from there.

Christian: I'm wondering how much of that is a cultural difference between the US and Europe, because when you're saying treating. People like adults or being transparent. I think those are oftentimes values in, in companies over here that you expect as a baseline. You Expect your manager to let you know where you stand and where the company is.

And so may, maybe it's a cultural thing, maybe it's just a company thing,

Cap: yeah, that's interesting to think about. I think people. Companies do this too, where they infantalize their employees in certain ways. You know, it's, oh, they can't handle that. Or, oh, like we'd be very careful about how we talk to this person about this thing.

Like, I'm not saying that there aren't sensitive topics and we shouldn't like, you know, approach people with kindness and empathy and like understanding. I also think there are definitely timing things where you're like, okay, to make sure this communication goes well, like I need to time these things out in a way that makes sense.

I think we tend to like. Treat people like children a little too much. And I think the other thing is true of new managers. I see them kind of like go like, oh, well, like now I'm up a layer, and so now I need to, like, I'm privy to all this extra information I need to, like, protect my people.

They don't do, they don't see what I did, which I was very frustrated by that. That really drove me crazy as a designer. And so I really yearned for that. And so then when I was able to give it, I did.

Christian: So transparency is one. Treating people like adults, probably giving them responsibilities and letting them run. And with it turning up on time, one-on-ones, pretty standard. What else is there? If we're talking about some baseline expectations, some things you can start, maybe you're a manager now, you're becoming a manager very soon, and you have no idea where to begin from.

Other than these, what else would you start with?

Cap: I would suggest people read a couple books like there are, A couple that were very, very formative to me. One is, managing Humans by Rans. it's an engineering management book, but I actually read it before I became a manager because I was trying to understand what was going on.

And, uh, it is you'll read it and you'll be like, this is definitely happened. Like all of this has happened to me. Maybe not as a manager yet, but as a person who has been managed it kind of goes through how to. Approach various complicated problems or people having a strong reaction to something.

It's really, really helpful. and then the other one is, a book called Turn the Ship Around, which is, I see you nodding. Yeah. But like, the premise of the entire thing is that like a lot of managers start out by doing more command control stuff, where you're like, I tell them what to do, they do it, they report back to me.

Like that's the cycle. Right. And that's not scalable. Like as you start to, like when you have one or two people, you can totally do that. It's like people who have like one kid, you can like totally focus all of your energy into this one place and it's very easy. But managers Especially now are getting stretched thinner and thinner.

Right. And so I think at some point at Etsy, I was managing 13 people at some point. Briefly, but really seven to eight's kind of my sweet spot. And it just can't work that way. And so this book kind of goes through how to set up systems so that people are highly trusted to bring you information and decisions that they have already made or are about to make and let you have like.

Transparency backwards in a moment to like kind of like guide if you need to. both of those books together I would say are very, very helpful to new managers because it helps you establish that baseline, for what you need to be doing. cause mechanically as a manager,

you go to the meetings, you show up on time. Like, it's like it's pretty straightforward. Um, you go to crits if you're a design manager, you give feedback, , you're just doing the normal thing. but the actual, under the cover skills, I think it covered a lot in those

Christian: Yeah, I think, uh, there's another one making of, uh, manager, I think it's called by Julie Z. Oh, it's a very good one, which is, not, so I guess turn the ship around is also a bit philosophical and you have to think a little bit, how do I transform, or how do I take that information? From the world of, I think he's a former Navy,

Cap: yeah.

Christian: Yeah, exactly. how does that apply to me in design? But turn the ship around is written by a design manager who gives a lot of practical advice. So, um, that's one that I've read. I, think there might be people out there at this crossroads of. I'm senior enough now, and now I have to make that choice.

Do I wanna become a manager or am I happy staying on the path that I'm on and staying as an individual contributor? And one of the things that I love that you said is I just said I was gonna do it for a year and kind of figure it out. It sounds like a bit of an experiment for me. Is that a good way of figuring out which way you should go or should you just commit?

What are your thoughts there?

Cap: I've seen people do it for the wrong reasons. I think if be really careful, I think there are people who are like, well, this is my path upward, like, and so I have to do this. Those folks tend to be very unhappy, and not very successful because they're unhappy doing the thing. if you're actually curious about it because you wanna help people because you want to like do that role, you can totally try it. I think you can do exactly what I did and become a manager and go back.

I knew someone a long time ago who she had been a design manager and director for a while. she wound up. feeling like maybe she wasn't sure if that was for her anymore. And so she did this exercise where over the course of a couple weeks, she logged every single meeting she had, every thing she did, and whether or not it left her energized or drained afterwards.

And then she got to the end, she looked back on it and she's like, man, like every design crit, I was pumped afterwards, right? Every strategy session pumped afterwards. Every one-on-one, drained every meeting about headcount drained, every like, finance meeting drained. literally a week or two later went to her manager and was like, Hey, like I don't wanna do this anymore.

I wanna be in IC again. And moved back. And this was someone who had like a pretty, built career, had been managing for, I think at that point, probably six years or something like that, but like went back and became the most senior IC at the place she was at. And just like was extremely effective because now she knows all the pieces.

And she's an incredible designer and so it all kind of worked out. I think some people get stuck in this idea that that's my way up. way In the organization, and that's just not, it's never good when that's the way you're thinking about it.

It never ends well.

Christian: And I think there are some companies in which that is the natural progression. They might not have an IC track and the only way up is that maybe in that case, you might think if the company needs something else or if you need something else.

Cap: although it seems to be changing now, the emphasis lately has been a lot more on craft and stretching managers like in the last couple of years, and I think companies are hiring more senior, senior staff principal folks. And because they need that, they're realizing that they spent too long kind of doing bad work.

And overmanaging . And so, I think we are seeing like the IC track start to really come into focus here in a good way. So I think if, if you were gonna stay in that track, this is the time. Like you're doing a great thing right now. And so that would be at least we're

Christian: Yeah, I think it is becoming more prevalent. I, uh,spoke to someone a few years ago about this topic, very experienced manager and she said, I feel sorry for the people who had to report to me back when I started out because I really wasn't that good and it made me think. How do you balance out this?

Maybe it is the right thing for you. Maybe you would enjoy it and you think, I wanna go on the management track. But obviously you might not be ready or you might be too early. you might not know exactly what you have to do. How do you balance that out with, there are people who are in your care at work

Cap: yeah, I tend to shoot straight with people generally, the people I manage in particular. I'm trying to think back. Like you, you're like unlocking a core memory for me., I remember talking to, my boss who made me a manager in the first place.

And I remember telling him some version of this where it was like, Hey, look I could be really bad at this. It's very possible. I've never done this before, right? I could be bad at this, I could not like it. I could think I'm good at it and other people think I'm bad at it. There are a lot of things that could go wrong here.

And I think just naming it transparently and candidly to the people you're working with helps them feel like there's openness to feedback. like they can give you feedback about how that's going. I remember my manager at the time was like. It's totally cool. As long as we can talk about it and you're open hearing about it, which it seems like you are, then we can change it.

We can adjust it, it's gonna be okay. my other observation has been that people who are the most worried about doing a good job tend to be the ones who do a great job because they're looking over their shoulder, they're looking around the corner. They're kind of going like, no, wait.

What if I mess this up? Let me like think about how to do it. Well, there's obviously an amount of that can be somewhat paralyzing, but it usually has not played out like that when I've seen it. I think the people who tend to like be a little like, am I doing a good job? Tend to be the ones that actually do wind up doing a great job versus the people who are like, no, I got this.

And then just do not got it. and it goes very poorly, but then they're not able to hear it or see it or anything. They have no like self-reflection. So I think if you're someone who's sitting there going like, I dunno if I'd be good at this, that's why you'll be good at it.

And you should just try it 'cause it's likely that you will, preempt any sort of bad

Christian: That sounds very familiar to me. I am, about to become a father and everyone I talk to and I say, Hey, I have all this good. Concerns or I dunno if I'll be good. And everyone says exactly the same thing, which is just the fact that you're worried about it probably means you're a bit more aware of how hard it's gonna be and the things, so probably is the same.

I assume you've written in the past that management, and I think a lot of people are missing that management means more accountability. What does that accountability look like on a day-to-day basis for someone who hasn't tried it yet, they might think of stepping into management, what does that look like for them?

Cap: , When you're an A designer on a project. You are accountable for your work on that project, the success of that project. That's basically it. Obviously as you get more senior, you may have other responsibilities and it gets wider, but ultimately, I hold people on my team accountable for the work that they do.

That's it. As a manager, suddenly you're accountable for many things. You're accountable for every project that's in your purview. You're accountable for any sort of, orthogonal project that is touching your projects. So it's like, you know, when there's overlap, if you don't manage the design system, but your team needs to contribute to the design system, you need to help broker that happening, right?

Make sure that that's going well and communication is happening. and then you're also frequently, responsible for the business of your area, which a lot of designers don't wind up getting that sort of Accountability for the actual business portion of their stuff. Like high level business impact or how are we selling this thing?

Like, tends not to fall into the IC track, but like that tends to fall. Lot of managers. and the last thing is, you're now accountable for other people's careers, which, uh, you are definitely not as a designer. Like we're responsible and accountable for other people growing. and that can look like a ton of stuff.

There's a big difference between managing a. First time entry level designer and a senior staff has like been doing this for 10, 15 years. You know, like has a ton of expertise, but they both need it. They both need management. They both need guidance.

But they're very different. and so developing that skillset set is also something, 'cause if your team's not successful, Their products won't be successful, the business won't be successful, and now you failed at your entire thing. So, it is definitely a lot more than that and it also goes a lot further than that.

You do headcount planning, finance planning, that all the boring, not fun stuff that people don't like doing. But those are the big

Christian: And I think when it comes to managing people, there's also no recipe. 'cause everyone likes to be managed in a different way There's a better way of managing someone than someone else, and you kind of have to suss that out and figure it out. And that also only comes with experience.

So the more I talk to people about management, the more it sounds to me like it's a completely different job. It's not a promotion, it is a lateral move into a different job, which kind of still touches on design, but especially if you're not gonna have an an IC role anymore, if you're not gonna design at all, then you're purely gonna be manager rather than a bit of a hybrid.

Then it's really just a completely different job, isn't it?

Cap: Yeah, and the hard part too is um, you're right that everyone needs to be like something a little different. Everyone, every person is different. You have to kind of adapt a little bit, but also in my experience, like. One of your jobs over time is to develop your own personal philosophy about how things should work.

I have a very specific idea about how my team should run, how we should communicate, how we should critique, and that is sometimes incompatible with other human beings that work on the team. At uh, Buzzfeed, when I started, I would say about half the team was completely incompatible with my way of doing things.

Or the way I wanted to do them. And there's a little bit of like, you have to gain over the time as a manager, enough confidence to go like, I'm gonna try to bring as many people along as I can. Some people are gonna be super pumped. Some people will just do it because they know they need to and some people will like just not do it.

And I think in my first year at Buzzfeed, I look back on it, half of the team turned over after my first year and I had to get really comfortable with that idea because like if you're gonna build a team, it also has to be philosophically sound. You also have to be understanding that it's okay that your thing is not for everybody .

it's this weird thing where you do need to adapt to individuals, but you also need to be okay at a certain level with things not being right for somebody. Because there are definitely teams out there, design teams who would look at what I'm doing and these design leaders be like, what a lunatic.

What an absolute lunatic. And I would look at their thing and be like, wow, I would never do it that way. But that also is kind of cool 'cause it means like how you like to work. There's probably a team for you. Out there with that philosophy, you just have to find it.

and so I think managers too often, like will sacrifice their philosophy for more of like a democratic thing, where everyone gets to kind of vote on how we run the team. And that always winds up being very painful and causes a lot of chaos and instability. So it's interesting 'cause you're right, yeah.

I definitely treat every single person a little bit differently depending on what they need or what their level is or like how they're feeling that week. But the underlying thing is like concrete and we're gonna hang onto that and that can be very hard for people to manage and balance out.

Christian: So when you say the underlying thing or the underlying principle, just give us an example of what that might be. It doesn't have to be real if you're not comfortable with it. It can be just an example, but what does that look like?

Cap: Now I can give you a real one

Christian: Yeah, go ahead. Perfect.

Cap: one of mine is that, design should be extremely transparent. I think we'd like to say that, but I don't think people do it the way I do it.

My thing has been we use a tool, we give the entire company access to that tool.

Designers are required to be posting updates in that tool about their projects and where they're at how they're going, what they've learned. And anyone can reply to anything that's going on. Some designers don't like that. Some design leaders think that's totally out there. but it works, it super works for the situations I've been in.

we continue to find new ways to do that. Um, another one is, I think designers should code, dude. Like I'm like, I'm one of those weirdos still. I guess it's getting less weird now, I came up writing front end and it really changed my relationship to the product. the final.

Artifact is not the Figma file. the final artifact is the code that gets shipped to customers. I think design does itself a disservice when it doesn't engage with that part of the process. And so yeah, Buzzfeed, I taught the designers to write front end at, lattice. Now they're required to fix paper cuts and visual problems with their products.

And that's new. And again, some people think that that's totally out there, that we should not be doing that. And again, that's very reasonable. It's a very reasonable take. but if you're gonna be on a team that I run, that's kind of what you should expect, you know? And so. Those things tend to be fairly divisive.

I've also found crit to be divisive. People don't like critique, as I've been very surprised by that. Actually, lattice had this problem when I first started as no one wanted to get critiqued. And we've changed that also. now we do multiple critiques a week and we have a bunch of channels for critique and it makes the product better.

But that was an interesting one too. I hadn't seen that one before.

Christian: How does influence look like in a company if you're not a manager? So let's say now you have been turned off. You think, this is not for me, this management thing. I do not want to be responsible for others, but I'm very happy with my craft and I wanna continue doing that. What can you expect going from a, let's say, a senior role into a lead or into a staff or principal?

To change on a daily basis for you. Also, when it comes to responsibilities, and again, accountability, you're still accountable for some things, probably for more than before. What's changing for a designer when they step, a bit higher up?

Cap: Yeah, I've got bad news for them a little bit. If you didn't like management, there's a certain level at which you're not going to toy being a senior IC either. I think, one of the frequent hallmarks of very senior design ics, is that they do basically do a lot of the people mentorship stuff.

I've even known like staff ics to do organizational moves I hired somebody at Etsy who, this was after I managed her, but I'm not surprised by the story. She saw a designer on the team working on something that she thought was like a total loser project, was like, this is going nowhere.

This is not good for the business. Without talking to that person's manager. She went to the PM and she went to the angel and she was like, Hey, I'm pulling this designer off. Like they're gonna go work on this other thing. Instead, there's something we need help with and this isn't going anywhere. And then she informed the manager afterwards.

and it was the right thing to do, from what I've heard about it, like the manager was like, this is amazing. Thanks for doing that. That's an extreme example. I've never seen somebody do that. I'm not surprised by this person doing it, but it's very rare.

but you do have a responsibility to the team and to the culture, and to mentoring others with your craft. 'cause like you are the craft person at that point on the team. And for instance, there's someone at last right now who I manage who extremely strong, very senior, She leads craft, like she does it better than I could ever do it.

I trust her more than myself when it comes to giving feedback or critique on the actual design craft. I need her to feel accountable and, invested in like the craft of the entire team. And so as you get higher and higher, that's what influence winds up looking like. She also winds up gaining influence by, because she's more senior, we give her the hardest stuff, the biggest stuff, the most wide ranging stuff.

The most like. Touches the, and many teams stuff. Like she's working on a giant overhaul right now of the entire system and it's gonna touch like every single team. And she knows how to do that. She knows how to go, like, work with every team, get them to pressure test this thing, take the feedback, iterate, try again, like, she's like on it, right?

And I don't have to think about it at all. so there's like organizational, smarts you still need at that level. Beyond just like I can do my craft. I think there are probably exceptions to that, but that's the bad news for people who didn't like management, because it meant dealing with people.

Christian: I don't think there's a difference between dealing. With someone who reports to you versus maybe mentoring through craft and having a bit of a higher role in a design cred or whatever it may be. I do think one comes a bit more natural.

it's still the same job, versus the other one. Like we said earlier , it is a different job and you need a very -different skillset. While I think in my. My assumption is that at higher levels in an IC role, most of your work is still doing the work.

You're still in Figma sketch, whatever you're doing, and you're still doing that. And mentoring others jamming with others, all of that is part of it. Am I wrong or.

Cap: I mean, I think, I mean, it probably varies in our case, like.

You still do wind up with organizational responsibility? Like I think the big difference, right, is like they can't take someone's career. And I see can't, like, I mean, it'd be hard, it'd be hard for them to, like, they're not in the room to like deny someone a promotion or deny someone a raise it's just not, they don't have the authority to do that.

They may be inputs into that, but they aren't going to. Impact someone's ability to do their job the same way as like a manager can. So I think the consequences are less or can be less. but I think ultimately , like those folks are responsible for. running the projects too, there is a bit of more complexity there that I think managers wind up doing a lot of the time.

And I wind up handing that off to very senior ics where normally I would be like, I'm gonna track this project, make sure it's going well. I'm gonna check in on it. I'm gonna like, you know, just really stay on top of this thing. And when they're running a project that has multiple people associated with it, I can kind of back off and be like, you know, they got it.

They'll come to me if something explodes, obviously. But, You're right. It is very different. I think like mechanically different and also impact Difference is real.

Christian: I want to change gears a little bit to talk about a couple of the articles that you've written that made an impact on me. The first one is about, um, this say in the beginning we're gonna talk about boring. And now's the moment to talk about boring. You have this idea of a, uh, boring designer and how much you value boring designers before everyone explodes.

What is a boring designer? Let's start from there.

Cap: I actually, you know what's funny? I wrote that probably 2012 or 13, and I've since come to regret that blog post. I leave it upright because it's an artifact of a time and it's good for me to look back on my past thinking. essentially the time, what I was seeing was almost the opposite of what we have now in design, where there was a way over emphasis on.

Visual design and graphic design dribble was at its peak at that exact moment when I was writing that. And it was like, it has to look this way. And design had this big chip on their shoulder and was like, you know, gotta do it this way. Make it look this way.

it felt really intense, versus being able to. See through like to the business case, see through to the engineers, see through to the product people to really collaborate. I think we were still learning As an industry how to deeply collaborate with other disciplines and to understand what they were going through.

And so at that time I was a huge advocate for pulling back a little bit off the stick and trying to really meet people where they were and bring design to them. I think we swung way too far in the boring direction personally over the last few years as seen in hiring stuff I've seen lately.

And like portfolios I've seen lately, we've gone way too far. In that direction. and we're course correcting pretty hard now and it's been very painful. I think at the time I was probably right, but not in the long term. I think there's a balance there for sure.

Christian: So how are we course correcting today? What is it we're doing to put that right and find the right type of designer? Let's call it, for lack of a better word.

Cap: I've been talking to a lot of other design managers and directors about this and it's something that like people don't talk about a lot publicly, but I think we went through a time in the last five, seven years where design became more and more strategy and less design we relied a lot on design systems that someone with graphic design skills had made. Like there were a lot of tools and that's great. I think that's very helpful. But ultimately when there's an economic contraction, like there has been, and roles are more rare.

You're going to start needing people with the full boat, like you're gonna need people with both the ability to strategize and execute at a high level. And I think what people have found is they either put themselves or been put into positions by the companies they joined that did not help them build the graphic design skills they came out with, user experience and strategy skills, which at the time were very valuable and designers were in short supply. and so that made it even more valuable to have that skillset, but they never, were forced to develop the actual , capital D design skill . and that's been pretty evident to me. In the last few years, even had to teach pretty senior people about, things as basic as typography, line length, color theory, spacing.

Pretty senior people, not like entry level, product designers. And I think that starts to, there's a smell there where I'm like, oh, we've done a disservice to a bunch of designers out there and now we're going through a very, very painful moment where. The portfolios we see are highly strategic, but because there are fewer roles, we need people who can do the whole thing.

And so that's been pretty hard. we're definitely course correcting pretty hard in the other direction. I'm hoping we find a balance back the other way at some point. But right now that seems to be what the industry is going through. And like I just as an anecdote, every time we've opened up an IC role at Lattice in the last couple of years, I've had to shut it off within a day because I'll have over a thousand applications.

I'm just like, I don't, there's no way if I just left it up, like it'd be a disservice to the people applying. I am physically, manually going through those and I notice also there's a big difference in the, percentage throughput of people. , I mean I'm ballparking this, but I think.

Back in the day when I would receive portfolios, it'd be probably like a one in 10 pass through where I'd be like, okay, one in 10, like you're good enough to have a phone call and start to understand what they're good at and what they've been doing. now it's probably one to two in a hundred and it's very painful and like this is confirmed to me by other design directors, design managers that are going through hiring processes .

I think a lot of that is we've done a disservice to these designers in this industry and haven't taught them the actual design skills they need. And so, yes, being a boring designer used to be really cool and very helpful, and you needed those people to bridge the gap between these disciplines.

But now, we've done that work and now you need people who can do the whole thing. And I think we're kind of in a tough spot as a discipline right now.

Christian: You hear a lot these days sort of a renaissance of. Craft and taste and these couple of things that we talk about, especially in the age of AI, where Some of the work that we are doing right now will be handed over, or at least done in partnership with some sort of a non-human intelligence.

But there is this thread that everyone talks about of craft and taste still mattering. It being the difference or main differentiator between us and a the robots. That's what I wanted to say and I thought I shouldn't say that then you said it, so there you go. Are you of the same opinion that's missing and it sounds like that's what you're saying, that we have lost a little bit of that in the past decade or so.

Cap: Yeah, I think so. I think the AI thing is so interesting to me. I think back on various moments in design , and I think about that in contrast to ai where I'm like, the first. typographer who had to like lay the type by hand to see a typewriter must have been super pissed.

You know, like very nervous about their job. Right? And the first person, my first typewriter, like designer who saw a computer must have been like, oh shit. and the first time you saw Photoshop, you know, or the first time you saw Sketch or Figma or you know, it's like.

Those are a little less, those are more evolutionary. But like, there have been some serious revolutions technologically in our industry in the last a hundred, 150 years. 200 years. And, uh, it's all been okay. For design, it doesn't replace the thing that actually differentiates design, which is what you're saying.

It's taste and the ability to make something beautiful that works well and that understands the person using it. I think the problem with AI right now is that everyone's like doing the hype thing where it's like, it's gonna make your breakfast. And like, actually it doesn't say that.

They're like, you're gonna eat breakfast while it does all your work. But it can't do that right now. it's very limited. It's a statistical average of everything. It knows and so its ability to. Do something net new from scratch that understands the person that's trying to use it, understands the problem well, like, and make something beautiful and usable, very low.

Like it can't do that. I'm not saying it can never do that, but we're pretty far away. And I think instead if we look at that tool is what it's meant to be, I think, which is, a tool. It's a pulley system or a bicycle to go a little faster than you would on foot, you can make something pretty cool.

I think it can really help you. I mean, the designers, I talked about a lattice who are starting to write front end, like they're using cursor now, do I care that they're using cursor to fix visual bugs? Absolutely not. We still do PR reviews, the code's good. They're learning stuff so they can see how it would fix it, and then they tweak it themselves by hand.

That's great. I love that. I think that's so cool. and then, you know, eventually we'll have design tools that do something similar or like, so far away. We used Figma make last week and I was so disappointed. it's So far away, but I can see the bones, I can see where it's going, and it's gonna be very powerful someday.

But it can't replace the thing that I think has always made design. Design, which is that like kind of differentiation I gave a talk to the design team a couple weeks ago, like as part of our onsite, my vision for the team. And I gave them all these examples of, you know, when I, when the internet first started.

I show them a bunch of pictures of different websites. , Here's the first banking website. And it was horrendous, right? And like here was first social network and it's like MySpace, you know? And here's the first way I chatted with friends and it's a image of ICQ, which is a disaster.

I can't believe I used that thing. or IRC. And I was like, those things became businesses and became they got usurped. Companies who cared about design like Square came in and upended banking slack came in and upended IRC, like, it still exists.

Like it's an open source thing. It's great, but likethat's not what people use. You know, discord came around. It's like there are example after example, after example. design is the differentiator. For everything. I saw a funny post, some design leader on LinkedIn was like, oh, like finally with ai, like design's gonna be the differentiator.

I was like, it was always the differentiator, man. and so I think that will still be what separates premium companies from less premium offerings and, another example, Fiverr has existed for a long time and did that destroy the graphic design and illustration industry?

Absolutely not. I know a ton of very successful working people who've been doing it for a very long time. Still do it. Still make a great living. and so I'm not that worried about the AI thing as much .

Christian: I tend to think of it more of a thought partner. It's also what I called it earlier. Uh, it it's great to, to jam with, it's great to ask questions. I think it's really interesting. If you go into the settings you can set some guidelines for it. And one of the guidelines that I've set is,

Always challenge me every time I say something or as often as possible, challenge me and challenge me with data, not with an opinion from Reddit. and sometimes does that, and it makes you rethink some of the conversations you're having. But again, it's a thought partner. It needs you to bounce ideas off of rather than create something for you.

And again, we don't know where the future is gonna be, but probably this transition looks like it's gonna be much more gradual than a lot of people fear . You mentioned earlier. Design systems and, and all of these things that have a little bit homogenized, the design world.

And you take 10 of the most popular apps and you're probably gonna see a lot of the same components just with a bit of a different visual, , effect or whatever. But it's, it's still a list. It's still a model. And I've been thinking about this the other day. Maybe you don't have an opinion on this, but do you think design over the past 5, 6, 7 years has gotten a bit boring ?

Cap: Yeah, but I don't think it's a design system's problem. The design system, like most design systems are giving you style for HTML elements that already exist. You know, It's, it's not like, HTML will still be there, that we'll have to style the form fields and style like that will all need to exist.

Right. And I don't want to have different dropdowns all over the place either. So I think it's very reasonable to do that. I think there is maybe something into what you're saying where like I've noticed at times an over componentization of systems I'll give you a good example, We have an avatar component. It only has two sizes. I'm just like, why? No user gives a rat's ass about it being 32 pixels or 16 pixels or 24 pixels. Like make it make sense in the context it's in. Don't let the system make that decision for you., and I think there is kind of a place where design systems can naturally go where they over componentize to the point where you're not using the best tool.

For the design you're trying to make, you're using what's there. I do think having good guidelines around that are good. So like I have a, um, flow chart for the designers where it's like, can you use the design system as the design? It's like, yes, great. No, why not? Can you change your design to use the design system?

If not, great, let's talk about that. , It's this whole diagram of how to question the system to get to the place where we adjust it or change it. And I think a lot of places miss that part where they're like, oh, we're just gonna keep building components and components and components.

And then like, it becomes so brittle that, everything does start looking the same. But it's also, it's not just that it looks the same, it works weird because you're like, why? Like a lattice has this problem actually everything's a table. Everything, even a list, like a normal list, that should just be a list of links to a thing table.

And I remember getting to last and I was like, why is this a table, dude? Like, it doesn't make any sense. And they're like, well, that's the component. That's the pattern. I'm like, great, we gotta question this a little bit more. It's not, this is not the answer. and so I do think it can take you to that place.

I think good. Gardening can help with that, but I do think there are places that, well, I do heavily on it.

Christian: Yeah, I think you said a word there that I really like. We're just questioning oftentimes, and I've been in this situation myself, where you try to do something new and you always get pulled back. Oh, you could just, I know you've created this new thing, but it's much faster to just use this component that we already have.

Engineers will be happier. It'll all move faster, and perhaps that is true, But then you have a death by a thousand cuts. If every single time you always revert back to the design system. First of all, you're not gonna create anything new . Second of all, there's not always a component that's equal to what you are trying to do.

So I think if you always revert to the design system without necessarily questioning, I like that word, might create some of these problems of, I dunno if boring is the right, but It's just not the right thing to do, I guess, for the product. And when we were talking about craft and taste earlier, sometimes you look at something and you know, this just doesn't feel right.

it doesn't feel right, but it's in the design system and therefore we have to use it. So I guess questioning is really important . Healthy team is having arguments. I think that's a sign of a healthy system.

You wrote another article. About making things happen. I guess it's about high agency people, isn't it? let's talk a little bit about, what that means, A couple of examples that you have from the past and, um, something that, I think anyone in the audience can learn.

it is generally about becoming a bit more high agency and, taking work that perhaps is not so glamorous and running with it. I'll let you give a bit more of a, an overview of it.

Cap: Yeah, so the idea is that like, um, every company has a small, limited number of what you might call shiny projects. the big cool, everyone's thinking about it at the company project, I think Latti probably has two. Right now we have a team of 16, 17, 18 designers. So some people spend a lot of their time wanting to be on those projects and I think that that's how, they're gonna have an impact.

They're gonna make a difference. They're gonna get seen is through those projects. And I wanna be clear, that's totally true. That's real. if you were on those projects, you are seen, whatever you're doing is high vis. there are pros and cons to that.

But I find that really successful designers, people in general actually, like people at work in general, tend to be able to take any project that isn't those projects and like get themselves into a place where they believe it's one of those projects and they start to treat it like it's one of those projects.

so a good example would be, uh, there's a designer. Designer I was talking about earlier at Lattice, who's like so senior and so autonomous. When she was earlier in her career here, she was working on one of our like very complicated, nuanced tools. It's a compensation tool that has a lot of ins and outs, a lot of math, a lot of tables And I would say very boring project, boring from the sense of like UI design it's. pretty straightforward. she took that project and basically designed a vision for how that would work and how the setup could be. That was so inspiring. it inspired the engineers.

She would show it to people outside the team and they'd be like, holy crap. I didn't think it could work that way. she took it to this place that like she didn't have to. She could have easily just been like, well I'm gonna do the feature and do the ticket and make it look the way the rest of it looks and make it work.

But I think she looked past that and like she's one of those people who can't help herself and like went further and it turned into the thing we wound up doing and she basically got a lot of internal accolades for that project that is why she has a reputation now.

And she gets on the big projects because. She was able to take stuff like that, or we had another one which was like, it's this, I don't even know how to explain it. It's this like, basically HR concept that's really difficult for people to understand. Even people who worked on this stuff, did not quite understand it and it was hard to explain.

At some point she put together a Figma file explaining it and made a like. 15 minute loom where she visually explained this very deep and complicated topic, and that thing went viral internally. it got passed around and passed around because everyone was like, holy crap, I've never understood this before.

she didn't have to do that. no one said, Hey, like, could you put together. A visual, beautiful explainer for how this entire system works. she did it for her and then passed it along because she saw that like other people needed it and like it became famous inside of the company.

And so I see people like that all the time where they're able to take something that isn't necessarily considered the most important hot thing at the company, and they turn it into that because that's just naturally what they do, and they're able to get jazzed about this. I talk to people about this whenever I'm interviewing for jobs, uh, in the past I've said people are like, oh, well, like, what do you wanna work on?

I'm like, you know what? , I mean, you look at my work history, it's all over the place. So clearly I don't care. I could work at a cardboard box company if I thought the people were cool and like we were working on hard problems, I could make myself excited. I think that's a really important skill to develop being able to get jazzed about almost anything.

And find the fun in it because then that lets you do great work. It'll get you put on those products eventually. it's a really big differentiator for people in their career.

Christian: I was gonna ask, what's the lesson out of this? And I guess the lesson is that right? To just try to learn how to make yourself excited about the work in front of you. There is one detail there and I think it's also important to draw out which is going the extra mile. I think sometimes these days we just do what's good enough and that allows you to move on to the next project.

But I guess one of the lessons there is perhaps spend a little bit more time going. A little bit deeper, going the extra mile, and sooner or later the right pieces will fall into place or, or sooner or later, there will be benefits to you doing the extra mile, you know, 10, 15, 20 times that will, uh, come back to you, in a positive way, I guess.

Cap: Yeah, the way I framed it to the design team is, something people talk about still is, I called it being the balloon. Like if you think about the tri, like the triangle, right? Of product and engineering and design product is there to understand the business case. understand the business of the product you're making.

Understand who the customer is supposed to be. Like they, they're supposed to strategize and then they wanna ship Engineers wanna build the thing. Like they have a timeline, they wanna build it. In that time. If you only had those two inputs, we'd build some pretty crappy software and we do build pretty crappy software when those are the only two inputs.

Design I see frequently fall into this place where they only listen to those two inputs. They're so empathetic. Like we're also like I designers are just so kind like it's like this. One of my favorite things about being a designer is the design teams I've always been on are so kind, so generous. They extend that to their partners, which I think is cool.

But then they wind up in a position where they're like, well, I cut this scope and I did this a little less because my engineers are stressed out, or because the product manager said we have to go, And what I've been really hammering on with the lattice team is like, no, no, no, no, no.

Your role in that group is to be the balloon tugging up into the air you're trying to get them. Lifted, out of that muck and like do something that's more, you know, you want to take it up a notch and we're gonna lose. It's okay to lose too. I don't think, like, you know, some of the stuff that the person I was even referencing design, like we aren't doing like we didn't do, but she pushed a conversation and like, I think that's like the magic of design. Again, this is going back to like, we have a lot of strategists in design.

We like built this thing where we were like compromising or just getting the thing out or doing the like. Mechanic of it, but not doing the part where it's like, no, it could be more. that's the thing, it's not even like extra time or the mile or whatever. It's just like your job is to push, 'cause if you don't, who's gonna, it's not gonna be product, it's not gonna be eng most likely. I mean there's obviously exceptions to that, but like for the most part, their incentives are not lined up with. Push it harder, do more, make user experience that is differentiated. Like, that's not like on their incentive list.

And so you gotta push. And so I find those people like are able to do that pretty well. And like the last thing I'll say about it is, I mentioned this earlier, but another thing I say a lot is like, we gotta find the fun in this stuff, guys., I still can't believe that making internet stuff is a job.

If you told me when I was 14, making my little websites on the web that like, someone's gonna pay me like non insignificant amounts of money to like do this for like my job. I'd have been like, you're outta your mind. There's no way. I remember once I was at Buzzfeed and we were in this really, really heated discussion, like people were arguing and I'm sitting there just in this room not saying anything and eventually I stop it and I go look.

I'm glad we all take this seriously, but can we just have a second? We are literally arguing about how to put cat videos on the internet. Can we just like, get real here? I think people should come to work and be serious. Like, I think that's good. I like taking our work seriously, but like, come on for a second.

Um, and Latice is similar. It's It's serious ish, like it's HR software, there's performance stuff in there, but like. Ultimately, if you couldn't leave feedback for one day in Lattice, we'd be okay. my dad works in healthcare so I have a very strong, like a very sharp line between like what would really matter and what doesn't.

And like I think this is a, I just think people need to find more fun and what we're doing, it's doesn't have to be so serious all the time. And that can help you push a little more. 'cause it's just fun to make.

Christian: I love that. I have a couple more questions that I ask everyone. They're short fire. The first one is, where do you look for inspiration in your day to day?

Cap: I am orthogonal. I do, I have a lot of weird hobbies. I'm really into super Nintendo ROM hacking communities, which is a weird thing. I like Super Mario World Rom hacks if you haven't looked them up. It's really oddball small community of people who make new Super Mario World games that are really hard.

I read a lot. I write a lot still. I don't publish a lot of it, but I still write. But yeah, I tend to, or I go for runs. I tend to find my creativity orthogonally in things that just have nothing to do with my design day.

Christian: And then the last one, what is something that you believe AI will not be good at and therefore designers should or could

double down on?

Cap: It's the craft and vision stuff. I'm still surprised in user research, there is user research that contradicts research I've seen in other products even. and the world moves forward.

even if you collected all the user research in the entire world and put it into the AI for instance, and said like. How people respond to this exact thing I'm making, it would not be able to tell you because you're in a new context, you're doing something different, a little bit. Like, it's like it can help you do the thinking, but it cannot predict it.

And so the craft and the like customer understanding for design, I think will not be replicatable. and that again, design has proven durable for many, many, many years On the back of like, people can't make it as good as we can make it. And that continues to hold true. People will find new ways to use these tools.

I'm very excited about that, to make net new stuff or new ways of making things. And so, yeah, I think we just keep looking at it as a tool and not as a replacement. And then keep looking at like, okay, craft is gonna move forward, technology will move forward. And like our role in that will be to understand customers and to deliver beautiful highly usable things that I don't think AI will be able to do by itself.

Christian: Great. Ka. Is there anything else you want to add at the end?

Cap: No, I had a lovely time. Thanks for having me on here.

Christian: No, thanks for being on. It's been, uh, an absolute pleasure.